Philips ePaper technology, with Tableaux displays, is the basis of the MUSE exhibition of digital artistic works focused on the theme of environmental sustainability
When they say: set a good example! Too many times, in recent years, we have commented on exhibitions that were perhaps very beautiful and worthy, capable of making people reflect on the topic of climate change and the need to resort to renewable and eco-compatible energy sources, but not perfectly coherent, since they were not sustainable, implying a significant expenditure in terms of energy and CO2 for their very creation. Well, the Philips initiative of the MUSE Digital Art Award, a competition that involved professional artists from all over the world and students from Italian academies and art schools, has innovated starting from the very concept of the exhibition. As the curator Julia Rajacic explained to us: “The idea was to create an exhibition that was truly and entirely zero impact, starting from the supports, the Philips ePaper monitors which do not consume energy, up to the details such as the wooden structures, coming from previous installations, and the recyclable cardboard panels, engraved and unprinted, to describe the titles and authors of the works. Even for the opening, we broke with tradition, which requires the physical presence of the artists, inviting us not to necessarily undertake journeys with an impact in terms of emissions. Today technology also helps you to be present without necessarily having to travel!”
With works from all over the world by professional artists and Italian art students, this exhibition shines in particular for the visions of the future represented on the Philips Tableaux displays which, like modern canvases, have lent themselves to reproducing them. “To allow artists to verify the performance of their work on this particular expressive medium, the ePaper display, we have provided guidelines and an online tool to simulate the display of the works, as they would have been presented,” Luca Guariniello, marketing manager Italy of PPDS Philips professional displays, told us. In fact, the Philips Tableaux ePaper displays, without backlighting and with zero consumption, offer a very particular image, characterized in some cases by a dithering effect, which gives the images an almost “pictorial” appearance, as if were composed of many tiny brushstrokes. Photographs, static frames of videos, digital and geometric processing, generative graphics but also specially processed drawings and images: there is everything in the twenty works (out of around three hundred received) that an independent jury – composed but not guided in its choices by the curator Julia Rajacic – selected for exhibition. Fascinating and powerful works, capable of making us reflect both on the theme of sustainability in the present and on the future world.
The Philips brand is present but, as Luca Guariniello pointed out, “it is more important to talk about technology than about individual products, and the intent with this award and with the exhibition was to send a signal, to make it clear that it is possible to contribute effectively towards environmental sustainability. Philips, for example, has also started producing new packaging almost entirely in recyclable soy, free of plastic and polystyrene.”
Open from morning to sunset, and no later because, in line with the premises of the concept, the exhibition is not illuminated with artificial light or heated, MUSE represents in our opinion an important first step, which will have to be followed by many others but which definitely inaugurates a new way of imagining how to make digital art.
