Emilio Vavarella

Emilio Vavarella’s work combines interdisciplinary art practice and theoretical research, and is centered around the study of the relationship between humans and technological power. His works present a combination of new technologies used with alternative (non-productive, poetic, dysfunctional) goals in mind, imagining technology’s future effects through the use of speculative fiction, and decontextualizing and misusing technology to reveal its hidden mechanisms.

Emilio is currently working on a PhD in Film and Visual Studies and Critical Media Practice at Harvard University. Venues that have exhibited Emilio’s work include: MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo; KANAL – Centre Pompidou; MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; Villa Manin; Museo Nacional Bellas Artes in Santiago; National Art Center of Tokyo; Eyebeam Art and Technology Center; Fondazione Studio Marangoni and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa.

→ emiliovavarella.com

Exhibited works

Report a Problem, 2012
Archive of collected digital images, sublimation print on aluminum, variable dimensions

The series of 100 images entitled Report a Problem is the first part of a project about the relationship between humans, power, and technological errors. “Report a Problem” is the message that appears at the bottom of the Google Street View screen, which allows viewers to report a problem during the viewing of the place they are virtually visiting: missing censorship, wrong colors, random appearances. I traveled on Google Street View photographing all the “wrong landscapes” I encountered before others could report the problems and prompt the company to adjust the images. Common landscapes are transformed by Google’s unexpected technical errors into something new.

The Driver and the Cameras, 2012
Collected digital images, sublimation print on aluminum, variable dimensions

Each Google Street View car is equipped with a Dodeca 2360 camera with eleven lenses, capable of photographing 360 degrees. Afterwards the photos are assembled, creating a stereoscopic view, and an algorithm developed by Google automatically blurs the faces of people to protect the privacy of those accidentally portrayed. To create this series of photographs, I went looking for faces that had escaped Google Street View’s algorithm. The eleven portraits I isolated immortalize the driver of the Google car. The driver is a sort of phantom power; he appears where he shouldn’t be and his presence has escaped censure. His face is the symbol of an error yet at the same time shows a human side and, perhaps, the limits of technological power.