Wrong Test
I experienced my first test pattern sometime in Germany in the 1980s. It was a television test pattern –still in black & white at the time. The tube television was the only electronic imaging device in our household. Picture and channel settings were regulated using dial knobs only. The analogue test pattern was used to facilitate the picture settings and to check for errors. It was broadcast for a few minutes just after the transmission sign off and just before the sign on. Much later, a different, more minimal test pattern reminiscent of early computer graphics would help me calibrate a monochrome ink jet printer.
(Thomas Thiel in: Wrong Test, artist's book, 2011)
Wrong Test (Deep Space), UV-print on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, 2011
Beyond Gestaltung
Printed on a wooden board or stretched on a frame, the Tests vary in texture and are integrated into spatial interventions and installations in dialogue with existing architecture. For the exhibition "Beyond Gestaltung" (Bielefelder Kunstverein, September 10 - November 6, 2011) Previdi presented his new test patterns in the display window of the exhibition space. Printed PVC sheets were mounted on the wall at various heights, flexible on one side. Like window shutters, the images can be folded out and in as needed. Their transparent structure and placement before the windows establishes a connection to the specific architecture and situation.
(Thomas Thiel in: Wrong Test, artist's book, 2011)
Beyond Gestaltung, Bielefelder Kunstverein, 2011
Long Time Exposure
Fly's Eye Dome was realised in the 80ies by the visionary American architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller. The modular structure of fiberglass varies from its predecessors (the more famous geodetic domes) in its organic form and the big circular windows. Today, there exist only a few of these domes, one of it is in the collection of Max Protetch: Sculpture Park in Beacon, only a few kilometers from New York.
Untitled (Long Time Exposure),
UV print on wood, blue-back paper, painted cardboard
Wir sind alle Astronauten, Marta Herford, 2011
Chrome
2008 Google Inc. introduced its new web browser "Chrome" which quickly became popular. One of the main functions of this new, freely available program is the development of "Cloud Computing" such as offering virtual software and data storage over a network. The new version of the program is still being advertised widely nowadays.
(Vlado Velkov, 2011. Press release Lichthaus, Kunstverein Arnsberg)
Black Frame, PVC on glass, 720 x 720 cm, Lichthaus, Kunstverein Arnsberg, 2011
Testsieger
Miracle for my feet!
WOW!!! This stuff is amazing. After only two days of use, my feet, especially my cracked heels, look like I just got a peed. My feet are soft and moisturized. The smell is very invigorating. Thank you Philosophy!
(review of miracle-foot-repair-creme, taken from amazon.com)
Testsieger, Sommer & Kohl, 2010
Black Hole Sun
In my eyes,
Indisposed,
In disguise
As no one knows.
Hides the face,
Lies the snake,
And the sun
In my disgrace.
Boiling heat,
Summer stench.
'Neath the black
The sky looks dead.
Call my name
Through the cream,
And I'll hear you
Scream again.
(Chris Cornell, 1994)
BLACK HOLE SUN, neon lights, solar panels
Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, 2010
There's Something Very Important I Forgot to Tell You
Egon: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Peter: What?
Egon: Don't cross the streams.
Peter: Why?
Egon: It would be bad.
Peter: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad?"
Egon: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and
every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Ray: Total protonic reversal.
Peter: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
(Ghostbusters, 1984, Ivan Reitman)
There's Something Very Important I Forgot to Tell You, Francesca Minini, Milano, 2009
Fraktur
DB: Whether consciously or unconsciously, the Gutenberg Bible incorporated emancipation. Reproducibility enabled a new form of distribution and as such also of access. 'Everyone' was able to buy, read and enterpreter the Bible - something that had previously been the exclusive privilege of the clergy.
RP: And of course the translation into the German vernacular. It could be argued that we currently find ourselves in a similar moment, in which similar forces meet and it can no longer be said that the one is better than the other.
(Taken from: Da cosa nasce cosa, Daniel Baumann talks to Riccardo Previdi, 2009)
Fraktur, De Vleeshaal, Middelburg, 2009
Manifesta7 - Principle Hope
The time the cigarette needs to go out is the time of the duration of Manifesta; means: approx. every 2 weeks the posters will be changed to show the next stadium of the smoking cigarette. So for the opening one will see the "original" Hollein - Image, but like 2 weeks later the cigarette starts to smoke... and so on, like a very slow motion movie shown on the billboards of the city.
The Opposite of What We Now Know To Be True
Dr. Melik: "... wheat germ, organic honey, and... Tiger's
Milk."
Dr. Aragon: "Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years
ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties."
Dr. Melik: "You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or...
hot fudge?"
Dr. Aragon: "Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite
of what we now know to be true."
Dr. Melik: "Incredible!"
(Sleeper, 1973, Woody Allen)
The Opposite of What We Now Know To Be True, Sommer & Kohl, Berlin, 2008
C YK - Black To The Future
Magenta 'was' a purplish red evoked by lights with less power in yellowish-green wavelengths than in blue and red wavelengths (complements of magenta have wavelength 500–530 nm). It 'was' an extra-spectral color, meaning it 'could' not be generated by a single wavelength of light. The name magenta 'came' from the dye magenta, commonly called fuchsine, discovered shortly after the 1859 Battle of Magenta near Magenta, Italy.
C YK - Black To The Future, Iris Kadel, Karlsruhe, 2008
Walking Clouds - Art Statements 07
What would happen if Munari’s circles were made oversized and created a gigantic Super-Structure?
An enormous, but still light and fragile conformation, something between a construction game for kids and a strange arrangement of furniture, which will float into space evoking ideas of futuristic architecture, utopian cities, strange machines landing from a parallel universe of “Walking Clouds”.
Oversizing Aconà Biconbì, 2005, Inkjet print on paper, 100 × 167 cm
C'était un rendez-vouz
(...) "With more and more media readily available through this unruly archive, the task one of packaging, producing, reframing, and distributing; a mode of production analogous not to the creation of material goods, but to the production of social contexts, using existing material. What a time you chose to be born!" (...)
C'était un rendez-vouz, Francesca Minini, Milano, 2006
Green Light Pavilion
Looking from above down below is not a new way of gazing at the world. For centuries, the celestial perspective was considered to be the privilege of divine beings, birds and a few hybrids like Icarus, whose fateful flight seemed to confirm that humans should stay on the ground. […] Riccardo Previdi's Green Light Pavilion, lit with green lights from below, provided a launching pad -- figurative and literal -- for all of the artists's projects, which took over the pavilion for a few weeks before moving on. Tomas Saraceno's wireless camera transmitted an overview of the site with the help of a helium balloon […].
(Jennifer Allen in: Sehnsüchtig gleiten Ballone rund um die Welt (exh.cat.), 2006)
To the Outer Space at Near Earth Escape Velocity, 2006
Collaboration Riccardo Previdi and Tomas Saraceno for "Sehnsüchtig gleiten Ballone rund um die Welt"