Putting together creativity and technology may be powerful. This is why students and professors from the School of Media Design and Multimedia Arts of NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano, answered enthusiastically when STMicroelectronics asked for a video that could inspire engineering students in visioning how sport devices can be improved by sensor technologies - 3D motion tracking, accelerometers, gyroscopes, et cetera. The idea of using a video to create a relationship between students of media arts and engineering sounded great.

 

 

Creating a video artwork is not simple, indeed - perhaps not as difficult as creating a new device, but it does not come without a great conceptual work. For this reason we started with a Creative Design Workshop. More than 20 NABA students worked for an entire weekend developing different ideas based on the inputs received by technology experts and professors of sports and arts. The winning team produced the video you can see in homepage, with the help of a lot of other students. Have a look to this page for the complete staff involved. The video here is the backstage of the video production process.

 

 

The title of the project is “Overtake”, meaning “do better”, “outdo”, “get past”. This spirit is a perfect summary of the story that Giulia, Ludovica, Federica, Tommaso and Riccardo wanted to tell. Technology is seen not simply as a tool but as an aid to understand and surpass our limits.  Alice Garlisi, one of the best joung italian iceskaters, has been asked to mimic obstacle and difficulties, expressed with the metaphor of she skating in the forest, on the ground, etc. A mysterious technology device was both helping, tracing and creating virtual environments for her, in order to face increasing difficulty levels and, finally, “go further”.

 

 

Judging the quality of the artwork is up to you. What we hope, as NABA Media Design, is that the video can push you forward in inventing new devices with strong creativity and humanity in them.