About the installation

Storms (2021) is a series of video works that further Quayola’s research on the tradition of landscape painting, exploring its pictorial substance through advanced technologies. Ultra-high-definition footage of Cornwall’s stormy seas serve as a dataset to generate new computational paintings.

In Storms litanies of waves unfold over a nullified space. The works “paint themselves” over the flow of dilated time, pictorial forms that untangle on the canvas/screen crumbling towards abstraction. Although the link with reality thins on a retinal level, the paintings are generated from the exact same “natural data'' captured en plein air. The machine is programmed to produce a “traditional painting” of a digital substance, a painting of pixels.

Human and machine, collaborating, investigate the hierarchies between human, nature and technology, generating new aesthetics.

Credits
Algorithmic paintings and recordings, editing, data-management: Giulia Olivieri
Tech research: Andrea Santicchia
Production and logistics: Maria Elena Brugora

With the support of
Cinematography: Marcus Domleo
Shoot assistance: Henry Keep
Behind the scenes: Matt Robinson
Sound Design: Riccardo Marsana
Software Development: Nikolai Matviev, Kyle McLean, Natan Sinigaglia, Sebastiano Barbieri
Printing & Framing: Artproof
Developed with the support of Aesop

About the artist

Quayola ^IT 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.

Storms by Quayola

With the support of Istituto italiano di Cultura di Montréal