works by Luca Tornato Serafini
Luca Tornato was born in São Paulo, Brazil. “Repurpose” is a word that holds great meaning to him, and a concept that is widely reflected in his artistic production. His creative process entails a dialogue with the machines he uses, giving them the possibility of dreaming, thereby elevating them from their merely functional purpose. With a background in electrical engineering, and heavily influenced by expanded cinema and early computer graphics, he hoards old analog video equipment giving them a second and final chance to create videoart, oscillographics and installations. Now studying a bachelor's in ArtScience at KABK, The Hague, he is usually seen scavenging tube TVs around school and occasionally VJing. His portfolio can be seen on instagram at @lucatorsera.
Luca has previously exhibited installational pieces and performed in The Hague (NL), Aalborg (DK), Glasgow (UK) and São Paulo (BR).
A/V Performances
KABK x KC Night, VJing for Sphera de Noumenon, The Hague, NL
Vjing for Gestalt Pop, at De Besturing, The Hague, NL
Machine Dream, live A/V performance at Aalborg Surreal, Aalborg, Denmark
Selected video works
stray home
STRAY HOME (2m56s) is a short film made during quarantine times, using analog video equipment to explore the current situation we live in. This moment of crisis is intensifying the polarization of people and the state, misinformation is institutionally spread by my country’s president and the overall system is going towards a failure; we are forced to live by negligent decision-makers.
“STRAY HOME” is a study on these themes. The works of Marshall McLuhan (the concept of the Global Village) and Nam June Paik (the electronic manipulation of imagery as means of media and political criticism) served as a major influence for this work. Errors are introduced in the video chain, either at the video signal or by capturing images on a tube tv while changing shutter speeds on the camera and so on. A collection of quotes and footages from political leaders is sequentially corrupted, recaptured and merged with a human-like character, forced to live among these errors. Misinformation encoded in data transmission is key in a post truth world.
LINK.
URB
URB is a documentary (25m43s) synthesizing a week of workshops with guest lecturer Esther Polak, which took place in the city of The Hague. In these documentations, the city is explored as a space produced by its mobilities, and its different categories. Linking these concepts with Judith Butler ideas on performativity, we were invited to closely observe and study the URB, producing a lexicon - with new concepts, used throughout the film, such as "move-entity" (a pedestrian, a biker, a car) and "buildingness" (when a move-entity blocks mobility, acting as a building) and a series of quick experiments on streets and parks of the city center. The film was shot with a hi-8 camera and is composed of fast cuts and drifting planes through objects and move entities, playing with the performativity of the city itself while also grasping onto the students' conclusions during the workshop week.
LINK.
Elos Atemporais
Elos Atemporais (3m50s) is a music videoclip made for the song of the same name, featured in the EP “TALASSOFOBIA” from sukya || porno, a band from São Paulo, Brazil. The work explores narrative using an oscilloscope and a tube TV. The path of two completely different analog signals, drawn similarly by cathode ray tubes, interconnected by two energy fields. With an oscilloscope - an instrument commonly used to visualize electronic waveforms - one can control its cathode rays to display any pattern on the screen using audio waves as an input. These waves were synthesized both by a computer via programming environments and analog electronic circuits assembled by me. The tiny oscilloscope screen was filmed by a DSLR camera and edited in software with no post-processing. A hi-8 VHS camera was also used to shoot the final scenes and features scenery from Glasgow, Scotland.
LINK.
Por Favor Volte Mais Tarde (Please Come Back Later)
This short-length film (5m17s) is a minor study on ways to expand cinema using videomapping and interactive projections in a scripted story. It is about a relationship between three characters and the space they live in. Shot in the corridor of my old apartment in São Paulo, the film used a custom arduino controller to control the parameters of a processing sketch (a programming environment for visual artists). This process was used to paint my door and further explore the main character's inner feelings, imagination and mood swings. The soundtrack was entirely composed by me in Nanoloop, an 8bit step sequencer for mobile phones. With a simple plot and no dialogues, Please Come Back Later tries to explore complicated relationships with unusual tools.
LINK.