EM TOOLS
Project, research, development and design | Alessandro Carboni
Production | Formati Sensibili 2013-2017
Support and collaboration | EM Tools is the result of an individual and collaborative investigation of theory and practice between Alessandro Carboni and people such as performers, theorists, artists, researchers, cartographers, curators and mapmakers. EM is designed and developed through iterative research conducted independently and in collaboration with universities as School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong; Adaptive Environments Research Group/IT University of Copenhagen; Living Archives Project, University of Malmö; Kunsthal, with the support of Participatory IT/Department of Aesthetic of Communication at the University of Aarhus.
Preliminary findings, research and applications | Media Architecture Biennale in Aarhus; Bi-city/Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture; Transmediale Festival in Berlin, Santarcangelo Festival; From Soil to Structure Festival (Malmö); Crisalide festival, Forlì; Atelier Sì spazio tempo 2015/16 Artists in ResidenSì Programme, Bologna.
EM Tools for urban mapping and performative practice is a choreographic method devised by Alessandro Carboni that uses the body as a tool to capture, extract, and map urban events, detecting what happens in a place in its geometric and temporal extensions. Through this approach, such events are internalized, transformed, and reorganized through choreographic thinking. The result is a bodily map composed of postures, shapes, and gestures of the body.
EM Tools is the result of both individual and collaborative research between Carboni and performers, theorists, artists, researchers, cartographers, curators, and map-makers, aiming to explore the body as a vector, tool, and condition through which to analyze the invisible forces acting in contemporary urban space. Today, the tools function as a toolbox available to artists and performers, an operational manual for using the body as a device for mapping urban events and analyzing the spatiality and temporality of places. The method is structured around four fundamental principles: observe, capture (mapping urban space through bodily actions), extract (selective elaboration of actions in the protected space of the studio), and transmit (translation of the bodily map into a choreographic score).
EM Tools was developed within Alessandro Carboni’s doctoral research at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.