Abstract

Symmetry: Culture and Science
Volume 34, Number 1, pages 107-110 (2023)
https://doi.org/10.26830/symmetry_2023_1_107

GEOMETRY OF LIVING 1

Daniela Bertol

Daniela Bertol, Ph.D., is a research artist, scholar, author, designer. In the early 1990s she founded SpaceInk a meta-disciplinary art, architecture and design practice with cultural and art production in physical and digital space, encompassing hybrid processes at different scales and media—ranging from computational design, video, land and performance art to artist books, experiential places and fashion. Research and practices are threaded by explorations of the physicality of geometry and its presence not only in the built environment but in life itself. Her works often investigate the relationship between place and human body, from a phenomenological and perceptual view to a social context, extending from the environment to the human body: the performative actions of Healing Geometries interact with a sculptural framework based on the icosahedron and were developed from her doctoral research Form Mind Body Space Time - the Geometry of Human Movement. She is the author of several academic articles, interactive multimedia publications and three books: Visualizing with CAD (1994), Form Geometry Structure: from Nature to Design (2011) and Designing Digital Space (1996), the first book on Virtual Reality in architecture. In 2022 she founded the Sky Spirals Institute, a center of theoretical studies and practices developing art-in-nature places and projects related to naked-eye astronomy whose first site is S.U.N.F.A.R.M. (2001), a phenomenological/symbolic landscape and naked-eye sky-earth observatory located on a 68-acre property in the Hudson Valley (Claverack, New York).
Email: db@sky-spirals.org

The Primoli Foundation's library in Rome is currently showcasing Daniela Bertol's "Geometry of living 1" exhibition, which explores the relationship between geometry, architecture, and the body through multimedia and transdisciplinary works. Bertol's work combines video and digital media with earth art and interventions at different scales, from jewelry to landscape, to create a transdisciplinary approach to art. The exhibition features video projections and digital prints, selected from the artist's archive of works from the last twenty years. Bertol's work explores the idea of a mathematical universe and uses algorithms and computational methodologies to generate forms whose numerical and geometric definition defines the visual aspect.

References:
Bertol, D. (1994) Visualizing with CAD, Springer, New York, NY, ISBN 9780387942759. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6946-3_6

Bertol, D. & Foell D. (1996) Designing digital space: an architect's guide to virtual reality, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 9780471146629.

Bertol, D. (2011) Form Geometry Structure: From Nature to Design, Bentley Institute Press, ISBN, 978193449311.