URBAN MAPPING PROJECT
“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in” Leonard Cohen
Urban Mapping is a street art project, conceived to ephemerally transform buildings and structures in the suburbs, hidden by streetlights or forgotten over time.
It is a performative act that is built on the search for the right place based on both purely practical criteria (absence of light) and conceptual ones (importance and meaning of projecting onto a certain structure). The project differs from normal video mapping in several ways: There are neither clients nor spectators (except casual ones) and no real script or specific material is conceived, as generative graphics or images that react to the ambient audio present are used: sounds generated live, car engine, atmospheric agents, passers-by, traffic and urban sound in general. Audio that is characteristic of the aesthetics of the project. The performative act becomes a parenthesis of light, ephemeral as its duration. Despite this, through documentation, images similar to “normal” street art are produced. The difference is that the latter remains in the place of creation and waits to be observed over time. Instead in this case it is only possible to intersect with a ubiquitous present, a sudden glimpse for those who fortuitously stumble upon it. We live in a world in which the necessary concreteness of things is associated with extreme elusiveness. Appearance wins over essence. Social networks and today’s communication demonstrate that the bond with the image is increasingly stronger than with the concrete and tangible presence. A world more liquid than ever. The discussion regarding the belonging of street art is even more distorted: what happens exists only for those who are present and those who are present are present in an unconscious way. Ours is a fleeting action, which is exhausted in the short time in which it occurs. What remains is only a possible video and photographic documentation.
