An altered state of consciousness, realised in virtual reality; a garden full of futuristic plants; avatars steeped in existential despair, a collection of imaginary cameras; a drowning celebrity artist.
All this in just an hour鈥檚 quick exploration Welcome to , bursting from its two central venues to sprawl across the city.
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The festival has been a fixture for more than 120 years, and has never felt more vital. Its main exhibition this year is called . Ralph Rugoff is its curator. He鈥檚 more usually found running London鈥檚 Hayward Gallery, and he鈥檚 brought some of the Hayward鈥檚 spirit to bear to Venice. May You Live is colourful, brash, accessible, and full of exciting experiments in technology and digital media.
It鈥檚 big, too. Between now and 24 November, half a million people will visit Rugoff鈥檚 exhibition, which is spread over two sites. The first is the Central Pavilion of the Giardini della Biennale 鈥� gardens laid out along Venice鈥檚 eastern edge at the beginning of the 19th century. The second site is a 300 metre-long former rope-making factory in Venice鈥檚 Arsenale, a complex of former shipyards and armories.
Ryoji Ikeda鈥檚 universe
It鈥檚 in the Arsenale that you鈥檒l find (indeed, will find it hard to miss) dataverse-1听(lead image) by the Japanese DJ and artist . Rugoff鈥檚 exhibition is big. The Biennale is bigger. But Ikeda, not to be outdone, has gone one better, and created an entire universe on a gigantic, wall-sized high-definition screen.
In a Paris studio that consists of hardly more than a few tables and laptops, Ikeda and his programmers have been peeling open huge data sets, using software they have written themselves. From the flood of numbers issuing from CERN, NASA, the Human Genome Project and other open sources, they have fashioned absurdly detailed abstract animations.
The data itself is what matters to Ikeda 鈥� its patterns, rhythms and regularities. What it represents is secondary, even irrelevant. Ikeda鈥檚 first love isn鈥檛 science, after all: it鈥檚 mathematics (and before that, music).
Driven by data
True, dataverse-1鈥榮 15 minute-long abstract 鈥渄ances鈥� each explore the universe at a different scale 鈥� from the way proteins fold to the pattern of ripples in cosmic background radiation. But Ikeda鈥檚 aim is not to illustrate or visualise the universe, but to convey the sheer quantity of data we are now gathering in our effort to understand the world.
In the Arsenale, we are afforded glimpses of this. The Milky Way, reduced to wheeling labels. The human body, taken apart and presented as a sequence of what look like archaeological finds. A brain, colour coded, turned over and over, as if for the inspection of a hyperactive child. A furious blizzard of solar images. And other less easily identified sequences, where the data has peeled away entirely from the thing it represents, and takes on a life of its own: red pixels move upstream through flowing numbers like so many salmon.
Ikeda鈥檚 dataverse project, which will take a year and two more productions to reach fruition, is being supported by the watchmakers Audemars Piguet. an increasingly familiar name among artists who operate on the boundaries between art and science. Last year, AP helped Brighton-based art duo Semiconductor with听听their CERN-inspired kinetic sculpture HALO. Before that, they invited LIDAR artist Davide Quayola to map the Swiss valley where they have their factory.
Beauty of number
But while AP has a declared interest in art that pushes technological boundaries, Ikeda himself fights shy of any talk of technology, or even physics. He鈥檚 interested in the beauty of number itself.
In an interview with the Japanese curator Akira Asada in 2009, he remarked: 鈥淚 cannot help but wonder if there are any artists today that give real consideration to beauty. To me, it is mathematicians, not artists, who epitomize that kind of individual. There is such a freeness to their thinking that it is almost embarrassing to me.鈥�
And more鈥�
Other highlights at the Arsenale include Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster鈥檚 Endodrome, (above) a purely virtual work, accessed through a HTC Vive Pro headset. The artist envisioned it 鈥渁s a kind of organic and mental space, a slightly altered state of consciousness鈥�. Manifesting at first as a sort of hyper-intuitive painting app, in which you use your own outpoured breath as a brush, 贰苍诲辞诲谤辞尘别鈥檚 imagery becomes ever more precise and surreal. In a show that bristles with anxiety, Gonzalez-Foerster offers the festival-goer an oasis of creative contemplation.
Also at the Arsenale, and fresh from her show Power Plants at London鈥檚 Serpentine Gallery, the German artist Hito Steyerl presents This Is the Future, (above) a lush, AI-generated garden of the future, all the more tantalising for the fact that you鈥檒l probably die there. Indeed, this being the future, you鈥檙e sure to die there. Steyerl mixes up time and risk, hope and fear, in a wonderfully sly send-up of professional future-gazing.
The Giardini, along the city鈥檚 eastern edge, are the traditional site of La Biennale Art Exhibitions since they began in 1895. They鈥檙e where you鈥檒l find the national pavilions. Hungary possesses one of the 29 permanent structures here, and this year it鈥檚 full of imaginary cameras. They鈥檙e the work of cartoonist-turned media artist Tam谩s Waliczky. Some of his Imaginary Cameras and Other Optical Devices听(above) are based on real cameras, others on long-forgotten 19th-century machines; still others are entirely fictional (not to mention impossible). Can you tell the difference? In any event, this understated show does a fine job of reminding us that we see the world in many, highly selective ways.
There鈥檚 quite as much activity outside the official venues of the Biennale as within them. At the Ca鈥� Rezzonico palazzo until 6 July, you have a chance to save an internationally celebrated artist from drowning (or not- it鈥檚 really up to you). A meticulously rendered volumetric avatar of Marina Abramovic虂 beckons from within a glass tank that is slowly filling with water, in a bid to draw attention to rising sea levels in a city which is famously sinking. Don鈥檛 knock Rising听(above) till you鈥檝e tried it: this ludicrous-sounding jape proved oddly moving.
Back at the Arsenale, Ed Atkins reprises his installation听Olde Food, (above) which had its UK outing at London鈥檚 Cabinet gallery last year. Atkins has spent much of his career exploring what roboticist Masahiro Mori鈥檚 famously dubbed the 鈥渦ncanny valley鈥� 鈥� the gap that is supposed to separate real people from their human-like creations. Mori鈥檚 assumption was that the closer our inventions came to resembling us, the creepier they would become.
Using commercially purchased avatars which he animates using facial recognition software, Atkins has created his share of creepy art zombies. In Olde Food, though, he introduces a new element: an almost unbearably intense compassion.
Atkins has created a world populated by uncanny digital avatars who (when they鈥檙e not falling from the sky into sandwiches 鈥� you鈥檒l have to trust me when I say this does make a sort of sense) quite clearly yearn for the impress of genuine humanity. These near-people pray. They play piano (or try to). They weep. They鈥檙e ugly. They鈥檙e uncoordinated. They鈥檙e quite hopeless, really. I do wish I could have done something for them.
听
, the 58th International Art Exhibition, runs at the Venice Biennale until 24 November 2019
