Download the Roberto Bocci Installations and Interfaces 1994-2005 book (3.1 mb., 85 pages).
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Introduction by Art in America editor Eleanor Heartney.

Roberto Bocci’s resume reveals a remarkably diverse interdisciplinary education. Over the years, he has accumulated degrees in industrial chemistry, music theory, painting, photography and Electronic Arts. Out of this stew has come a body of work which encompasses photographic and digital images, CD and DVD-ROMs for desktop computers and interactive multimedia installations. Running through Bocci’s oeuvre is the desire to reach viewers on multi sensory levels through work which combines technology, science and art. In his installations, viewers  find themselves engulfed by images and sounds culled from the familiar world but transformed into strange new environments. They interact with mask interfaces equipped with sensors connected to computer programs which trigger sounds, images and animations. They can absorb multi-layered narratives created out of collections of video interviews and news clips.

Bocci notes that one of his purposes has been to push beyond the modernist notion of art as the object of quiet contemplation toward a model which is more engaged and interactive. Underlying it all is the question: has technology changed the way we experience the world? Bocci’s work explores contemporary senses of time and space which have moved far beyond classic Newtonian definitions of those entities. No longer can time be conceived of as a linear stream of causal events or space as the inert stage upon which it all takes place. Instead, Bocci brings viewers into a realm more akin to Einsteinian notions of space-time which is shaped by experiences of simultaneity and suspension, fragmentation, flux, circularity and instability. Bocci’s installations reflect a world permeated by MTV, the instant replay on the sports channel, the pause, fast forward and replay buttons on the remote control, the split screen in the movies and all the means that technology has provided to give us a sense that time and space are infinitely elastic. However, as his works point out, this is not always a comforting thought. Fragmentation of space and time can engender feelings of alienation, displacement and confound our sense of identity, the interpenetration of inside and outside can make us long for stability.

At the same time, we know that there is no going back to old modes of experience. Bocci also shows us what is to be gained from new modes of perception - the ability to communicate and even to love across time and space, for instance, the ability to encounter and appreciate diverse points of view generated in far flung locales, the ability to reshape our real and perceptual environments in ways that would have once seemed fantastical. But while Bocci is fascinated by technology, he refuses to go the route of those who celebrate the notion of the “post human” cyborg and suggest that technology has the ability, not only to overcome the body’s limitations, but ultimately to replace it altogether. This view has gained currency among proponents of a version of postmodernism which holds that old fashioned notions like “nature” and “body” are simply outmoded psychological constructs. Efforts to create artificial intelligence in a form which rivals and surpasses the human mind, explorations of “virtual realities” which are convincing down to the last detail while existing only in the interface between mind and computer, creation of robots and “smart houses” designed to anticipate our every need all seem to point to a future in which the body is an obsolete and irrelevant shell which may ultimately disappear altogether.

Taking issue with such bleak predictions, Bocci sides instead with thinkers like Simon Penny, who argues that these proponents of post-human evolution have fallen into the old mind/body trap which has confounded western thinkers since Plato. Using a computer metaphor which equates mind with software and body with hardware, this notion sees the two as entirely separable, while elevating the former over the latter. Instead, Penny espouses the importance of holistic, embodied  knowledge, holding that sensation, movement, touch, are integral to what and how we know.

In keeping with this more humanistic vision, Bocci’s works remain deeply connected to corporeal sensation. His installations require active physical interaction. While they may suck viewers into unexpected new worlds, they never allow them to lose sense of their bodies. In fact, it is often the experience of physically moving through space which triggers the sensations generated by the work. Instead, in Bocci’s work, the viewer is replaced by the performer, the art work exists in the space between the artist and his audience, and is essentially the creation of both.