Herz, catalogo è questo.

A project by Alessandro Capozzo and Katja Noppes.

Madamina, il catalogo è questo / Delle belle che amò il padron mio / un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io / Osservate, leggete con me. / In Italia seicento e quaranta / In Almagna duecento e trentuna / Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna / Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre. /
V'han fra queste contadine, / Cameriere, cittadine, / V'han contesse, baronesse, / Marchesine, principesse. / E v'han donne d'ogni grado, / D'ogni forma, d'ogni età. / Nella bionda egli ha l'usanza / Di lodar la gentilezza, / Nella bruna la costanza, / Nella bianca la dolcezza. / Vuol d'inverno la grassotta, / Vuol d'estate la magrotta / È la grande maestosa, / La piccina e ognor vezzosa. / Delle vecchie fa conquista / Pel piacer di porle in lista / Sua passion predominante / È la giovin principiante. / Non si picca se sia ricca, / Se sia brutta, se sia bella / Purché porti la gonnella, / Voi sapete quel che fa.

Pretty lady, here's a list I would show you, / Of the fair ones my master has courted, / Here you'll find them all duly assorted, / In my writing, will't please you to look, / Here is Italy, six hundred and forty, / France is down for five hundred and twenty, / Only two hundred the Rhineland supplied him, / But mark the climax, Spain has already one thousand and three, / Here are Countesses in plenty. / Waitingmaids, nineteen or twenty. / Rustic beauties, Marchionesses, / Ev'ry grade his pow'r confesses. / Here are courtly dames and maidens, / Young and handsome, old and plain. / Is a maiden fair and slender, / He will praise her for modest sweetness, / Then the dark ones are so tender! / Lintwhite tresses shew discreetness; / When 'tis cold he likes her portly, / In the summer, slim and courtly, / Tall and haughty, ne'er she alarms him, / If she's tiny, no less she charms him. / Ripe duennas he engages, / That their names may grace these pages, / But what most he's bent on winning, / Is of youth the sweet beginning, / Poor or wealthy, wan or healthy, / Stately dame or modest beauty, / He to win them makes his duty, / And you know it, not in vain.

"Herz, il catalogo è questo" is a mixed media installation organized in a three modules rhythm: The first one introduces a heart cast made in traditional plaster, with the famous lyric by Da Ponte - Mozart written on. It continues with 13 heart casts, made of silicon rubber with talcum powder, installed as a city floor plan. The third part is a another heart cast made of silicon rubber placed next to a monitor, a messy electronic circuit is openly installed on it.
The system is driven by a microcontroller connected to an ultrasonic ranger sensor and a servomotor, a surveillance b/w camera (with a infrared lighting system built on) is set to take the heart inside view, the servo makes the camera moving with an heartbeat-like rhythm.
When audience moves nearby the installation the system detects that physical presence and make the servo
increasing or decreasing the beat.

The installation perceives our presence and returns, as a moving picture, the vestiges of a presence:
Do hearts surfaces keep memories?

Alessandro Capozzo and Katja Noppes, "Herz, il catalogo è questo", 2006. Analog and digital mixed media.
15 silicon rubber cast, video-monitor, microcontroller, ultrasonic sensor,
various cables and messy wires.

	work: Herz, il catalogo è questo - photo documentation - year: 2006 medium: mixed media >> goto the page
	work: Herz, il catalogo è questo - video documentation - year: 2006 medium: mixed media plug in: quicktime >> go to the page