Giovanni Flore
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Research Residency Program
update: 2019.11.7
Giovanni Flore
| Participating Project | Research Residency Program |
|---|---|
| Activity Based | Italy |
| Period | 2013.8 - 2013.9 |
Purpose of the residency
I called my research "The Body Electric Project", after the American poet Walt Whitman who celebrated the beauty, the strength and the revolutionary energy coming from the human body. The event and consequences of the Tohoku earthquake have pushed my reflection toward contemporary life-styles, consumption models and the precarious state of our modernity, which is entirely established on the electricity supply. What if we considered our bodies not only as target for power supply and consumption but also as sources for producing it? Eastern philosophies consider body and mind as a unique oneness ? differently from Western philosophies that are based on the "body vs mind" dualism. My research will be centered also on this shift from dualism to oneness as a demand for relying on the human bodies and not only on fuel and power plants in feeding our electric societies.
Plan during the residency
My research will be mainly web-based and I will investigate the following fields: the human body as a focal point not only for consuming but also for producing and delivering energy; the differences between Eastern and Western philosophies and mindsets in considering the relation between body and mind; the impact of such different approaches in relating to the body energy; the existing technologies for harvesting this energy; this phenomenon as seen from a design and art points of view; the socio-political impact of considering the human body as a source for energy. Along with this research, I intend to meet some Japanese bi-lingual artists and researchers in the fields of: photography and video; martial arts and Eastern philosophies; technologies and bio-sciences; advanced product design.
