Era, inspired by canyon erosion, is a prototype coffee table made of 3D pantographed wood for Mario Coppola’s exhibition SEDIMENTI, curated by Luigi Nicolais at the Plart Museum in Naples.
The objects featured in this exhibition are the result of an active collaboration between the designer—Mario Coppola—and two different artificial intelligences—Stable Diffusion and MidJourney—which function as non-human alters within the creative process. Through this interaction, each work is developed starting from a sketch and a handful of keywords. Starting from this data, the AI develops a large number of variations in which each design element, that is, each shape, is transformed into sediment, a residue amalgamated with the others “horizontally,” without hierarchies, without attempts to reduce complexity into abstract geometries (drawn from outside the world). On the contrary, as occurs in the millions of years of morphogenetic processes that shape the differentiated continuities of sedimentary rocks, composed of heterogeneous aggregates of minerals, bodies, and even waste, here too each element abandons its formal autonomy and merges with its neighbor, generating a plastic and coherent whole in which Platonic geometries, a metaphor for ideal perfection, are on the same level as the topological geometries of bodies and landscapes. A coexistence based on solidarity between parts once physically and conceptually separate that, together, attempt to narrate the crisis of our time.
The pieces were made from corn starch, organic waste, recycled plastic from the sea, recycled concrete, and engraved wood (CNC).
Photo credits: Fabio Donato
