Page 12 - PRESSIONE SIMPATICA ON PAPER

Sympathetic Pressure
(or the aesthetics of the machine as a dysfunctional praise and existential paradox)

by Irene Sofia Comi

Our times seem being defined by what is measurable and Even before hanging in the limbo between work of art and
shareable. A few days ago Galileo, a satellite navigation activation device, between art and science, or anthropolo-
system that by no coincidence is named after the father of gy and medicine, Self-Indicator of Sympathetic Pressure,
modern science, succeeded in setting a record of a billion the main sculpture around which the exhibition gravitates,
smartphone users. For a few years already it’s been red is an investigative work that takes place on a fine border-
alert on the high risk of exposing our kids to IT devices at line. Commenting on our times, in his book I miti del no-
a premature age - sometimes even before they learn how stro tempo (The Myths of Our Time) Umberto Galimberti
to talk - as leading to a number of consequences such as states “while technology is only focused on development,
neglecting their engagement in social activities. which we mistake for progress when development is only
Recently in 2019, Sergey Young has more than once an- the enhancement of a dimension”, progress, on the other
nounced his plan to live to be 200. To anyone sharing his hand, “is a population that betters”. Yet at times the wor-
same goal, the founder of Longevity Vision Fund, apart ld of technology still deploys methods of knowledge that
from recommending pharmacological treatments, promi- rely on intangible attitudes of emotional nature, sign of a
ses he will design devices to allow people to practice exer- dormant but still existing empathy. In disguise, whether
cises without moving their body. Where medicine fails, we like it or not, we are still in Anaximander’s apeiron, an
technology thrives. And while this preamble may seem unoriginated and unlimited principle.
dystopian, there’s still a glimmer of hope. 2012 saw the
draft of the World Happiness Report and the first celebra- Self-Indicator, a biometric system that measures mental
tion of the UN International Day of Happiness. Thanks to and behavioral states, seems to tell us so. Similarly to a
an agreement between the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts medical device designed to treat pathologies, thanks to a
and the association Médecins francophones du Canada, biometric system the sculpture re-elaborates the heartbea-
for the first time in history doctors were allowed to pre- ts of its “patient-users”, measuring their level of empathy.
scribe their patients visits to museums because art is good By comparing the heartbeats of two users, the device is
for our health. “Happiness indicators are now being used able to quantify their level of “harmony” while engaged
by an increasing number of governments in their politi- in a relationship with each other and shape it as a breath, a
cal decision-making,” says Jeffrey Sachs, and from Pope pneuma that constitutes the entire world, including nature
Bergoglio’s advisor to Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa is as well as mankind up to its most intimate part, the psyche
a short step. Alexa lives and breathes algorithms: fed by (from psyko “to blow”). It operates in a cosmos, “an in-
human minds, it is the result of a constant interpretative dividual, animated reality in eternal movement embra-
effort made by real people. The coexistence of humans cing all beings” (Larre, Berera, Filosofia della medicina
and machines does indeed look possible. It would almost tradizionale cinese).
seem Artificial Intelligence had won against our most dre-
adful forecast for the future of mankind - just like what Looking at the device, we find ourselves in front of a
was already predicted by Artificial Intelligence, an an- short-circuiting mechanical process: it is a tool designed
drogenic boy-robot programmed to love, protagonist of and programmed to measure something that, refractory to
Spielberg’s homonym film - Artificial Intelligence, 2001, numerical factors, is not measurable. Because of that, the
from a project by Stanley Kubrick. numerical data, if not for the mechanical activation of the
process, loses its importance. It is here that the transfor-
These thoughts may seem to have nothing to do with Mat- mation of the object takes place: the sculpture is systema-
teo Vettorello’s Sympathetic Pressure. tic, what only matters is the transformation that is taking
place.