DIVERGENCES is a film and a 1:1 scale video installation by mixed-media artist Federica Sasso and sound artist Luca Pagan. Drawing on the photographic tradition of studies of human motion, the artists reframe Eadweard Muybridge’s legacy, transforming it into a moving sculpture that embodies hyper-contemporaneity. Conceived as a live-recorded performance, the work features a middle-aged man who lost his left leg in an after-work accident, walking continuously on a treadmill within an aseptic environment while immersed in virtual reality.

Moving through four liminal VR environments, the subject wears a biosensor suit developed by the artists and a high-tech prosthesis created by the Rehab Technologies Lab of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) and INAIL, where the treadmill is typically used for functional testing. The wearable technologies generate real-time feedback in response to his movements, producing sounds reminiscent of water, grass, and the footsteps of women’s and men’s heels, each connected to the virtual spaces he traverses. Immersed in an architectural concrete corridor illuminated by a metaphorical light on the horizon, he advances through constantly shifting surfaces: from carpet to marble, from water to turf.

DIVERGENCES explores a range of phenomena related to embodiment (the sensation of perceiving an external, digital, or physical object as part of one’s own body) as well as human perception within surrounding environments and its response to external digital stimuli. Referencing scientific experiments while displacing them from their conventional context, the artists present a video suspended in a white, bright, almost fictional dimension poised between art and advertising. In doing so, they push the relationship between humans and technology to an extreme, prompting viewers to question the future of physical and virtual interactions, ergonomic solutions, and their implications for contemporary society.

Sasso and Pagan investigate new possible connections between the body, sonic impulses, and emerging realities, exploring how a digital-physical setting (including a virtual environment and a bionic extension of the body) can generate haptic sensations and altered perceptions. They guide us through a suspended universe that reveals unconscious and neurological responses, ultimately prompting the question: “Would I react in the same way?”

PREMIERE AT 2023 ARS ELECTRONICA SEPTEMBER 6-10, POSTCITY LINZ (AT)

Artists: Federica Sasso and Luca Pagan
Art Director: Emanuele Amighetti
Styling: Giovanni Nordio
Editor & Supervisor: Carlo Fusani
Director: Emanuele Cantó
Dop: Ciro di Niccolo
Producer: Isotta Fiorenzi
1st AC: Emma Mariano
Gaffer: Tommaso Bolongaro
Grip: Alberto Braga
Bolt Operator: Marc Debon
Photographer: Giacomo Alberico
Styling Assistant: Miriam Perego
VR Designer & Developer: Igor Iurevici
Vice Project Manager Hyperleg Project: Samuele de Giuseppe
Test Subject: Omar Cantoro
Orthopedic: Francesco Migliarese
Graphic Designer: Maria Chiara Moro
Web Developer: Marco Pagan
Shot in August 2023, Milan (IT). Thanks to MovieChrome.
In collaboration with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and INAIL.