Unfinished. Jonathan Monk e l'Afghanistan di Alighiero Boetti.

Per il progetto Untitled and Unfinished (Afghanistan) l’artista Jonathan Monk ha organizzato insieme alla gallerista Sonia Rosso una spedizione in Afghanistan, presso i laghi di Band-E-Amir, sulle cui acque Alighiero Boetti avrebbe voluto che le sue ceneri venissero disperse dopo la morte, azione che tuttavia non è mai avvenuta. Tra le difficoltà dovute alla situazione politica e a vari problemi logistici, nel 2004 Mustafa Sahibzada, un ragazzo Afghano incaricato dall'artista, seguendo le istruzioni sul luogo e riguardo alla tipologia di materiali da raccogliere, ha potuto realizzare filmati e fotografie, che hanno permesso a Monk di produrre cinque film in formato 16mm, ciascuno corredato da 16 fotografie scattate durante il percorso per raggiungere i laghi. Questo articolo si propone di ricostruire il progetto dietro l’operazione artistica, contestualizzandolo nel dibattito contemporaneo attorno alle riletture dell'Afghanistan di Alighiero Boetti.Jonathan Monk organized, for the Untitled and Unfinished (Afghanistan)project and together with gallerist Sonia Rosso, an expedition to Afghanistan to find the Band-E-Amir lakes, where Alighiero Boetti would have liked his ashes to be scattered after his death, an action which never took place. Among the difficulties due to the political situation and various logistical problems, in 2004, Jonathan Monk had entrusted the documentation of the lakes to Sahibzada Mustafa, an Afghan boy, who,following precise instructions about the place and about the types of materials to be collected, was able to take many films and pictures and send them to the artist, who produced five films depicting the lakes in 16mm, with a strictly fixed camera shot, each one accompanied by 16 photographs taken during the route to the lakes.This article aims to retrace the project behind the artistic operation, putting the work in the context of the contemporary debate about Alighiero Boetti's Afghanistan

Unbuilt art. Appunti per un dibattito sul non realizzato

L’articolo si propone di affrontare e ricostruire il dibattito intorno al tema del non realizzato nell’arte contemporanea. In relazione al museo digitale MoRE, l’obiettivo è quello di individuare specifiche linee di ricerca e prospettive, spesso interdisciplinari, che hanno posto le basi per un progetto di ricerca, guardando al dibattito legato al ruolo del progetto e alla sua messa in discussione come a più recenti pratiche curatoriali, per arrivare a una definizione del non realizzato.This article wants to take on and reconstruct the debate that, from the fifties until today, was built around the theme of the unrealised in contemporary art. In relation to the digital museum MoRE, the goal is to identify specific lines of research and perspectives, often interdisciplinary ones, who have laid the foundation for a research project, looking at the debate regarding the role of the project and how it’s been questioned, and at the same time at some more recent curatorial practices, to define what the unrealised is

MoRE: un museo digitale dedicato al non realizzato / MoRE: a digital museum of the unrealised

MoRE è un museo digitale, e conserva esclusivamente documenti digitali, un elemento che ci impone un confronto con il complesso tema della realtà del web e delle proposte che in questi anni sono state avanzate sul tema della digitalizzazione e della possibilità di operarvi in relazione ai temi della conservazione e della tutela. Si propone di documentare un tessuto progettuale e artistico quasi del tutto sconosciuto che ha diritto di essere inserito a tutti gli effetti nella storia del progetto in senso lato (il “non realizzato” coinvolge del resto anche il panorama espositivo se pensiamo alle mostre non realizzate, gli allestimenti rimasti sulla carta e le occasioni abortite) e che, se letto dal punto di vista archivistico e documentaristico, offre materiale decisamente interessante. Contribuendo a definire non solo le singole storie artistiche e quelle attuali, l’archivio permetterà quindi di indagare le modalità di rapporto con le istituzioni e con i pilastri del sistema stesso delineabili anche grazie alle motivazioni suggerite dagli artisti per la mancata realizzazione di progetti commissionati o comunque pensati per essere realizzati, informazioni che contribuiscono a definire e a raccontare le difficoltà tecniche, economiche, morali, etiche ecc… con cui l’artista oggi si confronta.MoRE is a digital museum, and it collects only digital materials, an element that forces us to deal with the complex reality of the web and of the proposals advanced so far about digitization and the opportunities that it offers for the preservation and conservation of the works of art.MoRE does not aim at writing a parallel history of art, but to document a set of projects and works of art pretty much unknown that deserves to be included with no doubts in the history of the project broadly speaking (the unrealised involves after all the system of exhibitions too if we think at all the unrealized exhibitions and arrangements and the occasions failed) and that constitutes an interesting heritage from an archivistic and documentaristic point of view.The archive, by contributing to the definition of historical and contemporary art, will help to understand the relations with institutions and the pillars of the system itself, also thanks to the explanations given by the artists for the non-realization of the projects, commissioned or intended to be realized anyway, information that helps in describing the technical, economical and ethical difficulties that the artist has to face nowadays

Intervista a / An interview with Scott King & Matthew Worley - CRASH! Londra, 05.07.2013

Intervista al collettivo CRASH!, composto da Scott King e Matthew Worley, realizzata a Londra da Marco Scotti in occasione della donazione del progetto A Better Britain a MoRE.An interview with CRASH!, Scott King and Matthew Worley, taken in London by Marco Scotti on the occasion of the donation of the A Better Britain project to MoRE

Single species features in ecological networks

Le reti alimentari descrivono le relazioni trofiche (flussi di materia o energia) tra le specie di un ecosistema. All’interno di questo ambito, una metodologia diffusa ed ampiamente utilizzata è denominata “ecosystem network analysis” (ENA). La maggior parte delle applicazioni di teoria delle reti utilizza indici globali per caratterizzare struttura e funzionamento degli ecosistemi, mentre pochi esempi sono indirizzati all’indagine delle proprietà dei singoli componenti. Attraverso questo lavoro, partendo dalla struttura metodologica dell’ENA, mi propongo di estendere la comprensione del ruolo delle specie in funzione della posizione occupata all’interno delle reti. In particolare, analizzo l’importanza di quantificare l’intensità delle relazioni trofiche (pesi) rispetto alla semplice distribuzione binaria dei legami (presenza/assenza), garantendo informazioni funzionali in aggiunta alle caratteristiche topologiche. Confrontando diverse tipologie di reti (preda-predatore, pianta-impollinatore, ospite-parassita), dimostro come l’importanza del peso vari con la tipologia di interazione considerata. Inoltre, esploro come la posizione trofica, espressione del flusso energetico nei sistemi naturali, condizioni la topologia delle reti ecologiche. Descrivo, quindi, la distribuzione di abitudini alimentari specialistiche e generalistiche lungo la catena trofica, discutendo aspetti connessi all’onnivoria. Analisi matematiche, algoritmi e regolarità sono testati ed analizzati su dati reali, enfatizzando il bisogno di un’azione sinergica tra studi empirici ed approccio simulativo.Food webs describe feeding relationships between species, depicting road maps for the flow of energy and matter in ecosystems. In this conceptual framework, a prominent collection of quantitative methods consists of ecosystem network analysis (ENA). Few examples focussing on single species features, as emerging from roles they play in complex systems, have been stressed. By this research, starting from ENA procedure, I try to extend the knowledge on properties displayed by species in relation to whole system structure. I stress the problem of considering weights in ecological networks, since dealing with unweighted graph we are simply paying attention to the topological organization of nodes and links, while analyzing a weighted network we are including functional information that can obscure significantly the topological characteristics. Comparing different ecological networks (e.g. predator-prey, plant-pollinator, host-parasite), I demonstrate how the importance of weighting may vary depending on interaction types. I explore how species trophic position (energy delivery) affects food web topology, evaluating distribution of trophic specialization and generalist trophic behaviour towards the trophic chain and defining omnivory composition. Within my thesis, mathematical developments, algorithms and patterns were tested and analyzed on real data, stimulating the need of a coupled action between empirical studies and simulations

Ettore Sottsass. Il viaggio e l’archivio

Ettore Sottsass Jr. (Innsbruck 1917-Milan 2007) was an architect, artist, designer, photographer, and writer, who always had a nomadic approach to events. This led him to travel incessantly around the world ever since his university years and till the end of his life. Starting from his archive, this article aims at investigating the design methods and processes around his journeys by considering both his business trips and the ones fostered by his curiosity. Travelling represented a tool for the search of his own identity, a parallel path in his long and seminal career, always intertwined with his design methodology

Feste in Brianza. Le grafiche di Ettore Sottsass e gli eventi nella falegnameria di Renzo Brugola

Within the design career of Ettore Sottsass, in the second half of the Sixties, it is possible to find three apparently surprising projects: three invitations for as many parties, organized in the carpentry shop of one of his collaborators and friends, Renzo Brugola. This article aims to reconstruct the context of these works and the respective parties, starting from the designer’s archives, to try to focus on their importance with respect to the pacifist cultural scene called “beat” and the counterculture of which Sottsass and his wife Fernanda Pivano were entertainers

Flow network indices signal a directional change in ecosystems: Evidence from a small mountain lake (Lake Santo, northern Italy)

Empirical evidence of the theoretically expected trends of ecosystem development is scarce so far. In this research, we used long-term empirical data about the plankton community of a small mountain lake (Lake Santo, northern Apennines, Italy) to reconstruct its developmental trajectory during a period comprised between early 1970 s and 2010 s. We exploited these data to build yearly ecological networks and from their configuration of energy flows we computed network information indices. The trends of these indices enlighten about the developmental trajectory of this ecosystem during the period covered by the data set. In particular, they indicate that Lake Santo evolved in the direction of increasing stability at the expense of efficiency in energy transfer. We compared these results with current hypotheses about the directionality of ecosystem development, which are rooted in ecosystem theory, and discussed the possibility that, counter to some theoretical models of ecosystem development, Lake Santo followed an unimpeded direction of development rather than a trajectory typical of an ecosystem under stress. Finally, the long-term trends of flow network indices provided insights about the health status of the ecosystem

Understanding Social–Ecological Systems using Loop Analysis

The sustainable management of social–ecological systems (SESs) requires that we understand the complex structure of relationships and feedbacks among ecosystem components and socioeconomic entities. Therefore, the construction and analysis of models integrating ecological and human actors is crucial for describing the functioning of SESs, and qualitative modeling represents an ideal tool since it allows studying dependencies among variables of diverse types. In particular, the qualitative technique of loop analysis yields predictions about how a system’s variables respond to stress factors. Different interaction types, scarce information about functional relationships among variables, and uncertainties in the values of the parameters are the rule rather than exceptions when studying SESs. Accordingly, loop analysis seems to be perfectly suitable to investigate them. Here, we introduce the key aspects of loop analysis, discuss its applications to SESs, and suggest it enables making the first steps toward the integration of the three dimensions of sustainability