from, maybe to
From, maybe to is a research project culminating in the creation of various sculptures, mixed media drawings and videos, aimed at investigating the natural algorithm through which self-similar processes of construction and dissolution manifest themselves in our memory via modules and their evolution, starting from personal remembrances.
Category
sculpture | sound art
Specifics
for piano components, metronomes, metal bars, metal clamps, tin casts of branches 2ch sound
Years of creation
2023 – 2024
The work delves into the intersection of music, visual art, and architecture within a conceptual framework rooted in self-referential proceduralism. Gianluca Iadema’s memories become the one of the sculpture. It reflects and incorporates itself by identifying with its origin upon encountering it, thereby transcending its own nature, as time arises from memory. This process involves the present moment becoming part of the past, then being regarded as such and reintegrated into the now. In this way, the present exists both as itself and as a recollection of the past, creating a continuous sense of passage.
These synthetic metal structures are conceived as filters, through which some excerpts of memory, represented in this particular work by piano components and other musical elements, are processed. Each structure engages in a dialogue with a musical element composed entirely on the piano, employing both standard and extended techniques, as well as digital signal processing. The music is then diffused as a binaural tape. Consequently, these structures are transformed into autonomous systems, resembling three-dimensional mnemonic projections. At the same time, each piece incorporates natural elements, such as tin cust of tree branches, to reflect the fractal characteristic of the sculptures.
The conceptual aspect intersects with the narrative dimension. In fact, the entire project “From, maybe to” consists not only of sound sculptures but also of mixed media drawings and videos. As in my other projects, the logic of creating a sort of deconstructed movie through different types of media is also present here.
The entire narrative apparatus begins with three videos in which a photogrammetry of a piano explodes, transforming the instrument into a true space for exploration. What was external becomes internal and vice versa, creating an “absolute” object that floats in a fourth dimension. The piano transforms into an abstract landscape, revealing traces on its surface, captured by the mixed media drawings. At this point, the point cloud slowly reassembles, morphing and gradually taking on more three-dimensional forms. It’s as if a distant gaze is trying to understand what it is, and this “other” gaze eventually realizes that all these components need to reconstitute themselves into a sculpture, without knowing what a piano is. In the end, it is revealed that these structures turn out to be machines designed to store people’s memories.
In addition to the narrative aspect of the three videos, there is also a layer that traces the conceptual component. By the end of the videos, instead of the piano exploding, it implodes and, by collapsing, becomes first a line on a Cartesian plane, then a cube, and finally a hypercube, representing the fourth dimension, where inside and outside remain concepts belonging to the category of the absolute.
As for the mixed media drawings, they were conceived as preliminary sketches for the creation of the sculptures, a sort of speculation by this “other” civilization wondering what all the components of the instrument—metals and organic elements—might represent. The lines they trace at times resemble languages, at times architectures, and at times sound spectrums and musical notations.
