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This is a digital installation exhibited in Cisternino for the Suoperhost event, created by the artistic collective Like a Little Disaster.

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Proliferation is a collaboration between Martina Petrelli, a visual artist from Francesco Pasqualini's research team at the Synthetic Physiology Lab (University of Pavia), and Alessandro Ciociola, aka Choxee, a creative coder. 

The digital installation takes the place of a mirror, a familiar and intimate everyday object, although it does not traditionally reflect the image of the person standing in front of it. A webcam captures the visitor and integrates them into a complex digital composition. The visitor's figure isn't mirrored frontally; instead, it is reproduced within a golden spiral that overlays a cellular microscopy video pattern.

This combination is not accidental: the golden spiral evokes concepts of growth, perfection, and nature. However, in this context, its application to the observer's image suggests a kind of incorporation or dissulution into a predetermined cycle. The cellular microscopy pattern creates an aesthetic that recalls the idea of uncontrolled proliferation, of exponential and unstoppable growth, but also a sense of fragility and vulnerability. Just as cells are "consumed" and altered by microscopic observation to a point of no return, so are places and their identities progressively eroded by the incessant and voracious exposure of social media. A proliferation of images and presences that ultimately saturates and destroys their authenticity.

Proliferation invites us to reflect on this insatiable hunger for images and virtual presence. By seeing ourselves reflected as proliferating cells, we are prompted to ask: Are we becoming mere samples to be analyzed, elements of an ephemeral ecosystem destined to be consumed undre the relentless eye of virality?

The artwork has powerful interactive omponent.

Audio sensors capture visitors' sounds and conversations, triggering the appearance of reviews that overlay the monitor. These reviews, complete with star ratings and typical language of online portals, can concern the work itself, the fake b&b in wich it is located, or, more generally, the problem of over-turism.

During the exhibition event, the interactivity expands further. Visitors are invited to add their own reviews, contributing to a continuous flkow of comments that enriches and modifies the visual experience of the work. In this way, the observer is no longer just a passive viewer but becomes an active part of the critique, an entity that contibutes to the digital "noise" and "proliferation" of opinions and data that characterize online life and, by extensio, contemporary tourism.