30/08/2021 - IMAGINE, DESIRE. AND THEN, JUST LOOK
The power of transforming imagination into images
Where does a desire come from? From creating an idea in our mind. Call it fantasy, call it imagination. Maybe it’s the most precious faculty we have as human beings.
We are sitting in our office on the third floor of a grey building stuck in the middle of a polluted city. We can close our eyes for a second and imagine the golden hour of an old Sicilian village between the sea and the mountains. Aren’t we madly desiring to be walking through its streets? Maybe with a light breeze caressing our skin. So we just get a bag, book a flight and flee there. Now we can fall in love with that place: obviously we will. And then, when we’ll be far away, we won’t just desiring it: we will need it. And maybe come back.
When we see something that we like - a person, an object, a place - we need to experience it. To hear it, to smell it, to touch it. That’s why, in the museums, they have to tell us, and write everywhere, “don’t you approach, don’t you touch”. It’s an instinct, an irrepressible desire to experience what we see, and like, with our senses. Maybe because, somehow, experiencing means possess. That’s human nature. It’s quite the same with love, everybody knows it: when we fall in love with someone, we madly need to feel that person. That’s what sex is basically meant for, however we decide to live it.
We could even say more about desire. The more we desire, the more we want. When we imagine something for a long time, the emotion to obtain it is even strong and upsetting. Someone used to say that “the expectation of pleasure is itself pleasure”.
That’s the kind of quote that we learn more from advertising than from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's reading. Of course, if the desire isn’t at some point satisfied, it just vanishes. But it’s the whole thing that makes us feel alive.
Since ancient times, through an infinite number of artistic techniques, we have always tried to represent reality, but most of all our imagination and desire. Who would have thought, one hundred years ago, that one day, thanks to technology, we could be able to create images that perfectly reflect reality and that, unlike photography, actually anticipate it?
In some cases, we also can reinvent reality or create something is not physically possible in our universe.
That’s 3D power. By relying digital technologies, Diorama can do something precious and unique. Diorama starts from imagination and desire and transforms it into a concrete visualisation, turning desire into need. Once sight is satisfied, indeed, all the other senses remain.