[ISEA2004] Artist Statement: Silvia Rigon – Venus Villosa

Artist Statement

WEARABLE EXPERIENCE

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 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.

  • Silvia Rigon is an Italian media artist based in Los Angeles. Her work often refers to the notion of monstrosity as a way of unveiling the cultural ambivalences inherent in our relationship with technology. She won the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Art Festival in 2004.   silviarigon.com

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