«Latitudes» is a generative art project by Aleksandra Jovanić. The series of 260 unique pieces is available to collect on the Highlight platform. Please see the project page for details.
Months ago, Kenza Zouari invited me to exhibit at MONO Gallery in Tunis. I had no idea what I would display at the time, but I warmly recalled my two visits to Tunis long ago. This immediately inspired me to think about travel, changing locations, going places, meeting new people, and living. Latitudes are all about exploration and undiscovered freedom.
I often reference Italo Calvino's stories in my work because I love how they significantly diverge from the traditional sci-fi genre. In Calvino's tales, you won't find dystopian futures or human protagonists pitted against supernatural forces and creatures. Instead, his narratives are predominantly set in the distant past, at the dawn of the universe's creation, and his protagonists are often distinctly non-human. He skillfully combines contemporary scientific theories with cosmogenic myths to counterbalance abstraction and enhance emotional depth.
From the earliest sketches, questions emerged: Where are they going? Who are they? Will their fall or race ever end? Where is the finish line?
Latitudes calls to mind Italo Calvino's character Qfwfq in the story "The Form of Space" while falling (assuming he is falling), occasionally moving in an upward direction, perhaps just flowing along an unknown path in space with no sense of above and below, he wonders if his trajectory will intersect with his longing for love in the future.
During this never-ending descent, passing by one or many universes revolving around them, he contemplates all the positive and negative outcomes, dreaming of their parallels eventually meeting:
“In this alternation of hopes and apprehensions, I continued to fall, constantly peering into the depths of space to see if anything heralded an immediate or future change in our condition. A couple of times I managed to glimpse a universe, but it was far away and seemed very tiny, well off to the right or to the left; I barely had time to make out a certain number of galaxies like shining little dots collected into superimposed masses which revolved with a faint buzz, when everything would vanish as it had appeared, upwards or to one side, so that I began to suspect it had only been a momentary glare in my eyes.
[…] unwound in continuous, parallel, straight lines which mean nothing beyond themselves in their constant flow, never meeting, just as we never meet in our constant fall […]”¹.
Aleksandra Jovanić is an artist and programmer from Belgrade, Serbia, who holds a Doctorate in Digital Arts and a BSc in Computer Science. She teaches at all three levels of study at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, master studies at the Faculty of Applied Arts, and art doctoral studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade.
She combines various media in her research and artistic practice, mainly interactive art, art games, and generative art. Jovanić's recent works focus on the aesthetic of data visualization & optical illusions and explorations of accepted concepts of truth and reality. Her work has been exhibited internationally and included in exhibitions at Unit London, VerticalCrypto Art, FeralFile, Vellum LA / Artsy, and ArtBasel with Tezos.
Latitudes will drop on October 10th at 2 pm ET on Highlight. This project is characterized by three distinct traits: directions, color, and latitude. Collectors who mint three tokens in one transaction will find that it results in their Latitudes spanning all three possible directions while maintaining a consistent color palette.
There will be 260 pieces available at 0.02 ETH.
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Italo Calvino. 1976. Cosmicomics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.