Curation, 3D and video · NFT
The Garden of Gods
A new planet, habitable only on certain conditions, and a garden waiting to be populated. Eight artists, eight NFT works, a single landscape.
- Where
- Via Raiale, Pescara · SXSW, Austin · Vellum, Los Angeles
- When
- March 2022
- Artists
- Paulo Arraiano, Szilvia Bolla, Stine Deja, Gioia Di Girolamo, Ivan Divanto, Benoit Ménard, Taka Kono, Olia Svetlanova
- Music
- Francesco Gentile, Light Shift
- Work
- Curation, 3D environment, video, communication
The project
A distorted Eden, inhabited not by Adam and Eve but by non-terrestrial forms of life.
The Garden of Gods is a digital diorama in eight acts. On a planet that is potentially habitable but seemingly hostile, new species arrive, settle and change. Each work is an NFT; together they inhabit a single 3D landscape, where every creature has its own weight and its own place.
The creatures
Benoit Ménard's rover, Szilvia Bolla's transparent egg, Paulo Arraiano's first aquatic life forms, Olia Svetlanova's forms free of every earthly boundary, Stine Deja's biorobotic prosthesis. And the avatars: Gioia Di Girolamo's, mirrored in the screen, and those of Taka Kono and Ivan Divanto, one before a spring, the other before a drinks machine.
Holding the phases together is an acid-green liquid: no longer water, but an energy drink. It is what makes life on the planet possible. Like the apple, in a crooked Eden.
Music by Francesco Gentile, Light Shift. Critical text by Cinzia Franceschini.
The soundtrack
Light Shift
Studies on relativistic Doppler effect · Francesco Gentile · 1′42″
The music binds the eight acts together, like a beam of light passing through each phase of the settlement of the new planet and illuminating them one after another.
Universe. Galaxies. Stars.
Everything flows into an endless chaos of motion.
Is it something that can be told by sound?
The answer is gray.
Silence.
It comes.
Red Shift.
It passes.
Blue shift.
Silence.
We are just mere observers.
We observe red.
We observe blue.
We come up with our conclusions.
We trick ourselves to think we know where we are.
But we don’t.
And so the answer remains unheard.
— Francesco Gentile
The work
Curated by Ultrastudio. The 3D landscape, the projection videos, the social media videos, the posts and the invitation were all produced in the studio.
Official preview in via Raiale on 12 March 2022. From 13 to 19 March the works were presented by marcel at SXSW in Austin, Texas; they were then shown at Vellum, Los Angeles, on 31 March 2022.
Vellum, Los Angeles
On 31 March 2022 the Marcel.Art community brought an evening of eight curated exhibitions to Vellum, Los Angeles. One of them was The Garden of Gods, curated by Ultrastudio: the works ran together across a wall of vertical screens, in the green and pink landscape built in the studio.
For an idea that asks not to stay alone, the first step is an email.
Write to us
Where we are
Via Raiale 161
65128 Pescara
Programme
Exhibitions, residencies and talks.
The programme
Ultrastudios APS · via Raiale 161, 65128 Pescara, Italy · Tax code 91147480684 · ULTRA*STUDIOS di Gioia Di Girolamo · VAT IT02405270683 · Privacy
Since 2012. Since 2026, also a studio.