From trend to acceptance, in 2023 the grammar of the new millennium redesigns the contemporary (and the everyday)

Metaverse and Multiverse, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Algorithms, Computer Art, Crypto Art, NFT, Blockchain, VR, Phygital, Augmented Reality: these are the 12 excellences selected to tell the story of Italian digital art.

A year dedicated to digital art, 2023 also marks the launch of the VDA Award, the first edition of the biennial award instituted by Var Digital Art by Var Group, which is the first in Italy to report in its entirety on trends in digital art, selecting the 12 excellences of our country, identified by a scientific committee of lecturers, critics, journalists and experts of recognised fame and expertise, to offer insights and formulate- also for the general public - an exhaustive narration of the relationship between art and new technologies, with its new artistic, poetic, stylistic and philosophical visions.

Metaverse and Multiverse, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Algorithms, Computer Art, Crypto At and NFT, Phygital, VR, Augmented Reality and much more: 2023 was the year that brought out digital art in all its nuances and intersectionalities as an artistic language and new trend, as well as a priority medium and media for narrating contemporary society, interpreting its changes with new formulas and processes born from the encounter between conventional practices and other innovative and technological approaches.

2023 also marks the return of Var Digital Art which, one of the first in Italy, was launched in 2018 to intercept these trends, and now kicks off the 1st edition of the VDA Award, a biennial award for 12 excellences in digital art: 12 Italian artists, with their diverse training, approaches, languages and directions of research, offer a panoramic snapshot of digital art and illustrate the facets, trends and potential of this new grammar of our millennium.

An open window on the languages of the future, the entire production of digital art in Italy in 2023 was analysed by four exceptional insiders - Chiara Canali, Valentino Catricalà, Rebecca Pedrazzi and Domenico Quaranta, assisted by Davide Sarchioni (artistic director of Var Digital Art) - to draw up a shortlist of the 12 artists, among emerging, mid-career and established, who most distinguished themselves in 2023, either by consolidating existing lines of pioneering research or by shaping new practices and visual alphabets.

The artists selected for the VDA Award 2023 are: Luca Pozzi (Milan, 31 January 1983), Chiara Passa (Rome, 1973), Federica Di Pietrantonio (Rome, 1996), Domenico Dom Barra, Debora Hirsch (São Paulo - Brazil, 1967), Martin Romeo (Carrara, 1986), Rino Stefano Tagliafierro (Piacenza, 1980), Davide Maria Coltro (Verona, 1967), Matteo Succi aka Svccy (Ravenna, 1997), Danilo Correale (Naples, 1980), Roberto Fassone (Savigliano, 1986) and Kamilia Kard (Italian-Hungarian born in Milan).

From the original pioneers to up-and-comers, the team of artists called together by the VDA Award offers a wide variety of experiences. They run from Davide Maria Coltro, the digital art pioneer who invented “media painting” in 2001, to Chiara Passa, active in digital art since 1997, who exploits animation, video animation and virtual reality to explore the boundary between the real and the imaginary, and Domenico Dom Barra, the pioneer of Glitch Art in Italy. Among the 12 excellences, we also find cross-cutting experiences, using and combining diverse media, genres and practices, represented by Luca Pozzi, who investigates the relationship between art and science; Debora Hirsch, who combines traditional painting with the creative potential of digital image processing, videos and NFTs, and Kamilia Kard, who employs a variety of media, from painting to video and animated gifs, prints and installations, digital paintings and websites. The shortlist also includes Danilo Correale, who explores a wide range of visual and collaborative strategies including photography, installation, video, participatory action, public interventions and text; Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, director and video artist, author of numerous commercials and short films, including 2014's 'Beauty', which was a worldwide success; and Roberto Fassone, whose multimedia research is characterised by the use of fakery, disguise, mannerism and fiction.

The VDA Award is also aimed at new generations of artists with innovative research: Federica Di Pietrantonio, focused on relationships and processes created via simulated/virtual realities, social platforms and video games; Martin Romeo, who explores the relationship between nature and technology in a variety of media, including dynamic sculptures, virtual reality performances and multimedia installations; Svccy, who dialogues with the physicality of the physical work and the animation of NFTs by reworking the aesthetics of Vaporwave, characterised by the use of nostalgic themes from the 1980s and 1990s and video game operating systems, merging them with images of Roman busts and abandoned shopping malls.

Each of them has been invited to participate in the award with an already published work or one conceived for the occasion, for a total of 12 strictly screen-based digital works from which, in September, the best four will be selected for presentation to the public on 26 and 27 October at the Palacongressi in Rimini during the Var Group's annual convention, entitled “Shape the present, build the future”.

THE SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE: Chiara Canali is an art critic, author, journalist, independent curator, lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Artistic Languages of New Media at the Faculty of Humanities of the eCampus University, where she is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the PRISMA Research Centre, and author of “Tecno-socialità. Partecipazione e interattività nell’arte contemporanea” (Postmedia Books, Milan 2019); Valentino Catricalà, scholar and curator of contemporary art, is the curator of the MODAL Gallery at SODA in Manchester and lecturer at IULM University, responsible for the digital art area of the Rome Quadriennale; he has written several books, including “The Artist as Inventor” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021); “Art in the Age of Ubiquitous Media”, co-edited with Sean Cubitt, (VCS-Visual Cultural Studies, Mimesis, 2022); and written “Arte e tecnologia del terzo millennio” for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Electa-Quaderni della Farnesina 2019); Rebecca Pedrazzi, art historian, lecturer for courses and masters on IA and the Art world, author of the successful book “Futuri possibili. Scenari d'arte e intelligenza artificiale” (Jaca Book, Milan 2021), she also manages art projects at IULM AI Lab, Milan and is coordinator of the AI Creator Lab courses; Domenico Quaranta, lecturer at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, is an art critic, curator and author, among others, of “Media, New Media, Postmedia” (Postmedia Books, Milan 2010; 2018); “Surfing con Satoshi. Arte, blockchain e NFT” (Postmedia Books, Milan 2021), and “Net Art. Scritti sull’arte nell’era dell’informazione” (Postmedia Books, Milan 2023).

Established by the Var Group, a leading operator in the sector of digital services and solutions for business, Var Digital Art (VDA) is a dynamic pole of experimentation that investigates the scenarios of technological innovation through the languages of contemporary art, organising exhibitions (VDA Exhibition), meetings (VDA Forum), and training sessions (VDA Lab) with a multidisciplinary approach uniting diverse know-hows and professionalisms, to promote and support artistic research in the digital sphere (VDA Award).