Tentacular

Are we human or are we matter?

As human beings we are accustomed to the idea that we are the only or the main holders of a culture, that we are the only ones who have a literature, are able to produce art, have feelings and deserve rights. Well, what if we revise this assumption? What if plants, animals, mountains, rivers, rocks and objects too had their own way of expressing themselves that escapes our limited perceptions? Michela’s ‘Tentacular’ collection provocatively challenges the anthropocentric view creating shapes that are suspended between human, plant, animal and material world. These beings are very different, yet the same, very capable of interacting with one another and very much deprived of boundaries. Each piece has its own identity, its own character and expresses it through pose and movement. There are those who are more bold, those who are more shy, cheerful, sad, undecided, confident. All these traits that we human beings appropriate, actually belong to all things.

Experimenting, playing and making mistakes

The experimental approach can be quite confusing and risky but is also fun and necessary to discover and create new ideas and concepts, getting out of the comfort zone with a timeline as flexible as possible: the importance of the errors.  The best possible way is not necessarily one that we can foresee : one must evolve and adapt, lay the cards on the table, observe them, swap them and be ready to make mistakes and start over from scratch.  The materials are my cards: ceramics, glazes, glass, wood, rattan, silicone. Techniques such as extruding, knitting and bending, sculpting, firing, soldering, carving, are my game. In order to understand and research with materials, they can be modelled and handled in many ways: We can expose them to different temperatures, harden them, bend them or melt them, change their shape and structure.  We can take different matters and mix them together, have them interact with each other. The most unpredictable and interesting results happen combining elements, shuffling the deck.

Renewal of the tradition

In a world that is moving towards a digital and virtual existence, the list we can do is try to preserve as much as possible traditional analog techniques. This does not mean that we have to reject technology, but it means that if we don’t want to lose our traditions we should renovate them. Tools such as Photography, video recording, 3D scanning, 3D printing, and virtual reality allow us to give a virtual life and digital recognition to objects and crafts. Much like music is sampled and digitalised giving us the ability to process it and play with it in previously unimaginable ways, MiDA-lab's ceramic pieces were 3d scanned through photogrammetry. This process gives deepness to traditional craft, producing handmade digital objects using updated tools: translating the material domain into something compatible with the day and age that we live in, instead of replacing the maker with a machine, and integrating the maker's uniqueness in a machine world.