built, Castellaneta Marina, Italy, 2016

The SCPTIPMFLIPPES (Strumento Cavo Per Traguardare Il Paesaggio Marittimo Fissando Labili Immagini Pronte Per Essere Sublimate), is a device for viewing the maritime landscape. While the coast is traditionally thought of as wild and pristine, activities and amenities from cities spread to the shoreline. The SCPTIPMFLIPPES is a tool to isolate portions of maritime landscape, removed from the (visual) ground noise. The object, developed for 3d-printing, is a pure geometric form of 140mm, black, dug inside. It has three visual cones: monocular visual cone for watching the horizon line; monocular visual cone for watching isolated elements; periscope to be used discreetly. The project aims at hiding superfluous details since contemporary natural amenities have been equipped with disturbing devices, signals, vehicles, stalls and so on.

In the first scene in 2001: A Space Odissey, “The Dawn of Man,” a tribe of hominids encounters the monolith in a rocky desert crater, where the only hues are yellow and light blue. The camera angle points from the foot of the artifact towards the sky, the upper edge of the monolith creating the illusion of a second, new horizon. The geometric cones inside the SCPTIPMFLIPPES represent the cones of the human eye, each one is a reference to an element of the maritime landscape.

The SCPTIPMFLIPPES provides a collective act of framing. The more a boundary is affirmed physically and conceptually, the more valuable it becomes. Used as a movable item to be sunk into the sand, the SCPTIPMFLIPPES identifies the value of a place before the site transforms. A probe of collective memory and an invite to include shared knowledge of landscape in future policies of urban transformation.

Ph. Domenico Pastore