Reinterpretations of the etchingsMatthew Attard and Galleria Michela Rizzo
On the sixtieth Venice Biennale, Maltese artist Matthew Attard addresses his nation’s maritime heritage, together with notions of religion and progress, by the prism of AI-driven expertise. His work focuses on pictures of ships that had been graffitied by seafarers on the stone facades of chapels in Malta between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, considered one of which is pictured beneath.
Ship graffito at Our Girl of the Visitation Chapel, Wied Qirda – Żebbuġ, MaltaElyse Tonna
Attard, pictured beneath, retraced the incised strains of the hulls, rigging and billowing sails utilizing his gaze, in a course of facilitated by an eye-tracking gadget and generative algorithms. “This gaze was translated into knowledge factors by the expertise, which had been then additional interpreted to generate strains or drawings,” he says.
A database of digital pictures generated from the info factors captured the engravings from numerous views, from which artworks resembling 3D scans and video items had been created.
Matthew Attard with an eye-tracking gadget.Elyse Tonna
The maritime graffiti resonates with cultures whose relationship with the ocean has been – and nonetheless is – essential, the place the ship stays a metaphor for hope and survival. Equally, Maltese chapels have lengthy been locations of sanctuary. Attard says he needed to discover “parallels with our present ‘blind religion’ in digital expertise”.
His reinterpretations of the etchings are ghostlike, skeletal impressions, as proven in the primary picture. “One might argue that even probably the most conventional mediums, resembling a pencil or a bit of charcoal, could be thought-about a type of drawing expertise,” he notes. His present is on the Malta Pavilion on the Venice Biennale, Italy, commissioned by Arts Council Malta, till 24 November.

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