Not Only RGB (Decentraland, October 2022-June 2023) is a MoCDA group show supported by Decentraland DAO featuring works created by Kevin Abosch, Matt Kane, 38‰ (Mattia Cuttini and Luca Donno), Sarah Meyohas and Mathieu Merlet-Briand.
This is a Q&A session featuring curators Chiara Braidotti and Anastasia Pineschi in conversation with 38‰.
As a duo you started collaborating in early 2021, but your artistic relationship dates back to 2019. Why did you decide to combine your research and what lies behind the name 38‰, which you chose to use for your joint projects?
We were just waiting for the right occasion to collaborate, and the opportunity was given to us by Twobadour for a collection of generative art on whalestreet.xyz. We decided to combine our strengths as they are complementary: mathematical and programming skills on the one hand and a somewhat methodical unruliness and unpredictability on the other. 38 per mille is the salinity of the Adriatic Sea, which is geographically close to both of us. While aware of its symbolic and cultural significance, the decision to represent it through scientific data speaks for our duo’s analytic attitude.
As an ongoing series, ColorSeeds is set out to explore the relationship between the chromatic spectrum and the geometric. What is complementary about these two spectrums and how do you work to bring out these elements in your practice?
There is a relationship between the colour spectrum and geometry because both have to do with numbers and are described by mathematical formulas. ColorSeeds combines the two in a creative way, from an insight into a piece by Mattia in which colour combinations are displayed in a geometric way, we developed an algorithm to follow this symmetry and break it. This exploration is a core element in our practice, as appears in ColorCuts too, our first series ever produced as a duo leveraging the intersection of colour and geometry, working between optical and generative art.
In ColorSeeds the relation between the laws of nature and its most random aspects seems to reflect your analytical approach as well as your work's ties to glitches and coding bugs. What is the importance of embracing errors, or rather, of allowing your creative process to be informed by some unintentional developments in your artistic production?
Evolution converges into geometric structures that optimise functions for increased survival. This process occurs by the selection of errors (mutations) in the genetic code. With ColorSeeds we are humbly replicating this process, in which chaos is introduced from a mathematical formula that can bring out unexpected and more interesting characteristics. The intervention of chance is a key aspect of our research and an interesting way to explore and embrace the infinite variety of outcomes an original idea can have.
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