DISCIPULA - PHROOM

Just Like Arcadia

Just Like Arcadia describes the disintegration of a digital image through the manipulation of its JPEG code. The image is a render of the Garden Bridge, a planned but never realized architectural project by Thomas Heatherwick Studio (and at the centre of a lively debate on London’s misuse of public funds).

Its JPEG code is progressively “corrupted” by the insertion of verses from the 1598 poem “La Arcadia” by the Spanish writer Felix Lope de Vega.

De Vega’s words describe an imaginary, idillic landscape that seems to resonate perfectly with the vision of the Garden Bridge project’s proponents a vision at odds with the social issues that London is currently facing.

This project won the Fondazione Fabbri prize in 2016

PHROOM magazine // international research platform and contemporary fine art photography and video art magazine // PHROOM X Art Stays Festival - Discipula — Digital rendering of the Garden Bridge

DISCIPULA is a collective operating in the field of contemporary visual research founded by Marco Paltrinieri, Mirko Smerdel and Tommaso Tanini. Working across a range of practices — varying from art installations, performances and publications to workshops and lectures — DISCIPULA focuses on the exploration of the role and uses of images in the contemporary mediascape.