The Pixelscape Project

Le pointillisme, a pictorial technique developed at the end of the nineteenth century, allowed the landscape to be rendered through swarms of colored dots arranged on the pictorial surface. Based on scientific discoveries relating to visual perception, a partnership was created between art and science to represent the landscape of the time. The word pixel, contained in the calembour that gives the name to this idea, reinterprets the postulate underlying this pictorial technique by making a direct reference to a new precision agriculture method called Pixel Farming. This, in addition to the use of the most recent technologies, is based on a principle of punctual colonization of the territory, which can be divided into minimum units. A new vision of agriculture is initiated, sparking significant reflection on the existence of total territoriality, overturning the concept of No-Stop City with the idea of No-Stop Countryside. The design experiment launched with the New Species of Agriculture seminar in Maccarese was a privileged opportunity to research new city-countryside relationships and, at the same time, investigate how a technological and high-precision agricultural system can enter into dialogue with the existing living communities. The postulate questions how much forestry, hydrological systems, and natural irregularities can interact with a controlled production system through a hierarchical agricultural infrastructure. The text takes this question as the cornerstone of a theoretical reflection that sees a significant operational perspective in a specific model of agriculture. Exactly as done by the neo-impressionists, the attitude pursued in pixel farming allows the territory to be redesigned through sets of dots at variable scales, which blend together through the principle of proximity, actively interpreting the complex territorial palimpsest. A new type of agriculture that would represent the possibility of restaging Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, where the natural environment achieves aesthetic harmony with the most modern uses of the time.