Computer Generated Memories

Benedetta Bigliardo, Tommaso Capanni

Academic year

2022/23

Anthropologically speaking, the definition of a ritual is attributed to the scholar Ernesto De Martino, who describes it as a means to counteract the "crisis of presence" that humans experience when confronted with nature.

From this perspective, many human attempts to "tame" the wild nature appear as a modern and organized form of ritual. Building cities, going to work, or attending church on Sundays thus become the daily rituals that everyone experiences, in an attempt to combat the primal fear of death, moving further away from the "Wild" understood as a threat. In this distancing, humans forget that they are children of nature, which is now seen as a danger to be tamed or a mystery to be studied and observed. By traversing the memories of a life in the moment just before dying, the project serves as a form of constructive ritual in three acts, culminating in the digital death of the viewer, aiming to reconcile them with their primal fear, counteracting the crisis described by De Martino.

Wildness is part of the OFF circuit of CHARTA, a festival in Rome dedicated to the photobook and contemporary photography, promoted every two years by Yogurt Magazine.