Alberto Frigo
 Alberto Frigo | |
| Born |
July 21, 1979 Asiago, Italy |
|---|---|
Alberto Frigo (1979) is an artist known for having photographed every object his right hand has used since September 2003. In a 36 year project he has been tracking 36 aspects of his life and surroundings. By 2040 the project will include 1,000,000 photos of all the objects he used, 432,000 of his dreams, 93,312 of the songs he heard, 25,950 of his thoughts, 77,760 of the public places he visited, 3,456 portraits of the people he met, 6,912 collages of the trash he found on the sidewalk, 10,368 shapes of the clouds he observed and much more.
Background
As young artist Frigo became quickly fascinated with filming his action paintings. Having moved to Canada in 2000 he began using 16 mm cameras to film his everyday life as a homeless in downtown Vancouver. Feeling overwhelmed from all the editing work Frigo sewed all his journals in a poncho and undertook a road trip across the americas. If the purpose of the trip was to get back to pen and paper and avoid the use of technology the result was that upon returning to Canada Frigo began to conceive the idea of a digital system to document his life and the way the surroundings affect it.
Having moved back to Europe in 2002 Frigo was invited to work as guest artist at the Interactive Institute. There he developed wearable computers to record life 24/7 but was ultimately inspired by Lev Manovich reading of Dziga Vertov's work and began to document life using different media to record multiple aspects of reality. After a brief collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko Frigo became project leader at M.I.T. Design Lab. He later taught database aestethics at Sodertorn University where he obtained a PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory.
Alberto Frigo's poncho
Alberto Frigo's wearable
Frigo's Square
Officially starting in 2004 Frigo has devised 36 methods to document life continuosly and until 2040 when he will be 60. His most famous work consists in photographing every object his right hand uses, a method inspisred by Georges Perec and the O.U.L.I.P.O. movement in general. In 2016 Frigo collaborated with Hasselblad Foundation and Peter Weibel on the topic of surveillance art. For the purpose he presented a large scale installation comprising of 144 photographic panels. In these panels one month worth of all the objects his right hand has used since 2004 were diplayed with each photographic line representing a day and each line of panels a year. By 2040 the installation will be a perfect square of 12 by 12 meters with one million photos of all the objects an individual has used throughout his adult life, namely from the age of 24 to the age of 60.
Alberto Frigo at Hasselblad Foundation
Alberto Frigo's right hand photo panel detail
Frigo's Cube
In 2018 Frigo conceived the idea of a giant 25 feet iron cube. Since there are 432 months in 36 years and 36 are his works the sculpture is made of 15.552 pixels. Each pixel then corresponds to a month production of one his 36 works. The sculpture was ulimately realized on Mount Novegno, 100 kilometers of Venice and 1000 meters above the sea level. Also the 36 resulting patterns of the sculpture (9 on each wall) encrypts the formula behind each work (by moving two empty pixels on a line of 8 one is to obtain all the letters of the alphabets). Similarly each of the 15.552 pixels stores the work's number and the month number (by moving two white pixels on a line of five one is to obtain all the numbers). Visitors to the sculpture can recreate the pattern of each pixel and retrieve a month production. The scultpure can be also accessed virtually on the project website.
Alberto Frigo's cube as seen from the outside
Alberto Frigo's cube has seen from the inside
Frigo's Circle
Upon completing his cube and halfway into his life project, in 2024 Frigo began to work on the idea of a memory theater in which every architectural element corresponds to one of his 36 life-works. Inspired by the circular camps of hunter-gatherers he began to work on a 50 meters circle in a hurricane devastated forest in his native highland. In this circle visitors are able to reconstruct the theater using virtual reality.
Alberto Frigo's memory theater
Alberto Frigo's circle
Thought
Conceptually Frigo aims to generate a DNA code, a hieroglyphic of a human life threatened with extinction. In this respect he relates to Marshall McLuhan's notion that marginal media artists build arks of their time. For instance his cube is partially inspired by the pre-biblical arks that were in fact cubic. Frigo then goes beyond the Foucauldian notion of technology of the self; he is conceiving a more generative type of technology as formulated by Jacques Ellul and the kabbalistic humanities predating the enlightenment.
In his own words Frigo defines is project as a bricolage, a lifeboat preparing to depart the ship of modern civilization. For this Frigo relates his project to Peter Lamborn Wilson's concept of T.A.Z. (Temporary Autonomous Zone) in the face of the megamachine of power as formulated by Lewis Mumford. In the writings Frigo executes as part of his project he relates this lifeboat as not only a medium to a more ecological and egalitarian living as that of hunter-gathers but as in itself a practice to become a hunter-gatherer as he himself claims to have become conducting his project.
