Interactions with the environment are increasingly determined by technologies that allow humans to extend their senses, to perceive the world in its different layers of reality. They are the media, means of communication useful for transmitting information about the world in a different and more immediate way. These technologies favor exchange, approach and encounter with one another, and this is an organic approach that responds to a biological need in which our primordial instinct of union is made manifest, the connection between man and the whole - many philosophies try to give an answer to this topic.

Since the invention of the wheel to that of the radio, from that of the smartphone to that of the luminous neon, means that determine our relationships and at the same time testify to our being in the world, who we are and who we were.

The word medium comes from Latin and, today, it is not exclusively referred to the media, but, more generally, to everything that works as a vehicle between us and the world. In other words, the medium is a mean. And Marshall McLuhan knew it already in 1967, when he wrote the book “The medium is the message”, alluding to the fact that every message that is somehow communicated is/ depends on the medium that has been utilised. But what does it entail then?
This can change - not to say revolutionise - the way we look at things and people surrounding us. It is like we observe and listen to the world with a special filter that adapts according to the technology used or to the instrument we intend to use.

The exhibition “On media. Signals and connections”, curated by LoosenArt and arranged at the spazio Millepiani in Rome is focused exactly on this topic. In fact, it exhibits digital works, videos and photographs that, in various ways, wonder about the processes through which we filter or we make contact with the reality around us. The technical and content variety presented by the artists featured in this exhibition offers a wide selection of nuanced differences, but also distinct time-dimensions, going from the past to the present. In which way do we perceive ourselves and the others? Which is the lens we look at our life through?

As illustrated by some of the pieces exhibited, the medium is the trigger for a dramatic change of perspective. The Internet, in particular, contributed to accelerating this process, leading to diverse ways to explore the urban as well as living context. Tools like Google maps or the 3D reality enabled not only a double kind of fruition and vision, but also an augmented experience that exists both in real and virtual life. Those images convey a reality that is located in different times and spaces - yesterday and now, but even here and there. Simultaneously.
In this context, art witnesses, documents and accomplishes a visual research capable of synthesizing the rapid changes of the technical knowledge.
Other artworks, instead, mature the realisation that modern technology made the impossible possible. For example, it helped shorten the distances and break barriers thanks to easy and fast connections available for (almost) everyone. Others insist on the endless possibilities given by the overlap between various tech-languages - from writing and typewriting to AI chatbots. And another group insists on the visual side of the matter by inserting interferences and by combining diverse techniques in the same piece - photography and embroidery, but also digital pictures that have been consciously altered.
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“On media. Signals and connections” is a visual path taking its first steps within the tradition and then continues its way towards the present and, most importantly, the future. Signals, connections, messages and communications are reprocessed so that they appear to be implicit or explicit, figurative or abstract, narrative or synthetic.
The next move is up to us, visitors, who should be able to read and observe. Clearly or between the lines.