(English) All people going

The drawing represents the actual trajectory traced by people going  in Saint Marc Square,  from 2:05:00 to 2:07:43 pm,  26 February 2006

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.

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.