Our existence is constituted between appearance and disappearance. Our being is the center of sensed experiences, an unique creature of unpredictable active presence. The beginning is inarticulate, the image speaks.

It is important to be present, present in the image at the time of the image, present in the act at a time of action.
From the beginning of my work I was fascinated by conditions and forms of human senses and perception. There is no way to prove that all of us can experience a blue color or a specific tone in the same way. However, according to different indicators, we get to conclusion that our perceptive apparatus are functioning in a similar way. Notices, observations and research that pervade the scientific and artistic spheres constitute the structure for my work. My activity is diverging across three media: audiovisual installations (physical or interactive type), spatial interventions (in the urban and social tissue) and "live" media (audiovisual performances and concerts). I am exploring qualitative and aesthetic possibilities of various media as a function of direct communication with the public (visitor, observer) by setting them in a position of questioning, discovering and expanding their own cognitive and emotional maps. By immersing themselves in perceptive scenarios, visitors are becoming an inevitable part of the work itself, a reflective thinking-body structure, an active presence in time and space.

My recent concentration and action is a continuous research in the direction of time-space poetics in an open dialogue with the human sphere of perception. The recognizable guiding principle that extends through my works does not exclude a tendency of "fresh" analysis and approach, as well as the choice to be manifested in any of mentioned media.

The creation is rounded, just like life itself.

Davor Sanvincenti

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The allusive eye tells of the media and of the world, and its artists tell of the world in other ways than do the mass media. (…)  These are images of an art whose visual vocabulary has a high degree of complexity. This complexity is the core of allusion.

Peter Weibel: The Allusive Eye. Illusion, Anti-illusion, Allusion (ZMK Karlsruhe, 2004)

Optical travels of Davor Sanvincenti are informed by artist’s research of different optical devices, “vision machines”, vintage cameras or out of date and expired film stock, of found footage, archival devices and films and photographs as objet trouve. It is a body of work based on exploring the medium (and the media), with archival flare, as a meeting place of history, memory and future projections. What it represents are imaginary time-travels through the system of lenses as small interventions take place. Constituting the relationship with the past through images as part of an imaginary archive, still and moving images are playing a significant role in emotional rehabilitation articulating a subjective relationship.

* * *Expanded Horizon / In the pale blue mist of milky texture the horizon seems to evaporate and fade away, as the image has out of focus qualities. The content of the information placed in the middle of the frame is lost in a white spot. The meaning of the scene is constituted around its edges and we are trying to grasp it.  The picture shows an open sea. The site is Cabo de Roca in Portugal, the westernmost cape of Europe, a place that Luis de Camoes describes, "Here, where the land ends and the sea begins". This landscape is mediated by the image that is made possible by optical devices and the apparatus of their projection/ reproduction. The original slide is inserted into the device (single slide viewer) in natural light conditions. The light that penetrates illuminates the scene within, from the "inside" and contributes to the creation of the effect of the projected or screen image. The image is narrativized and the artist work has been concentrated on the time logic shaping the meditation of the state of flux, transience and nature.

On the other hand, the video "The River” is a cinematic voyage through a black and white photograph captured with an ancient camera. “The black and white photographic  film has previously passed through a series of processes of destruction in order to obtain light disintegrating internal structure that allows the further depth of navigation" – claims the author. Navigating the landscape of data, with aggravated perception and "reading" operation, the deconstruction of the scene is created by the collision of static and moving images. This is the focal point that constitutes the meaning, emphasizing the claim that in the video the seam between space and time is the space of the form. By "stretching the dimension of time, the temporal continuity collapses in the density of the frame - making an incrusted picture, the effect of density and stratification". (Edmond Couchot: La question du tamps techniques dans le numeriques electronique et de l'image) The density is created as a time-space predicament and pursued the monitoring over the time dimension of the screen picture.

In these works, Davor Sanvincenti’s metaphor with used technology - the use of expired films and / or outdated vintage equipment is used as a sign that indicates a possible deterioration of the physical processes, articulating the feelings of oblivion, emptiness and absence. Works created primarily through the medium of photography, film / video, function as a memento which represents an imaginary journey, contributing in the creation of a melancholy atmosphere.
The landscape scenes in the mentioned works represent the landscape not only as an aesthetic artefact or the phenomenon of nature, but as established in the codes of society and culture. The landscape is no longer just a beautiful picture, but becomes a place of questioning the relationship between space, history, memory, politics and identity. The landscape as a product of Western culture enables the mediation of relations between man and nature (outside world) like a model of human conceptualization of nature, to reflect different moods and complex relations.

An entire field of interest in artistic and existential research is opened up. It is made of imaginary travels through the paths of experience, memory, perception and optical sensations. Playing with the concept of illusion, exploring the possible boundaries of perception, construction of experiences and creating sensations are some ubiquitous interests of  Sanvincenti’s artistic practice that take shape in the variety of media -  film and video, photography, sound installations and live performances.

With his famous statement “medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan has placed the medium as a central point of our culture, making it a central subject of a discipline that is exploring culture in its relationship with structures of transmission, its materiality and mediation. A model to understand artworks by Davor Sanvincenti is represented by his interest in such media research, as a meeting place of old and new media, analog and the digital, as well as with the “archival impulse” navigating found footage and photographs and obsolete technical equipment. In this way his artworks constitute a specific relationship with the past as well as with the concept of time. It is a kind of situation where romanticized narratives and elements of nostalgia coexist in the same time as their deconstruction and reduction, concentrated on the medium itself and artistic procedure, not the story. In such way Davor Sanvincenti enters the dialogue with the history of media. Both accepting and questioning the tradition and the concept of multimedia, pointing out its specificities and peculiarities. Remembering a meditation on the medium by Rosalind Krauss in Voyage o the North See At first I thought I could simply draw a line under the word  m e d i u m, bury it like so much critical toxic waste, and walk away from it in a world of lexical freedom. “Medium” seemed too contaminated, too ideologically, too dogmatically, to discursively loaded.

"Let's change the world," said Marx, "Let’s change the life," said Rimbaud: for us these two tasks are identical - Andre Breton

Seven years has passed since the adoption of the World Charter on the Rights of the city, advocating sustainable models of urban society and lifestyles based on the fundamental principles of solidarity, freedom, dignity and social justice, urban development plans at the global level continue to result in environmental destruction and the privatization of public space, leading to social segregation. The privatization of public space is the most obvious problem facing cities in the post-socialist context: feudalization processes deprive citizens of the city, and with the atomization of society the collective participation in public space is disappearing. In the given circumstances it is necessary to ask the following question: what are the given possibilities of contemporary art for new considerations of the city and the reconstruction of its foundations in the context of the so-called new humanism? Or more specifically, how does Davor Sanvincenti, a young artist who works in transitional circumstances with his poetic interventions in social and space fabrics, create a new city and a new life in the city?

Although his interventions are interwoven with layered sensibilities, and do not suffer the classification of standard art-historian labels, they are very articulate in the primary intention of ennobling public space and re-activating the community. They call for the restoration of the almost disappearing needs of society: the need for direct communication and exchange of ideas, the need for cooperation and adventure, and the need for play and imagination in public space. In his works we can find Sanvincenti’s childlike desire for the transformation of the city by creating a series of intimate heterotopian points. Almost as a rule, it is a heterotopia of compensation that responds to neglected, forgotten, and flawed real spaces.

The intervention 3 and 15 on North (2007), performed by the artist at a bus station in the small Istrian town of Pazin, is illustrative of his approach. The station does not have a proper timetable, it lacks a public clock, there are not enough seats in the waiting room, and during the year only a few passengers pass through. Foggy mornings in the middle of summer, specific for the site, amplify the anxiety of the environment. Sanvincenti’s simple gesture of placing swings and a clock outside of the waiting area takes away the uncomfortable endless accumulation of time. The clock’s hands, moving counterclockwise, overlap with the actual time only at 3:15 pm (15:15), when the hands are, geographically speaking, oriented towards the north (in the direction of the Slovenian capital Ljubljana). Infinite connotations draw through the work the third principle of heterotopias: a real place is set in a parallel relationship with different spaces and locations which are mutually (not) compatible.[1]

The 3 and 15 on North intervention prompted the inert city government to make a decision about setting up a schedule for the station. It is less important whether it was an unexpected side effect, or whether Sanvincenti consciously positioned himself as an agitator, than the fact that it successfully generated micro-political change in the local community. The subtle poetics of agitation can also be read in the work Untimed (2006), which was performed during the “Seven days of creation Festival” at the Small Fountain Square in Pazin. The audio-spatial installation consisted of 3,168 white cups filled with spring water, arranged on a square around the fountain, which was not functioning for more than a decade. The number of cups evoked the population who lived in Pazin in 1868 when the fountain was built. Audio recordings of contemporary sounds of the city could be heard during the intervention on the square. The focus of the work was the fountain and the life that took place, and that could take place, around it. Sanvincenti is interested in the ventricular trips to fetch water which created a dynamic and lively meeting place over the centuries. The introduction of modern water supply systems pushed away all the aspects of social relations that evolved during the interaction of the population along the live water source. The Untimed intervention returned the residents to the Pazin’s Small Fountain Square, establishing a new dynamic random encounter originally centered around a glass with water, and then around the fountain, which was functionally restored after fourteen years.

The strategy of developing "small gesture" politics, as well as interest in marginalized areas of improvement, is also present in the work Musical Handrail (2010) installation made as part of Zagreb’s UrbanFestival. A musical instrument was placed on one of the balustrades which approaches the historical center of Zagreb, and promoted new forms of communication among the passers by who were invited to participate actively in a harmony exchange. Under the conditions where social solidarity is almost gone, Sanvincenti created a small concert stand under the horse chestnut tree in the affected fabric of the city in which such rhizome branching creates supervision mechanisms and social control. The instrument was available daily for playing and also served as a handrail, placed at the point where, for unknown reasons, the same was missing.

Although these urban interventions are only a small part of the oeuvre of Davor Sanvincenti, and in which the public space issue is only one segment of his work, they can be viewed as the sketch for a portrait of the artist because, to paraphrase Harvey, the question of what kind of city we want and what kind of town we create is inseparable from the question of what kind of people we want to be and what kind of relationships we seek.

Stavljam u uši čepiće što mi ih je, igrom slučaja, prije desetak dana poklonio autor izložbe. U okolini je previše zvukova koji odvlače pažnju: dječja prepirka prilikom doručka prije odlaska u školu, mješalica za beton iz susjedna dvorišta koju nastoje nadglasati pomoćni radnici raznim dosjetkama, jutarnji tv program iz donje etaže… (Lavež pasa uopće i ne spominjem, to me ne smeta.)

Potopljen u unutarnji bazen odjednom začujem prolazak zraka kroz nosne šupljine… Lupnem se nekoliko puta prstom po obrazu, slušajući iznutra, udarci odjekuju muklije. Zatvorenih ušiju prisjećam se jučerašnje izložbe, doživljaja tijekom boravka u dvije prostorije koje je Davor Sanvincenti improvizirano postavio u galeriji VN. Odmah po ulasku u prvu, bijelu, dočekao me snažan, zaslijepljujući mlaz svjetla. Smjesta skrećem pogled, nisam u stanju gledati se oči u oči sa svjetlom. Dapače, zatvaram ih, ali kapci su tanki, još uvijek je sve bijelo. Zamišljam da svjetlo prolazi kroz mene. Zapravo ipak ne prolazi, zaustavlja se negdje unutra, ne može van jer sam zatvorio oči. Sakuplja se u meni. Što se tiče zvuka, ne čujem ništa. Taloženje svjetla u svijesti nečujno je. Kad osjetim da je svjetlo ispunilo moje unutarnje bunare odlazim u drugu prostoriju. Oči su otvorene, no ona je potpuno mračna. Ali ta tama je ekran na kojem sakupljeno svjetlo pušta svoje slike. One nisu posve apstraktne, prepoznajem neke obrise, bijele sjene poskakuju u kadencama vlastita ritma, zamjenjuju ih druge, nešto tanje, sve dok ne postanu gotovo prozirne, na kraju još nekoliko točkica i gotovo. Ispraznio se akumulator, završio je film. U potpunom mraku osjetim kako mi se počinje približavati zvuk, kontinuiran, sve ga bolje čujem, podsjeća na dvije crte, jednu deblju i drugu sasvim tanku. Ta tanka je nekakav pisak, ali ne prodoran nego jedva čujan. Deblja je dolje, prolazi ispod stopala, ispod parketa. Tamo gdje taj zvuk izvire mogao bi biti prilično glasan, no između mene sada ovdje i njegova izvora duboko dolje ima mnogo naslaga. No, koliko god on bio dubok, ovaj gore je još viši, ovoga bih dolje još i mogao uhvatiti, no taj gore je potpuno nedostupan. Uopće i nije u mojoj dimenziji, ta je zvučna linija sastavljena od točkica koje su vrlo blizu, skoro se i dodiruju, to je pucketanje što se odvija po površini membrane koja označava prostor što ga registriraju moja osjetila. Tamo negdje izvan, naravno, pucketanje bi mogla biti i grmljavina. Pas, kolega živo biće, zacijelo bi se, preplašen, skutrio u nekom zakutku. A ja, čovjek, smanjenih čulnih mogućnosti ali bogatije mašte, stojeći u potpunom mraku, slušajući ono što jedva čujem, zamišljam: ovo dolje je debela kompaktna cijev, čak možda i neka zemljina žila, iznad koje hodam, a ovo gore je tanka zakrivljena žica što se proteže po rubu horizonta.

Naravno, zvuci su bili ovdje i prije moga ulaska u tu prostoriju, neprekinuti, jednako glasni, odnosno tihi, no zabljesnut vizualnom atrakcijom nisam ih čuo. Zatim je vizije nestalo, začuo sam ih i vizualizirao. Vidio sam izostanak svjetla i gledao prolazak zvuka.

Sada, dok s čepićima u ušima otvorenih očiju osluškujem treperenje moždanih valova, nastojeći ih prevesti u analizu doživljaja, zaključujem da je on ponajprije vizualan. Iako naslov izložbe (citat preuzet iz iz pjesme francuskog pisca Loysa Massona “Icare ou le voyage”) upućuje na auditivno – on nije gledao zvuk nego slušao nestanak i pojavu slike. Taj citat, kao konceptualni nazivnik izložbe ali istodobno i svojevrsna ‘uputa za upotrebu’, zapravo je personifikacija to jest utjelovljenje apstraktnog pojma ili ideje u liku čovjeka. No, osim što je ‘uputu’ nemoguće i uistinu provesti u djelo, to utjelovljenje i nije prijevod nečega izvan nego proizlazi iz konteksta samog čovjeka, stoga ga tumačim kao metaforu upućenu mentalnom prostoru s namjerom da potakne misao o doživljajnom procesu.

Davor Sanvincenti često boravi na području zvuka i rado istražuje pojam limena.  U njegovoj se intepretaciji pojmovi limen i liminalno odnose na senzorički prag, ono što jedva možemo percipirati, najniža količina senzacija koju naše osjetilo može registrirati.

Rječnik stranih riječi (B. Klaić) kaže za limen: 1. grčki – luka, zaljev, zaklon, utočište; 2. latinski – kuća, stan. Dakle ta kuća, taj zaklon, to je naša svijest, a Sanvincenti se pita što se događa kad u kuću stiže manje informacija, kad se gosti prorijede? Logično, a što se mene osobno tiče i iskustveno, svijest se snažnije aktivira. Sama dodaje, nadomješta. Svijest je pojačalo, oduzmite čovjeku ključne instrumente i ona će ih supstituirati. Ukidanjem zvuka glasnije čuješ svoje misli, nestankom slike jasnije ih vidiš. U periodima kad senzacije nema, u ireverzibilnom stanju organizma – snu, ona je apsolutni vladar, a mi – lokacija gdje ona prebiva – postajemo publika. Tada je supstitucija najprisutnija: to su filmovi u sinemaskopu, stereo dolby.

S druge strane, Sanvincenti voli elektroniku. Bez obzira boravi li u svijetu egzaktna  sustava razumski ili pak iracionalno uranjajući u apsurde brojeva, gotovo na inžinjerskoj razini manipulira deviceom. Konkretno, u prvoj prostoriji koristi 2 pojačana metalhalogena reflektora od po 1 KW koji ne proizvode toplinu, a koji bi, u idealnijim produkcijskim okvirima, cijeli prostor trebali obojati u jednolično i apsolutno bijelo. U drugoj, složenom audio aparaturom, aktivnim zvučnim monitorima, mixetama, itd. proizvodi infra visoku (20 000 Hz) i ultra nisku (20 Hz)  frekvenciju, obje točno na granicama koje može čuti ljudsko uho. Namjera je, međutim, krajnje neelektronska, odnosno nematerijalna, neizračunjiva – obraća se ljudskoj svijesti. Dovodi u vezu kontekst znanosti, na čijem je kraju (ima li ga uopće?) vjerojatno ipak neki metrički sustav, univerzalan ali nama nedostupan, s kontekstom nas samih, s onim univerzalnim u nama, s nečime od čega mi počinjemo, a to je duh.

Potvrda točke tog kontakta konceptualno je materijalizirana u trećem, gotovo nevidljivom, dijelu izložbe. Taj dio polazi od činjenice ili dimenzije dokumentiranja. U ovom je slučaju to nemoguće, autor je toga svjestan. U prvoj je prostoriji svjetlom poništio mogućnost fotografiranja (a što bi se uostalom i snimilo?), u drugoj je, istina, ponudio zvukove, ali one koje je besmisleno mikrofonom registrirati. Stoga kao jedinu mogućnost zabilježbe svog galerijskog istupa odabire elementarno analognu formu: knjigu dojmova. No, od nje čini izložbeni artefakt – knjiga je crno bijela, na bijelom je dijelu napisano ‘light’, na crnom ‘sound’ -  njena grafička oprema dizajnom slijedi formu improviziranih prostorija, kraj nje spremno čeka naliv pero. Kao diskretan detalj ta knjiga potcrtava autorovu osnovnu intenciju: elektronskim instrumentarijem djelovati na rubne, granične mogućnosti naših osjetila. Ali s metafizičkom namjerom, posvješćivanje perifernog doživljaja odnosno iskustvo samog tog doživljaja nužno mijenja prostor percepcije. Ta se promjena odvija u svijesti, ona je naša ultimativna kategorija, u njoj su i osjetila i razum i osjećaji. Tamo te dimenzije i komuniciraju, nerazlučivo su isprepletene.

Dati knjizi dojmova ikonografskim obilježjem atribut izloška znači njenu ulogu učiniti aktivnom a ne postfestumskom. S druge strane, opis dojma uključuje sva tri dijela svijesti: prvo, da bi se nešto izrazilo riječima nužno je koristiti razum. Drugo, njime se interpretira doživljaj, odnosno emocija. Treće, ona je potaknuta osjetilnom senzacijom. Graničnom, dakako, jer one uobičajene ne potiču takovu reakciju. S čepićima, dakle, u ušima, evociram jučerašnji doživljaj, a upisujući ga u knjigu utisaka prihvaćam sudjelovanje u ovoj izložbi.

“I have 24 communication possibilities per second and I do not want to waste a single one of them. Same goes for the sound. The meeting of every frame with the sound is very important. This means there the visual and auditive expression have equal economy." Peter Kubelka

One of the most famous avant-garde film authors Peter Kubelka has emphasised once, in his interview by Jonas Mekas, also a giant of cinematographic experiment, how cinema is not a movement but an illusion of movement.[1] Cinema is, argued Kubelka back in 1966, a quick projection of light impulses i.e. possibility to render a temporal dimension to light. Installation "1001"[2] by Davor Sanvincenti, an artist of the younger generation, corresponds with tenets of the pioneer of structural experiment in cinematography, and yet endeavours to analyze the possibilities of interfusion of image, light, sound towards a unique whole, all  through a medium of physical video installation. As emphasised by the author himself, the whole project evolved from a study and personal fascination with photographic, film and video media as the diverse possibilities of perceptive physiology i.e. activation of human states through particular wave frequencies.

The point of interest being, though the author belongs to the  young generation his installation "1001" is a deeply deliberated project which in its own way enters a dialogue with the history of extended cinema.[3] The notion of structural film was conceived in the 1960s and encompassed those tendencies and trends in avant-garde film that explored media characteristics. In the beginning, the structural film thematized the structure of celluloid tape and/or basic elements of film such as light, time or editing. The analyses of cinema foundations were followed by experiments that questioned the concept of film projection and the process of producing particular artwork, as well as the social and economic conditions in which the certain artwork arises. Artists and filmmakers created multiplied projections, film actions and installations by which they deconstructed the traditional projection layout. They also dissected the components that made up film illusion, creating new aesthetic possibilities in the process. Sanvincenti's study "1001" is actually an entrance into a peculiar dialogue with the structural film wherein the artist, questions new aesthetic and quality possibilities of the image, light, sound and wave frequencies in "four chapters".[4]

The artist described the beginning of installation in a following manner: "Darkness. The only thing visible in the entire room is a single pixel at a middle of painting canvas.[5] There is an audible sound of 10 "beats" every 6 seconds, while a white cube fills up a white painting. The sound of old camera trigger marks the end of "the first chapter". The installation's "second chapter", employs projection flashes, gradually revealing the initially black lines, followed by contours of trees and buildings, until an observer finally  gazes at 1838 photography by Louis Daguerre, titled "Boulevard du Temple". This was the first "photo"[6] to capture a human figure. Sanvincenti stressed how he values this photo very much since it  presents not only the beginning of photographic art but also of the media that developed under the aegis of photography, such as film and video art. Besides, photography is essential to deconstruction of the illusion of photographic technique. Namely, at the time Boulevard du Temple was famous for its numerous theatres, a vibrant site of gathering and socializing, the pulsating spot of Paris. However, at Daguerre's photo entire life is "deadened", there are no signs of life, no motion... The photography displays a square in whose left foreground there is a passer-by in tuxedo and a shoe cleaner shining his shoes. Even Daguerre's contemporaries, as recorded in historical accounts, believed Daguerre hired those two men to "assume a pose" and stand still for ten minutes, a time needed to make a photo. As rightly perceived by Sanvincenti, the shutter exposition time erased the life of Boulevard, leaving the figures in illusion of site's seclusion.

Therefore "the third chapter" reconstructs possible "truthful" depiction of Boulevard; one can discern the lines in motion that grow ever clearer until the moment when it becomes obvious these are people, passers-by. The time has been turned back. Afterwards the image gradually fades, leaving passers-by whose movements lead them out of the projection frame. Flashing, coupled with the increased volume of gamma binaural beats in visitor's headphones, and an amplified bass section exerting active influence at a visitor's body. Sanvincenti recorded the image that quivers, as if breathing and coming out from its own frame. In the same time occurs a culmination of interpenetration between sound and video flashes, marking the projection's end.

In today's pluralism of art media, tendencies and genres one cannot simply discover a firm criteria for recognizing the quality art projects. Still, one wishing to discover the features defining the quality project will encounter a certainly imposing guideline: redefining of medium in which artist is active, as well as questioning the purpose of one's own discipline. It seems "1001“ by Sanvincenti is such an artwork. Besides, there are numerous theoretical references that confirm curiosity of Sanvincenti's study. For example, in his book "Light Moving in Times", frequently cited Canadian film theoretician William C. Wees argues that brain, to a large extent, processes visual information joined with other brain's parts that are in charge of perception, and that eyes really play the smallest part in our visual perception. Similar conclusions were reached by French film theoretician Michel Chion. In his book "Audio-Vision" Chion explains trans-sensory perception where entire human body partakes in processing sensorial information. Bearing in mind a visitor's "tired eye" saturated with billions of visual data Sanvincenti actually insists on engaging the whole human body in perceiving "1001" project. Therefore the project’s subtitle – physical video installation - since the intention of the whole projects is to transform a visitor into a trans-sensory organism capable of new sensorial experiences and aesthetic potentials.