Ninfa Atlas

Ninfa Atlas manifests a translation process that carries the human figure from historical archive to digital asset through embodied performance. The project takes as its starting point Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (1924–29), the influential image archive in which Warburg identified recurring motifs in Western art and culture. One of this atlas’s protagonists, the ninfa (Italian for nymph), embodies the female figure-in-movement across cultures and time periods. Ninfa Atlas tracks the afterlives of this multifarious figure and her gestures as she traverses technological eras, social contexts, and historical situations. The project highlights the complexities of cultural categorization and the stakes of visual literacy.

Working from a 72-image score of isolated and animated feminine figures mined from Warburg’s atlas, five performers were invited to reflect on, enact, modify, contest, and invent gestures as a way to diversify and extend this archive. They then performed short dance phrases in a volumetric video-capture studio, which were later recomposited into 3D image assets. After importing these assets into a game engine, they were refilmed in the round using virtual cameras in a digital approximation of the capture studio outfitted with generic filmic backdrops sourced from an online catalogue. In the installation, each of the five figures inhabits a large screen oriented vertically like a smartphone and propped up on a mobile stand.