I had the good fortune to meet Bruno Giorgini and the researchers (Armando Bazzani, Sandro Rambaldi, Francesco Zanlugo) from the Physics of the City Laboratory at Bologna University, www.fisicadellacittà, who put their film material of crowd movements at St. Mark’s Square during the carnival at my disposal, as well the relative models for the simulation of pedestrian movements. I think they do not realise the importance of that gift.

I had the good fortune to meet Bruno Giorgini and the researchers (Armando Bazzani, Sandro Rambaldi, Francesco Zanlugo) from the Physics of the City Laboratory at Bologna University, www.fisicadellacittà, who put their film material of crowd movements at St. Mark’s Square during the carnival at my disposal, as well the relative models for the simulation of pedestrian movements. I think they do not realise the importance of that gift.

Starting from their material I did many drawings following a rudimentary, even crude procedure: I traced the pedestrians’ movements, drawing their paths with a felt-tipped pen on a transparent sheet placed over the computer monitor.  I then faithfully transferred the results onto ordinary large sheets of white paper.  The lines drawn in different directions create the space, drawing a St. Mark’s Square that is actually not there.  As well as the actual physical space, it is also a drawing of our individual and collective manner of relating to space. Each single path determines the route of others, in a continuous and reciprocal game of influences that makes our collective progress.

The method used renders lines that are imprecise, thus useless from a scientific point of view.  Nevertheless, it is an imprecision that is not so approximate, in so much as the movements are recorded in a “relatively” faithful manner, in other words as faithful as human sense perception can allow.  I am very interested in the modalities of perception, they as so imperfect, yet sufficiently perfect to make our existence possible.

Therefore, I want this to be a mere record, a relatively precise record of what occurred.  Invent nothing, observe what has been and what is, and know that that is exactly how things went, even though everything could have gone differently.  Quietly record, trying to convey that incredible complexity that makes our strange world unspeakably beautiful.

 Venice shows two big human typologies: tourists and people who live in Venice. One can read this classification also in the trajectories traced by the persons going: long and almost straight lines cutting diagonally Saint Marc Square belong necessary to venetians or to people who work or live here. Curls and twirls are created by tourists.

After Venice, Milan, in particular Piazza Duomo, that shows a social complexity that is very different from that one of Saint Marc Square in Venice. Referring to that specific portion of space and to that specific time frame I have analysed some different human categories: street vendors, street cleaners, people approached by street cleaners, pigeons.

 The project I worked on with the physicist Bruno Giorgini in Marseille developed this exploration thanks to our residency at IMéRA, Institut d’études avancées d’Aix-Marseille, www.imera.fr.  At IMERA we developed this method for a new environment, a city more ethnically and culturally plural than Venice. Together we set up procedures and tools for collecting data about mobility networks there: nodes, links, chronotopi. We shot videos focusing on specific behavioural patterns where strategies of shifting, approaching and distancing play a decisive role; and we were also attracted by the places and situations of pedestrian congestion. Using the same technique as in Venice, I translated these into drawings of movement. These again created a space that marks out squares and places w

Chiara Bertola,  The Illusion of Certainty; Sergio Risaliti, Writing of the Barely Perceptible Invisible. In: Dire il tempo. Mariateresa Sartori, ed. Gli Ori, 2019 

 Elisabeth A. Pergam, Drawing in the Twenty-First Century: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Practice, Ashgate Publishing Company, England, 2016, pag 407

Bruno Giorgini Senior Science Associate to the Physics of the city Laboratory and INFN, Bologna, Mariateresa Sartori Human mobility world lines on urban topologies 

Samuel Bordreuil, Emeritus Senior Researcher at the French CNRS, Scientific Director of the IMéRA, Marseille, France

FLUX URBAINS, FIGURES LIBRES : L’IMéRA, EXPLORATORIUM ART/SCIENCES

De toute ligne pure, libre d’aller où elle veut et à son rythme propre, Paul Klee ne trouve pas de meilleure formule que de dire qu’elle « goes for a walk », qu’elle « sort faire un tour »… ¹

Si la ligne pure se présente pour Klee comme un idéal esthétique, ira-t-on jusqu’à soutenir que le moindre passant ferait du Klee sans le savoir ?… Retraçant scrupuleusement ces tracés, c’est en tout cas avec ces lignes pures que Mariateresa Sartori renoue ! Plus précisément que sa main, sa main-sismographe, renoue. Comme elle le dit, « sa main voit », elle qui suit la trace sans jamais pouvoir la précéder.

Maintenant, ces ruissellements urbains, qui pour les recueillir ? Et en quelles citernes ? Savantes ou artistes ? On dira, pour l’heure, qu’ils se tiennent sur cette ligne de partage des eaux, cette ligne de crête, aussi bien entre « art et science » qu’entre « arts et arts » et enfin « sciences et sciences »…

Cette main, littéralement esclave du mouvement des autres, accomplit en effet deux choses en même temps. Dans son souci d’exactitude, elle se love dans le protocole de l’observation scientifique; mais elle libère aussi bien des secousses de vie et déplie leurs voltiges : une célébration que l’on attend de toute forme artistique …

En un mot, sans confondre ces bassins de sens, elle les met au défi de leurs raccords.

Si bien que ces dessins, cette installation, on propose de les recevoir comme le stylet de ce défi.

¹ Pour reprendre le commentaire très éclairant que fait Tim Ingold dans le chapitre 3 de « Lines », pp 72 – 73 . Tim Ingold, Lines, a brief History, London, Routledge, 2007.

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Human mobility world lines on urban topologies

contessannaly: Venice Fondazione Querini Stampalia