'New Landscape' Exhibition By Italian Artist Looks At Machine-Interpreted Scenery

Doha, Qatar: The exhibition "New Landscape" by Quayola, an internationally renowned Italian artist, will open tomorrow at Msheireb's M7.

“New Landscape” is a joint effort by the Embassy of Italy to the State of Qatar, Fondazione AGO – Modena Fabbriche Culturali, and the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Curated by Claudio Composti, the exhibition looks into nature that has been observed and then reimagined by machines. At the heart of the exhibition there are two monumental series, Storms and Remains: Vallée de Joux, which represent key moments in Quayola's visual research. Storms showcases a triptych with crashing waves on each canvas in which the artist explores the chaotic nature of waves during a storm.

According to Quayola, the machines which capture these waves, when plugged into a computer, only display a long list of“positions” and“measurements”.

The giant waves are made up of a number of tiny dots that correspond to a measurement observed by the machines.“Hundreds of millions of measurements later, we will have enough information to recreate photography,” he says.

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What the observer sees is a "regeneration of a scene," either from the sea or a forest (like in Remains: Vallée de Joux), manufactured through devices that can only“compute” what scenery is rather than understand it on a human level.

Quayola said that the process of gathering the information was lengthy; recounting that it took him at least two weeks on the Swiss mountains to be able to collect enough data.

“Motion information” is what drives the works of art and not the brush, Quayola says. The nature of the art, and the reproduction of reality in this work of art, are all contingent on data.

Despite machines being usually designed to do things efficiently, Quayola says that the“noise” that sometimes interferes with the work is an indispensable aspect of the artistic process. The“mistakes” he says add an“expressiveness” to the artwork; almost humanising it in a way.

The Italian Ambassador H E Paolo Toschi, who was in attendance alongside the Secretary General for the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs H E Riccardo Guariglia, welcomed the opening of New Landscape in Doha, thanking all of those who contributed to the project, remarking that it was“one of the examples of how we want to work our best to bring this kind of Italian creativity to Doha,” before thanking the Qatari officials in attendance and remarking that New Landscape served as a another opportunity to celebrate their partnership.

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