[aha] otolab_op7: The Exhibition

[Redazione Digicult]

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Traffic Gallery - New International Multimedia Centre & Digicult presents:

"OP7" by OTOLAB: THE EXHIBITION

November 8 - December 31, 2007
Curated by: Marco Mancuso and Claudia D'Alonzo for Digicult
Exhibition opening | Wednesday,  November 7 | 18.30 / 21.30 hrs
Traffic Gallery: Via San Tomaso 92, Bergamo - Italy

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Videoclips, visual art, installations and artistic visual performances; this is the orientation of the new-born Traffic Gallery in Bergamo, a gallery specialized in digital, multimedia and videoart, set up with the intention of promoting the new contemporary art trends expressed by the very last generations.

Starting November 8, Traffic Gallery will host the exhibit "op7", by the Milan-based collective otolab, curated by Marco Mancuso and Claudia D'Alonzo for Digicult, a project of electronic culture and digital art diffusion. Otolab was born in 2001 as an identity grouping musicians, djs, vjs, videoartists, videomakers, web designers, graphic designers and architects who share the will to research the interweavings between sound and image. Through a laboratorial practice focused on the sharing of experience and knowledge, otolab has produced collective and individual projects that range from livemedia performances to installations, from experimental electronic music to techno, thus featuring different approaches to experiment hybrid perceptions of synthetic sounds and visions.

The exhibit at Traffic Gallery wants to document and reinterpret one of otolab's most recent live performance works, "op7". Conceived in 2006 for the Mixed Media festival which took place in the Hangar Bicocca in Milano, it will be presented with a video installation of the work, a tryptich and seven photographic prints taken from the original video material.

 "op7" was a site-specific commission by Marco Mancuso/Digicult within the curatorial work for the Mixed Media 2006 festival, with the aim of inviting the Milan-based collective to dialogue with the "I sette palazzi celesti" (The seven heavenly buildings) of Belgian artist Anselm Kiefer, seven post-industrial towers that are permanently located in the Hangar Bicocca in Milano. Thanks to a five-screen projection, Otolab set up an optical path through seven tunnels of minimal black and white.

The sounds generate bidimensional shapes organized around a horizon, the only fulcrum in the emptiness, an axis around which "op7" plays with the spectator's eyes, deceiving the retina while generating illusory three-dimensional environments born off an inlay of flat geometry. Each of the seven tunnels is introduced by a moment of sensorial suspension that invites the spectator to abandon the former and prepare for the next voyage: six peripherical zones characterized by pulviscular sounds and pictorial visions created by the Pepposcope, an optical tool projected by the collective and here exhibited.

Otolab has set up self-organized cultural initiatives and organized seminars and workshops. The first retrospective on the collective's work dates back in 2004, curated by Lucrezia Cippitelli, at MLAC, Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea di Roma. The group has taken part with livesets and installations in national and international exhibits and events, such as:

- Dissonanze '06, Roma
- Clubtransmediale '05, Berlin
- Arte Nuevo Interactiva '05, Bienal Internacional de Merida, Mexico
- Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, Turkey
- Gallery Noass, Art and Culture Project Noass, Riga, Latvia
- Netmage '04, Bologna

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CREDITS:
Catalogue texts: Marco Mancuso and Claudia Antimonelli
Press agency: Claudia D'Alonzo for Digicult
With the participation of: Icona Arti Grafiche Digitali

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TEXTS:
Exhibition Critical Text: 
http://www.digicult.it/public/CriticalText_%20ENG.doc
Exhibited Works: http://www.digicult.it/public/ExhibitedWorks_ENG.doc
Bio Otolab: http://www.digicult.it/public/BioOtolab_ENG.doc
Bio Curators: http://www.digicult.it/public/BioCurators_ENG.doc

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LINKS:
www.otolab.net
http://www.digicult.it/en/
http://www.digicult.it/en/2007/otolabop7.asp
http://www.trafficgallery.org/

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INFO:
Opening and cocktail, Wednesday November 7, from 18.30 to 21.30hrs
Opening to the public | November 8 - December 31, 2007 | Free entrance
Opening time | from Tuesdays to Saturdays | 10-13hrs  16-19hrs | Closed on 
Sundays and Mondays

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DIGICULT is a cultural project involved in digital culture and electronic arts. DigiCult project is directed by Marco Mancuso and based on the active participation of 40 professional people about, who represent the first wide Italian network of journalists, curators, artists and critics in the field of electronic culture. And on a multitude of updated strategies around new media communication and networking activities. DigiCult is a web portal but is also the editor of the monthly magazine DigiMag, discussing with a critic and journalistic approach, about net art, hacktivism, video art, electronica, audio video, interaction design, artificial intelligence, new media, software art, performing art. DigiCult produce an electronic music and audiovisual podcast and the newsletter international service DigiNews. DigiCult is involved in side-activities like media partnerships and journalistic/critic reports, consultancy and curatorial activities and artists international promotion.
http://www.digicult.it/en
http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/index.asp
http://www.digicult.it/podcast/
http://www.digicult.it/en/Credits.asp
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