page_title: Maurizio Bolognini
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Maurizio Bolognini / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Maurizio Bolognini, Programmed Machines installation (1992-98)
context_page_description: Maurizio Bolognini is a post-conceptual media artist. His installations are mainly concerned with the aesthetics of machines, and are based on the minimal and abstract activation of technological processes that are beyond the artist's control, at the intersection of generative art, public art and e-democracy.
context_section_description: Maurizio Bolognini was born in Brescia, Italy. Before working as a media artist, he received degrees in Urban studies and Social science from the University of Birmingham, UK, and the Università Iuav di Venezia. He worked extensively as a researcher in the field of structured communication techniques (such as the real-time Delphi method), and electronic democracy, which he later used in some interactive installations.  His research interests and a wide range of artworks have focused on three main dimensions of digital technologies:
  — the possibility of delegating his artistic action to the infinite time of the machine, such as in his Programmed Machines. From the beginning (1988), this series introduced the concept of infinity into his work, and focused on "the experience of the disproportion (and disjunction) between artist and the artwork, which is made possible by computer-based technologies";
  — the space-time flows of technological communication, and the interplay of geographical and electronic space, which gave rise to works such as Altavista (1996), Antipodes (1998), and Museophagia (1998–99), in which the use of web-based communication flows focused on their physical infrastructure and was often combined with actions taken over long distance travels;
  — the introduction of new forms of interactivity based upon structured communication techniques and e-democracy, which he used in works such as the CIMs (Collective Intelligence Machines, since 2000) and ICB (Interactive Collective Blue, 2006).
  Some of these works were developed through intense cooperation with Artmedia, the Laboratory of the Aesthetics of Media and Communication, University of Salerno, and the Laboratory Museum of Contemporary Art (MLAC), Sapienza University of Rome. In 2003 the MLAC published a monograph book on Bolognini's work. In 2004 Artmedia organized a show which was aimed to highlight a European tendency in new media art, based on the concept of the technological sublime. The show included works by Roy Ascott (English), Maurizio Bolognini (Italian), Fred Forest (French), Richard Kriesche (Austrian) and Mit Mitropoulos (Greek).
caption: Sealed Computers (Nice, 1997). This installation uses computer codes to create endless flows of random images which will never be accessible for viewing.
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