In questo momento c\u2019\u00e8 una Tesla che orbita attorno alla Terra. C\u2019\u00e8 da poco pi\u00f9 di un giorno. \u00c8 lass\u00f9 e c\u2019\u00e8 un fantoccio vestito da astronauta al posto del guidatore: ha un braccio sulla portiera e uno sul volante e ascolta \u201cSpace Oddity\u201d di David Bowie, in loop. L\u2019ha spedita Elon Musk l\u00e0 a bordo del Falcon Heavy, il pi\u00f9 potente vettore aerospaziale mai costruito e fatto volare. Non ci sono termini di paragone per definire questa impresa perch\u00e9, semplicemente, non c\u2019\u00e8 precedente. Non c\u2019\u00e8 neanche un precedente nel marketing e neppure nell\u2019arte perch\u00e9, signore e signori, quella che sta orbitando sopra le nostre teste \u00e8 arte pura. Duchamp si sarebbe inchinato di fronte a tanto genio, cos\u00ec potente e stellare da essere poco comprensibile a noi umani. Alcuni dei quali, infatti, non hanno perso occasione per derubricarlo a puro marketing, svilendone la potenza immaginifica, la forza filosofica e l\u2019importanza che ha per il genere umano.<\/p>\n
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Perhaps Musk\u2019s genius is incomprehensible even to Musk himself. Yet if we analyze the intuition of sending a Tesla in space (decided, we ought to remember, because the Falcon Heavy mission was only demonstrative and needed a load to be tested \u2014 no wonder that between a few cubic meters of bricks and a Tesla), it\u2019s no wonder that Musk have chosen the latter. Leaving aside the reasons that justified it and admitting that they were largely a pure attempt to put to use a need, a Tesla in space is a great thing and also a good title for a novel.<\/p>\n \n But there\u2019s more.<\/p>\n \n I realized this by watching the live broadcast from the cockpit. There we can see Starman floating in space. There is a background that is familiar to us after countless movies on space and after the hundreds of thousands of photos of the Earth we have already seen. Yet there is something surreal and upsetting: it is not the usual view of the Earth from space. Or rather: it\u2019s the usual one but there\u2019s\u00a0something more as well.<\/em>Something different. Something familiar.<\/p>\n \n In fact, we are not seeing the \u201cusual\u201d spatial images: we are seeing them framed in something we know well: the windshield of a car. That\u2019s OK. But this car is orbiting in space. And it\u2019s not ok anymore: it is also tremendously strange and revealing.<\/p>\n \n In short: I found myself watching this show while listening to the most beautiful soundtrack of a science fiction film in the world, or rather, of the universe: that of Hans Zimmer\u2019s Interstellar. I was looking for Italy down there but the clouds covered it. I wanted to find a connection between me and Starman, I wanted to understand what kept me enchanted, bewitched by that video. Why I could not stop?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n could not stop because what I was seeing was a work of art, perhaps the most successful piece of contemporary art ever made. And it was not made by an artist but by an entrepreneur, perhaps the best one in recent decades but certainly not an artist.<\/p>\n \n If contemporary art is also based on decontextualization, starting from today we are facing a work that has brought this concept to its extreme consequences: an installation not only made with something familiar, but even displayed in space. Ladies and gentlemen, this is pure genius.<\/p>\n Art needs the observer and not just the art work itself, especially the contemporary one: and here is the observer, in front of his computer or mobile phone watching the live streaming of Starman, seeing what he sees, seeing him in the background of the Earth covered with clouds. Seeing the days passing, seeing the shadow of the earth itself on itself, seeing a celestial body that is not represented by art, is not painted, it is not carved: it is real, it is reproduced in binary code and broadcasted to millions of people everywhere in the world.<\/p>\n If art has a purpose, it is to show things as they have never been seen before. It\u2019s to represent the different levels that can be applied to reality.<\/em><\/p>\n Putting a windshield between us viewers and the Earth, Musk did not create a disturbance (and above all he wasn\u2019t just marketing his ideas) but he revealed a meaning that was hidden: that\u2019s that we belong to this planet and we can perceive the bond and relationship only when an intermediate and family element \u2014 \u201cnormal\u201d \u2014 works as a filter.<\/p>\n Who has ever seen the ISS up close? Who\u2019s ever been on board? Few astronauts. But a car? We all know how it is made, what it feels like to be there, what a windshield is conceptually: it is soething that frames reality. It is normal to see a windshield, it is normal to see what it frames, but nonetheless it is surreal that this experience takes place in space. Really.<\/p>\n \n Musk created the greatest work of contemporary art in history. \n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n Elon Musk created the greatest contemporary art work in history. Without even knowing it, probably<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[81,80,82,83,84,74],"class_list":["post-30580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-art","tag-arte","tag-contemporary-art","tag-elon-musk","tag-tesla","tag-venice-biennale"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/martinopietropoli.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nMaybe without even realizing it.<\/p>\n