Art has always tried to break its expressive boundaries by continually evolving into new languages and contaminating itself with other sectors of knowledge and society. The vocation of art is multidisciplinary through different languages, connecting with other cultural domains. A clear example of this systemic approach is the relationship of art with science and technology.
The proximity between art and science was a great driving force of the past and Leonardo Da Vinci is probably the best-known symbol of this interpenetration in Renaissance Italy. But with the advent of the scientific method and the explosion of scientific disciplines, a progressive fragmentation of the sectors of knowledge occurred, losing that initial richness. Yet our history tells us that it is precisely in the contamination of arts and knowledge that expressive horizons broaden.
A similar story was the relationship between art and technology, a territory full of expressive richness, from new materials, to the physics of light, up to digital technologies. But where technology becomes more complex and inaccessible this relationship risks becoming a wall.
Today we suffer greatly from the separateness of these worlds, as if they were insurmountable walls. The reason behind this fragmentation lies in the difficult access the necessary skills for artists who would like to have access to the digital technologies (i.e code programming).
Having spent a lifetime working across science, art and technology, I have often suffered from seeing the artist's humble renunciation in the face of walls that are very difficult to overcome. But I was also amazed at how researchers who possess a lot of knowledge and have an artistic soul give up expressing themselves with an artistic attitude. I also met many engineers, especially in the digital world, who had written in their eyes, "I would like so much but I can't". The problem is not whether or not to declare ourselves artists or researchers or technologists, but more simply to give ourselves the possibility of taking on different "attitudes". To do this, we must have "access" to worlds different from the one we normally frequent.
The problem of accessibility also leads to the creation of separate elites and the processes are often anti-democratic.
Although digital art has been developing for a couple of decades, we still see few works that could be at the level of the great artworks of the past. It is certainly a "new" art form (it is not 2000 years old like painting or sculpture...) but the real problem is that if the base of artists dealing with it is limited, the results will also be modest.
Yet the creativity of an artist can express itself far beyond the reasons why a certain technology or an algorithm of a scientific theory is born because art is free from having to prove something or having to suffer the constraints of the market. What in some sectors are considered limitations or errors, in others can be brilliant ideas that bring a new aesthetic or speak directly to the hearts and eyes of people.
This is why I have dedicated my life to breaking these constraints by working at the edge of these worlds to create passage corridors. Sometimes it's about breaking consolidated prejudices and I can no longer accept categories such as "artist", "scientist" or "technologist" as if they were barriers rather than opportunities for contamination.
In this journey I have had expressive, technological and scientific experiences which together can constitute a help for many people who want to break these cultural containers. This is why I helped the "Raphael Project" initiative to create corridors between art, digital technology and science. Because I believe that many artists (in the sense of artistic attitude) are ready to begin paths of breaking cultural containers if facilitated in this path.
For this reason, the "Raphael Project" seeks to present itself as a contribution, albeit small, to facilitate access to digital technologies and mathematical theories for people who have a creative attitude. The project was built as a bridge of contamination and a seed to which new experiences and new creative modules developed by a hybrid community of artists and developers can easily be aggregated, according to the logic of the "living lab".