Marco Ferrari, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, and Jussi Parikka on distance, proximity, and elemental media
Lumi is a visual narrative exploring snow, luminance, and planetary light. In their video essay, Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka reimagine historical photographic datasets through the lens of an imagined synthetic intelligence, trained to repaint landscapes as part of a speculative climate restoration project. Blurring the lines between science and climate fiction, Lumi envisions a collective intelligence of artificial agents traveling through time—moving between past photographic records and future programmed landscapes. Emerging from the interplay of light shaping its path and landscapes adapting to their own preservation, this intelligence transforms Lumi into a dataset of snow, ice, and light—a meditation on reversing time and re-synthesizing landscapes.
The interaction between light and landscape unfolds through various technological mediations. From early surveyors tracing terrain through the refraction of light to satellite imaging capturing atmospheric radiation, these processes produce diverse representations—annotated photographs, algorithmic classifications, and composite images. Each format reveals how landscapes are not only shaped by natural forces but also by human and technological intervention.
In conversation, Marco Ferrari, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, and Jussi Parikka examine these synthetic landscapes, discussing how moving images function as a tool for investigating distance, proximity, and elemental media. Their dialogue traces the transition from analog to digital landscape perception while interrogating the tensions between historical landscape representation and human presence in images. Ultimately, the discussion frames landscape recognition as a complex interplay of scale, measurement, natural forces, and technological mediation.
Lumi
Abelardo Gil-Fournier Jussi Parikka 2024, film, 18' Abelardo Gil-Fournier Abelardo Gil-Fournier is an artist and researcher. His work addresses the materiality of the visible, tackling in particular the relation between the post-digital and the production and ordering of everyday landscapes.
Jussi Parikka is Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University where he directs the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC).
Marco Ferrari is the co-founder of Studio Folder, an interdisciplinary design practice based in Milan, working both on commissions in the fields of culture and the arts and on research projects examining the politics and visualization of spatial data.
Review in conjunction with review published by Alex Mirutziu on Contemporary Lynx platform:
Transmediale 2025 | Contemporary Lynx - print and online magazine on art & visual culture
