In Verona, on the occasion of Vinitaly, Pasqua Wines proposes an immersive artistic installation that blends the values of tradition with technological innovation, one of the watchwords of the winery: the installation of merged*, Dreamlike (), it starts from a database of 28 thousand dreams and combines written text with images generated by AI.
We had already met studio fuse* in Rome for the work Luna somnium which had illuminated the Gazometro of Ostiense in 2022 during the Videocittà festival. The work involved a sphere suspended 18 meters high inside the metal structure, 360° images were projected onto its surface. The same installation was brought to the Gallerie Mercatali in Verona for Vinitaly 2023, to celebrate the debut of Cabernet Sauvignon Fear no Dark: the moon is not a star but a satellite that feeds on sunlight and reflects it, the parallel with wine is given by the challenge that consisted for the maison, its «Constant tension towards experimentation and innovation, not having fear and leaving the comfort zone”, in the words of Riccardo Pasqua.
Pasqua Wines and art
But the connection between Pasqua Wines and art has been developing for a few years now. The winemaker Carlo Olivari proposed creating a “blend of blend” of different vintages, composed of Garganega, Pinot Bianco and Sauvignon, instead of creating a classic white Soave. Hey French Multivintage, «When tasted it expresses aromas ranging from chamomile, almonds and citrus fruits to delicate notes of white pepper and tropical fruits». If the third edition of Hey French is now on the market, then the third secret recipe – the vines and vintages are in fact declared
(in this case 2019, 2018, 2020, 2017 and 2016) but not the percentages -, during the masterclass on Monday, 15 April, directed by Jeff Porter, the Wine Spectator giant, was able to taste the fourth edition in preview. Already from the first edition, we wanted to reflect the particularity of this wine on the label and in the box: the artist is CB Hoyo.
For a campaign dedicated to talent, the Limited Edition of Amarone 2013 Famiglia Pasqua was designed by the artist of Vicenza origins Giorgia Fincato: the image of a labyrinth unfolds directly on the glass without any paper wrapping. For the 2021 edition of the red Passion and feeling, the fashion photographer Gio Martorana it started from the graffiti and declarations of love left by tourists in Juliet’s Courtyard, thus creating a choral effect of murals above the surface of the bottle. And again, Pasqua Vini sponsors the exhibition Long live cut flowers Of Henry Mitrovich from Officina dell’Arte, a famous Veronese florist. Mitrovich starts from the overused word “memory” and highlights his vanitas and obsolescence; at the same time, he uses burning and welding applied to sheet metal as expressive languages for the sense of peremptoriness of the gesture and the impossibility of rethinking that it imposes. The artist also looks at the environmental impact of man and technology, however, taking up the grids and graphic interfaces of computer programs in his compositions. The two ideas of obsolescence and innovation thus balance and interpenetrate: to look forward with technological and creative progress we often have to abandon what is no longer useful, we sometimes navigate in the sea of nostalgia, by which it is important not to let ourselves be possessed and annihilated .
Dreamlike ()
Dreamlike () it is an installation dedicated to a common-collective experience but at the same time singular and deeply intimate: the dream which also constitutes the origin, the fuse, of every creative process. Riccardo Pasqua, CEO of the winery, has in fact emphasized how the dream – the vision projected towards the future – is the engine of innovation.
Founded and directed by Mattia Carretti and Luca Camellini in 2008, studio fuse* is currently made up of 12 people. Together they worked on a database of 28,748 dream testimonies, obtained from two dream banks: the first from the University of Bologna – 807 dreams, collected and transcribed anonymously in the Laboratory of Psychophysiology of Dreams and Sleep “M. Bosinelli” of the Department of Psychology “R. Canestrari” (Dream Data Bank, DDB) -; the second from the University of California Santa Cruz, a collection created by the professors G. W. Domhoff and A. Schneider.
The overall structure of the work is divided following the pattern that usually characterizes a night’s sleep – five cycles that alternate nREM (non-REM) dreams and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) dreams, characterized by rapid eye movements and muscular atonia, until awakening.
Cinema is defined as the machine of dreams and it is for this reason that fuse* aims to offer an experience with a cinematic flavour. Of the 28,748 dreams, 30 were selected from the archive of the Laboratory of Psychophysiology of Sleep and Dreams at the University of Bologna. These 30 dreams follow one another on the central screen while, laterally, whenever words are mentioned, the latter appear highlighted on the transparent LED panels placed in front of the barrels. How come? Words such as “crocodiles”, “sea”, “ship”, “bear” have in fact been extrapolated from many dreams, collected as dream testimonies in the Californian data set. A connection is thus created between different people coming from equally heterogeneous contexts who nevertheless seem to share fears, desires and impulses on an unconscious level.
Moving images are conceived thanks to generative algorithms that transform textual input into visual processing. The experience is extremely synesthetic, the video is characterized by an organization of images within a circular area that recalls the shape of the iris – the eye is in fact the only organ that constantly moves during sleep – and by the music that alternates crescendo and decrescendo, distinguishing itself in three moments that coincide with deep sleep (NREM), REM sleep and the moment of transition between the different cycles.
