It was incredible to find this piece on Youtube ...
4 years after I came out with my "Giocattoli Futuristi - Futurist Toys" .
At that time I turned out creating a short movie, taking distance from Futurist ideals, adopting visual futurist elements mostly to show a great contrast between our industrial world and that Futurist world dreamed in the thirties , where machines were seen as our friend...
But my original project was creating something like this : a virtual futurist marionettes theater, controllable in real time by multiple users.
Unfortunately, it was an overwhelming project for one person, and, at least here in Italy, I didn't find any economical support.
Anyway, I'm happy that a group of students from Entertainment Technology Center (from New York, I Guess) could follow their vision and come out with this pleasant interactive work.
Obviously, a project like this , could never consider itself finished, due to the evolution of the technology that futurists were constantly seeking...
The visuals are a bit far from photo-realism, due the use of real time rendering..
And well, ideally goes against Futurist Ideals : Futurists were against the manierist imitation of the great artist of the past : a more evoluted society will produce better results than what have been accomplished during the past .
Fortunato Depero was feeling very limited by the media he could use at the time he was living, specially in Italy..
So, I'm quite sure that if he had our technologies i would have gone in a very different direction from "Balli Plastici"...
perhaps i would have given motion to his great paints.
So, I'm not totally sure about the artistic value of this project.
(Also cause I'm quite envious) But I'm sure that this it is a great documentaristic contribute to the knowledge about Depero "Balli Plastici" and the futurist theater in general.
These guys even recreated some acts from the original ballet :
