{"id":2702,"date":"2023-07-18T12:46:44","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T12:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2023-07-18T12:52:20","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T12:52:20","slug":"no-more-suffering-technology-art-and-the-connection-between-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/2023\/07\/18\/no-more-suffering-technology-art-and-the-connection-between-human-beings\/","title":{"rendered":"No More Suffering: technology, art and the connection between human beings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of talk about the difference between seeing a &#8220;real&#8221; person and seeing an AI-generated image. But what about the difference between enjoying a live band and experiencing the installation &#8220;The Visitors&#8221; by visual-technological artist Ragnar Kjartansson?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors Complete Video\" width=\"690\" height=\"388\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qOxG711lb0E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The installation was on show at the exhibition N\u00e3o Sofra\nMais, at the Monastery of Santa Clara a Nova in Coimbra and closed this\nweekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It consists of eight videos, each showing a musician playing\nhis instrument; the musicians are in different rooms; these rooms are part of\nthe same house. In a ninth video you can see the house from the outside, a part\nof the garden of the house; on the balcony people are singing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The videos are arranged in a large room, four on each side\nand the ninth in the background. You can walk around the room and stop to watch\neach musician separately or simply choose a spot to stand and watch\/listen. All\nthe sounds are heard together, because all the musicians in the videos are\nplaying the same music. Why then is this fascinating? Isn&#8217;t it the same\nexperience as listening to a live band?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What Ragnar managed to do, in my perception, was to show\nwhat our bodies are capable of when we listen to music. Music moves us and\nthere, literally, in front of that installation, everyone moved. They walked,\nthey stopped, they got emotional, they danced and, at the end, when the\nmusicians met in a single scene, in a single video, in the same room, the audience\ngathered together, everyone in front of the same video. Then, when the\nmusicians left that video to appear in the ninth video, outside the house,\npeople literally walked around the room &#8220;following&#8221; the musicians. At\nthis point, some viewers were already singing the song they sing in the videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People walked together after watching the scenes for\nminutes, each looking at those details that interested them most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At a concert or show, the audience tends to be limited in\nmovement by both space and circumstance; this is part of the traditional ritual\nof listening and watching the performance. Ragnar, in contrast, has set the\naudience to move. The musicians, of course, move too, and while they play you\ncan realise how playing an instrument involves full body movements. One of them\neven prefers to play inside a bathtub, sometimes resting his guitar on a wooden\nstand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, among several sensations awakened, what I felt most\ndifferent and special &#8211; besides the beauty of the videos and the idea of the\ninstallation, very well constructed &#8211; was the following: the fact that this\nwork of art promotes the movement of the public among the musicians \/ videos.\nPeople end up walking around the other listeners\/spectators, and then we\nrealise that we are not spectators, but part of the whole context. The scene\ncomes to life precisely when those who watch it move and follow the musicians\u2019 movements,\nwith their whole bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just as they are each in their own room playing their\ninstruments, we are living our lives individually. But we are\nindividual-collective beings. We do not exist without coexisting, but we can\nonly coexist if we exist individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The installation thus reminds us of life itself; we are passers-by taking care of our own corners and paths, but we cross each other&#8217;s roads and thus affect each other. We are each other&#8217;s path. We each play a part of the music, or contribute with an instrument, a note, a layer. But in the end, we are part of the same symphony, all in tune, even if sometimes, isolated in our corners or rooms of our &#8220;homes&#8221;, we do not realise it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Paradoxes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stop\nsuffering, you are not alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Realise\nthat suffering is part of it and you are alone&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a lot of talk about the difference between seeing a &#8220;real&#8221; person and seeing an AI-generated image. But what about the difference between enjoying a live band and experiencing <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/2023\/07\/18\/no-more-suffering-technology-art-and-the-connection-between-human-beings\/\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2705,"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions\/2705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camilaleporace.com.br\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}