NOWNESS: Italian artist Quayola presents FIGHTERS

Fighters – is a new film and sculpture by Italian multimedia visual artist Quayola for Max Cooper’s latest musical project Seme (or Seed) – the latest in the acclaimed musician, sound designer and creative vast portfolio of work that explores the foundations of nature and society.

The short film impressively captures the fusion of computer programming and classical Italian art, extending the musician’s artistic commission by the prestigious Salzburg Easter Festival in discovering historical aesthetics through a more complex lens.

Quayola is an Italian artist based in Rome. He employs technology as a lens to explore the tensions and equilibriums between seemingly opposing forces: the real and artificial, figurative and abstract, old and new. Constructing immersive installations, he engages with and re-imagines canonical imagery through contemporary technology. His varied practice, all deriving from custom computer software, also includes audiovisual performance, immersive video installations, sculpture, and works on paper. A frequent collaborator on musical projects, Quayola has worked with composers, orchestras and musicians including London Contemporary Orchestra, National Orchestra of Bordeaux, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Vanessa Wagner, Jamie XX, Mira Calix, Plaid and Tale Of Us.

Seme premiered at Salzburg Easter Festival within the iconic Felsenreitschule concert hall on 28th March 2024 directed by Sir Antonio Pappano, who set the theme of the annual festival around the spirit and passion of Italy. The performance was then followed by two nights at London’s International Arts and Events Centre Barbican.

Forthisshow,CooperwasjoinedlivebyKimSheehan(soprano),NielsOrens(cello),andTomHodge (piano) resulting in impressive immersive aesthetics by award-winning design studio Architecture Social Club blended with modern audio, custom laser and projection techniques.

Much like electronic composer Max Cooper, Italian artist Quayola artworks are highly influenced by technology, often algorithmically generated experiences that pay distinctive attention to the relationship between various stimuli – the visual and the audible, all delicately explored through both the digital and the analogue formats.

Quayola’s work has been performed and exhibited in many prestigious institutions worldwide including V&A Museum, London; Park Avenue Armory, New York; National Art Center, Tokyo; UCCA, Beijing; How Art Museum, Shanghai; SeMA, Seoul; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Ars Electronica, Linz; Sonar Festival, Barcelona and Sundance Film Festival

Soundtracking the film Palestrina Sicut taken from Max Cooper’s Seme EP is an esoteric palette of synths and piano whose intimate warmth is accented by the use of elegiac and profound touchstones, establishing a conversational flow between traditional and electronic musicians.

“When I discovered Palestrina and tried integrating it into my music, I had a wow moment. It’s music that was created for the church, Holy music, but it carries a lot of the same messages of reflection and meaning that I often work with.” Max Cooper

A truly creative alliance Fighters showcases the harmonious potential of art and technology drawing inspiration from Michelangelo’s Captives (1510-1530), a series of never-completed sculptures which became emblematic of their expressiveness embedded in the exposed sculptural process.

Quayola’s sculpture is left unfinished, with the intent to document the aesthetics of the process itself, which becomes the true subject of both the film and the actual sculpture.

Fighters is a film about the algorithmic genesis of Quayola’s latest marble sculpture and the expressiveness of new robotic gestures, a chiselling visual performance that sees a robot take the lead protagonist – replacing the delicate touch of a human craftsman.

The film bridges digital and physical realms, sublimating robotic means and computational pathways into objects of contemplation, celebrating the intrinsic poetics of algorithmic logic and robotics precision, as well as the heritage of sculptural traditions, Carrara’s marble and the historical quarry itself.

Through recent collaboration with visual artists, coders, mathematicians, architects and filmmakers and informed by his PhD in computational biology, Max Cooper has incubated Seme’s thesis in music and visual arts, rooted in experimentation yet fully embracing the intersectional potentials that challenge the perceived barriers between art forms and performance events.

“I began thinking about the foundational ideas and aesthetics coming from Italy, and the connections to my interests which have gone into previous projects. I set on the idea of Seme to link foundational aesthetics in science to other areas found in Italian culture: art, religious iconography, architecture, music, etc. It’s a big melting pot of ideas and form.” Max Cooper