What we perceive is the inverted reflection of the world imprinted on our retinas. If everyone lives the experiences subjectively, how can we be sure that the reality around us is objective and not the fruit only of our conscience? REALITY ? is an augmented reality installation that seeks to investigate the illusory space in consciousness, between the subjective self and the infinite possibilities within us. A perceptual experience where the biological structures that make up the brain appear to weave architectures that support perceived reality. A liminal area where illusion and creation coexist, where body and mind seem, however distant and separate, to occupy the same space.

In the Battistero della Manna d’Oro, the walls are populated with brain cells, neurons millions of times larger, which create another dimension, which forgets its “objective” scale, becoming a magnified mirror of the mind. Neural networks that shape our thoughts and form our consciousness are integrated three-dimensionally with the marbles and stuccoes in altered Renaissance forms, populated by biological filaments, which contain sounds, memories and thoughts. Touching the neural structures through one’s own digitized hands, sound fragments are activated as acoustic representations of a collective mind that contains us all, at an extracorporeal level where by synesthesia the touch is at the same time both light and sound, but no longer physicality.

When at the end of the experience, as a ritual and symbolic gesture, by stopping you place your hands on the surface of the baptismal font in the center of the Manna d’Oro, the augmented space will expand, isolating the mind towards a void of light, absence of information and perceptual stimuli. In search of the origin of consciousness towards matter, towards the numinous.

Mixed Reality installation

Battistero della Manna D’Oro | Spoleto
Festival dei Due Mondi 65

For FONDAZIONE CARLA FENDI