Silvia Rigon: Venus Villosa
Title:
- Venus Villosa
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
- ISEA2004: 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More artworks from ISEA2004:
Medium:
- Interactive installation
Artist Statement:
Venus Villosa is an interactive installation staged around the sense of touch. It refers to the western myth of the Beast, particularly to the dichotomy of “beauty and beast”. It comments on the unresolved ambivalence of our relationship towards nature as it concerns our body and our identity. As new technologies allow the exploration of a different level of interactivity and involvement of the body in the sphere of the artistic experience, a subsequent need to rethink some of the metaphors associated to the different senses emerges.
Venus Villosa’s journey into the erratically unlawful act of touch takes the shape of a tactile interface, nested into the referential landscape of the mythical Beast, the archetypical representation of the unconscious mind. The installation enhances the physicality of the interactive experience and at the same time it critically addresses the notion of the body as the polarizing subject against which the culture of technology shapes its dreams of disembodiment.
Venus Villosa’s is articulated around three metaphors – the sense of touch, hair and the breast – as a way to unfold the dichotomies of the beauty and the beast, the ideal and the material, the natural and the artificial. The interactivity works as a meta-commentary, reinforcing the significance of the user’s experience as a whole. By engaging in the usually forbidden activity of touching art (and breasts), the user turns the beauty into the beast.
