Michele Tiberio’s work is realized in collaboration with Diletta Tonatto and consists of two parts, one tangible, the other impalpable. The tangible part of the project is represented by a book in which the digital identity of the artist was collected, requesting his own data from big digital companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, then included in this textbook, without any kind of censorship.
The intangible part of the work is perceived through the sense of smell: the pages of the book emit a perfume, an olfactory portrait of the artist’s digital identity. This portrait was realized by an algorithm that, by analyzing the collected data, created a profile. The algorithm was programmed starting from the capacity and experience of Diletta Tonatto, producer of the fragrance of which the pages of the book are impregnated, translating in olfactory notes the patterns obtained through the algorithm. In this artwork the corporeality and the digital, whose facets often diverge, are united by the same perspective, that of identity. The two authors reflect on what “exist” means in a period in which the boundary between real and virtual is increasingly blurred, showing how an ancestral sense, such as the olfaction, can be profoundly actual today.