News about Fabrica the Benetton group communications research center

TOCCATA AT FESTIVAL MEDIA MEDITERRANEA 2012

Oct 25, 2012

Toccata, an interactive on-screen installation, has been selected by Media Mediterranea 2012, an Interaction Festival that takes place in Pola (Croatia) from October 24 to 27 2012.

The project, created by Angelo Semeraro, a young Fabrica resident of the Interaction area, is based on the illusion of playing with the forces of a physical environment.

When the visitor walks by, a textile reacts to movement, changing its form and colors, giving the perception of modifying the equilibrium of the environment. An arpeggio of sine tones and noises is generated to give supporting feedback to the user’s physical movement and to make the user experience more immersive.

The application has been developed using a 2-dimensional physics simulator engine, Box2d. The 3d effect is only an illusion created by connecting dots as well as overlaying transparency.

COLORS MAGAZINE LANDS IN BRASIL

Oct 23, 2012

From 25 to 31 October 2012 COLORS will be in Sao Paolo to promote the new edition of the magazine in Portuguese, following an agreement with publisher Amarello who, starting with issue 84 Apocalypse: a survival guide, will distribute it in Brazil. A chance to get young Brazilians more closely involved in the reality of a magazine that has been talking about "the rest of the world", away from the limelight of media attention, for over twenty years, and to reaffirm Fabrica's long-standing interest in this South American country, as evinced by the numerous projects undertaken over the years.

Supporting the launch on 25 October, Patrick Waterhouse and Cosimo Bizzarri, respectively creative and executive directors of COLORS, will hold a workshop with Mesa&Cadeira (Table&Chair). The theme of the workshop held by the COLORS team is COLORS – A Survival Guide to Sao Paulo, the same format used for the last four issues (Transport, Shit, Happiness and the brand new Apocalypse) in which the magazine is conceived as a survival manual, offering instructions and suggestions on how to prepare for the future.
Mesa&Cadeira is an educational project founded by Barbara Soalheiro, a former artist-in-residence at Fabrica, who organises workshops where participants of all ages and backgrounds sit together around a table and work on a real project. A professional from the relevant sector guides them, helping them to solve their strategic dilemmas. Prominent personalities have taken part, leading previous editions of Mesa&Cadeira, including: Andy Cameron, interactive director of Fabrica; English artist Anthony Burrill; Alex Bec and Will Hudson, founders of It’s Nice That, and Casey Caplowe, co-founder of Good.
www.mesaecadeira.org

Bringing this intense week of meetings to a close, the official presentation of the new Portuguese edition of COLORS, to be held on 31 October at the prestigious Amarello headquarters in the centre of Sao Paolo. Opinion leaders from a range of backgrounds – art, culture, design, fashion - will attend the event.

The publisher AMARELLO also produces a quarterly contemporary culture magazine of the same name, exploring art, design, fashion, music, cinema, photography and politics. It includes contributions from artists, writers, photographers, architects, designers, musicians and poets, each giving their own personal interpretation of a common theme.

FABRICA AND BRAZIL
Fabrica has always taken a particular interest in Brazil, developing numerous initiatives: from Rocinha, daylight of a favela, a documentary by Carlos Casas on Rio de Janeiro's largest slum, which in turn inspired five short stories, written by five young authors at Fabrica, published by Mondadori (2004), to issue 68 of COLORS, dedicated entirely to the Amazon rainforest, with an introduction by Gilberto Gil (2006). The young Brazilian Fabrica film director Heloisa Sartorato is one of the directors of I am Jesus (2010), an internationally successful documentary portraying three communities, in Brazil, Siberia and Great Britain, which have grown up around three different personalities claiming to represent the Second Coming of Christ. Brazilian multimedia artist João Wilbert is the creator of Exquisite Clock (2010), a clock made up of numbers collected from everyday life: through the website www.exquisiteclock.org, users are invited to collect and upload pictures of numbers found in the broadest range of different contexts. Exquisite Clock has taken part in various international events and exhibitions. Recently, COLORS has enjoyed another prestigious collaboration, this time with young Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Grostein Andrade. At the end of 2011, for the special COLORS project With Love, Andrade shot Cine Rincão, a documentary based on a true story, which was screened at the Venice International Film Festival 2012, as part of YouTube's YourFilmFestival.

For further information:
Angela Quintavalle
angie@fabrica.it

XARENE ESCANDAR'S LECTURE AT FABRICA

Oct 19, 2012

Xarene Escandar, a Media Artist from US, held a lecture titled “Moment – Event”. The lecture took place at Fabrica on Friday 19 October 2012.

Xarene Eskandar is a researcher, designer and media artist with a diverse background ranging from fashion and automotive design to architecture and live visuals. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Design from University of Cincinnati, Department of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, and an MFA from Design Media Arts, UCLA. Currently she is working towards a Doctorate in Media Arts and Technology at UC Santa Barbara, and teaches at UCLA and Otis College of Art and Design.

Drawing upon cultural anthropology, her research is focused on the evolution of the symbiotic relationship of technology and the human with the aim of creating crossover points into dimensions and ecologies referred to as ‘utopia’, whether technological, architectural or social. Her latest work looks at the merger of architecture with the human, and lies within a greater body of work: testing the limits of perception.

DERAGLIAMENTI COMPETES AT THE FESTIVAL DU NOUVEAU CINEMA IN MONTREAL

Oct 18, 2012

Fabrica announces the participation of its recent production, Deragliamenti, in the official selection at the 41^st edition of the Festival du nouveau cinema, one of the major venues of independent cinema worldwide, scheduled in Montréal from October 10^th to 21^st 2012.

Deragliamenti tells of Milo Manara’s experience and joint work with Federico Fellini to transform the screenplay of the film Il Viaggio di Mastorna detto Fernet into a comic strip.

Originally written by Federico Fellini, Il Viaggio di Mastorna detto Fernet has been defined as “the most famous film never made”. Fellini’s decision to abandon the project just before the start of filming is shrouded in mystery. The most likely explanation is that the film in some way brought him face to face with his own death. It tells in fact of the wandering journey of a cellist in the afterlife and the project was described by Fellini himself as “the story of a man who is dead without knowing it”.

At the age of seventy-two Fellini started work with a longstanding friend, one of the world’s best known illustrators, Milo Manara, on a project entitled Il Viaggio, to transform the screenplay of Il Viaggio di Mastorna detto Fernet into a comic strip and in this way exorcise the lack of closure of the film. Ironically Il Viaggio was Fellini’s last work before his death in 1993.

Deragliamenti is produced entirely by Fabrica and directed by Chelsea McMullan, a young Canadian resident in the video area who has already produced experimental videos and documentaries.

The short documentary was nominated for a Genie Award (the Canadian Oscars) for Best Short Documentary. It competed at prestigious international film festivals, such as Toronto, Vancouver, Santa Barbara, It’s All True (Brazil) and London. It had its Italian premiere at Arcipelago-International Festival of Short Films and New Images in Rome, while its trailer featured at the first anthological exhibition on Milo Manara, set up at the Complesso Museale Santa Maria della Scala, in Siena, Italy.

Watch the trailer: http://www.fabrica.it/deragliamenti

SHOWING:

Saturday October 20, 2012 at 1.30pm

Séance 245

3536 Boul. Saint-Laurent – Montréal

http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/2012/fiches/courts-metrages/7667_4872/

FABRICA AT PARALLEL FORMATS

Oct 17, 2012

Fabrica has been invited to participate in “Parallel Formats”, a photography festival in Prague celebrating the 10th Anniversary of FOTOGRAF, a magazine dedicated to photography and visual culture. On October 20th at the French Institute Enrico Bossan, director of Fabrica’s Photography Department and of COLORS magazine, will hold the lecture “You can’t shoot what you don’t know”.
http://fotografestival.cz/en/