Research

Mosaic as an Experimental System

My practice-based PhD advances mosaic as an experimental system, conceptually and experientially, embracing the historicity of mosaic as well as its phenomenological ramifications. It proposes a new aesthetic formalism for the digital age, arguing that the ancient tessera evolved into the contemporary voxel.

Research Highlights

1. The spatial articulation of colours

2. Rethinking Minimalism

3. From the actual to the virtual

4. The new mosaic materiality

Mosaic Research Model

The Mosaic Research Model (2019) was developed as a methodological framework for the PhD and does not represent an expanded field of practice. It offers an overview of the influence of mosaic principles across several fields, articulated throughout the thesis. As a model, it places mosaic at the centre of a sensorial world where tactility and the haptic prevail. On the left-hand side, it concentrates on two-dimensional disciplines, suggesting an infiltration of mosaic principles in these areas of knowledge. On the right-hand side, it illustrates the influence of mosaic on three-dimensionality. The centre part of the diagram offers a temporal axis highlighting the contribution of mosaic to the passage from the built environment of construction (past) to the virtual environment of digital technologies (present). The centre column can also be interpreted as highlighting the return of pre-modern ways of sensing in contemporary experience within the Electronic era, or post-modern, based on mosaic principles as envisaged by McLuhan.

Chuck Close's Catalogue

Torcellini, D. (2019) Chuck Close: Mosaics. Milano: Silvana Editoriale [p.37] ISBN 9788836645022