Herbarum

The title of Nicola Villa’s A/V Herbarum installation draws inspiration from the famous sixteenth-century botanical atlas Herbarum Vivae Eicones ad Naturae Imitationem, a work that explores the connections between nature, science and new models of visual representation.

In this site-specific project, Villa transforms part of the ancient cisterns of Palazzo Doria into an immersive space where nature and technology merge to create a unique sensorial experience.

Through the use of sensors, electronic circuits and software, plants and visitors interact with the environment, generating sounds in real time.

These sounds, the result of contact between living organisms and technology, become a sound base to be merged with digital video animations and montages specifically created for the installation.

The video materials, designed to interact with sound, “move” in sync with the sound ecosystem, creating a visual dialogue between nature and visual representation.

In this synergy between organic and digital elements, Nicola Villa’s work enters into a relationship with an historic work by Piero Gilardi, Spiagge tropicali, dating back to the late 1980s.

Gilardi’s work, on display within the installation, also features a sound component that flows into the environment and enriches the dialogue between the two creations, highlighting art’s ability to explore the boundary between natural and artificial, past and present.

In A/V Herbarum, Villa invites the public to experience an ecology of listening and vision, where nature is not only represented, but actively involved as an integral part of the artistic experience.

The result is an immersive work that questions our relationship with the natural world and the technological systems through which we perceive and interpret it.