The forms of creativity

Patrick Dalli’s current show at the MSA’s Galleries on the piano nobile of Palazzo de La Salle, comes as a surprise. While viewing the 32 canvases on show, I personally witnessed art aficionados walking in and allowing their mouth to gape open. And no, the stupor is not about the female nudity, typical of Dalli’s paintings to date. Rather, it is about the fact that not one square centimetre of flesh is here on show. Yet it is all about a “she”, female, feminine and temperamental. Call her Gaia, Dame Nature, Great Mother, Demeter ... whatever name you decide on, Dalli presents her to us compelling, vibrant and surprisingly candid in some of the most dynamic colour combinations local artists have shown us of late.

Dalli remains bold. It is his way of being. There is nothing wishywashy about this artist. And true to his nature, his over-sized nudes have always been straightforward and in-your-face... as I myself wrote about his Spoleto exhibition back in 2015, the artist typically uses “unforgiving brush strokes, which are totally oblivious of the ‘photoshop’ effect. What you see is what you get”. Figuratively clear, down to the last wrinkle on a hip, his nude figures, mostly female and abundantly abundant, have rarely been set against a backdrop of detail. No chintz curtains, no embroidered piano shawls lying negligently by. Rather, Dalli’s nudes have always been juxtaposed against a vague or geometrically organised chromatic backdrop.

Curator Roderick Camilleri points out, “During the Covid-19 lockdown period, the artist needed to exit his studio and find inspiration in nature. In Landforms, he creates a collage of paint. The geometrics of colour have taken centre stage, brought out of the background where they held second place in his nude paintings, and placed directly on the foreground. This is something the public has never seen Dalli produce.”

In fact, these geometrics are literally basking in the light. The artist is showing another facet of his talent, and it is dynamic, startlingly brisk and vociferous. The journey into novelty began with a tiny landscape, where the sky is blue, the tree is green and the ground is somewhere in between. All as one would expect. As he continued to experiment, Dalli retained the “normality” of a landscape, obediently transferring what he saw onto canvas.

And in Landforms we can witness how suddenly the paintings grow bigger, jump out of the canvas and become bizarrely enthusiastic, with an in-your-face spectrum that could become open to subjective interpretation. As Camilleri explains, Dalli is drawing inspiration from the Siggiewi environs, apart from a couple of works lifted from the Sicilian countryside. Dalli himself describes how, “It was all very spontaneous, there was never any philosophy involved. I would go on location, do a few quick sketches, go back to my studio and quickly transfer what I had seen onto the canvas. I did not have to stop to contemplate. At times I would return to a discarded painting with a brainwave idea to transform it, and transform it I would.”

Yet these beautiful vivacious multi-faceted strata of rambling land and sky do allow space for reflection. The colours speak… all his trees remain green, while the skies take on colours which skies typically delight us with in very particular moments. There is an absence of humans and buildings. But the land itself becomes something marvellous. And I stop to recall places I have been and seen, with wide expanses of exciting flowing colours that left me silently smiling to myself. As happened with the multi-coloured blooming lentils in the valley of Castelluccio di Norcia, in the Umbria region of Italy, or around the expanses of sunflowers and red clover typical of spring in Malta.

I look into the paintings created with oils on linen canvas. While the overall scenic impression is one of stillness, the magnified view of the brushstrokes reveals an energetic hand, rugged strokes of paint and a strong pulsating verve. The paints are jumping off the canvas and some colours capture the light, while others appease the entirety of it. Note how I write about “stillness”. There is nothing to give away motion, but there is one dark brooding sky, and another which seems to be welcoming a storm. I would happily walk into Untitled, marked (13) on the wall, a great big welcoming painting that leads to somewhere calm. Dalli does an effective double take on further abstraction, teasing the viewer with a pink hole in one sky and a red abyss in another one.

Landforms is a revelation, further proof that artists mature while seemingly at play; that colours change form in the hands of the same artist and that land forms, just like body forms, manage to evolve and delight in different ways which effectively broaden our perspective of what is to be expected.

Landforms, curated by Roderick Camilleri is showing at MSA, Palazzo de La Salle, 219 Republic Street, Valletta, will run until 11 August.

Opening hours: Mondays and Fridays: 8am to 7pm; Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays: 8am to noon, 4 to 7pm; Saturdays: 8am to 1pm and Sundays closed.

What is stevia?

Stevia is an intense natural sweetener and sugar substitute obtained from the leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana (Bertoni) plant, native to Paraguay and Brazil. It contains active compounds collectively called steviol glycosides (primarily stevioside and rebaudioside) which show approximately 50 to 300 greater sweetness to that of sugar. Moreover, steviol glycosides are heat stable, pH stable and are nonfermentable. It is shown that the human body is not able to metabolize glycosides included in stevia making it a “zero-calorie” non-nutritive sweetener. Regarding taste of stevia, it presents with a slower onset and a longer duration with comparison to that of sugar. Additionally, at greater concentrations some of its extracts leave a particular aftertaste expressed as licoricelike or bitter. The primary usage of stevia is linked to foods and beverages with reduced sugar and calorie amounts.

Benefits of stevia

Control of Diabetes appreciated aspect

The most of stevia

The duo behind Kayak for Charity, Dorian and Albert, are taking on a new challenge this year, with the aim to continue renewing their support towards Inspire Foundation Malta. This time, the pair will be paddling by canoes around the island of Malta, in aid of Inspire.

Last year, the pair took on an outstanding paddling journey of more than 1,000 kilometres starting from Malta to Sicily, and then journeying all around the island of Sicily – a journey that took almost a month. This year the duo will be embarking on a new adventure making them the first persons to paddle an OC1 around Malta, all in aid of Inspire Foundation.

Used in competitive sport, Albert

and Dorian are the only people to own the OC1 canoes in Malta, and through this initiative, this will be the first time that an OC1 will be paddling around Malta. One of the most obvious challenges is that the stroke and seating are quite different from that of a kayak, and Albert and Dorian may have to withstand severe back pain to complete the route. There is also very limited storage space on the vessel so any food and drink would need to be rationed throughout. In addition, they will paddle this journey unassisted.

The distance of this paddle journey is 42 nautical miles or approximately 75km. The entire journey should take just over 12

Think about the last time you had a great experience. Are you able to pinpoint what made it special? Today, we live in the era of “The Experience Economy”, where the experience itself is the most critical consumer commodity.

This article explores the notion of designing experiences, particularly in museums in the 21st century. We will shed light on today’s technological capabilities that would allow museum professionals to understand the current visitor journey’s touch-points and what can be improved. Architecting better experiences starts with accessing visitor behaviour information that will enable professionals to know how to address the visitors’ wants and needs. But how exactly can one obtain access to such information?

The movie Night at the Museum immersed us into the idea of exhibits and artefacts in a museum having a life of their own, observing us during the day but delving into a hive of activity at night. Ben Stiller starred as Larry, the night security guard who stepped into this fictitious situation where exhibits came to life at night. In considerable detail, the museum exhibits fictitiously shared their insights about how visitors interacted with them during the day.

Unfortunately, while we may get one-off opportunities to spend nights at museums, it is improbable that we can ever experience the same magic as Larry. However, this does not mean we do not have an opportunity to get similar insights about what goes on in a museum environment during visiting hours.

Instead of the night-time magic, we experience in movies, the Museum Analytics (MAtics) project uses the latest Artificial Intelligence techniques in computer vision and data science to provide insights into how audiences interact with various artefacts in a museum space.

To explain how this is all possible, let us continue with a thought exercise. First, think about your favourite masterpiece at a museum. Imagine you are in its place, seeing visitors coming face to face and staring at you. Then start noticing the reactions and emotions of the different visitors.

The emotions could be those of surprise, awe or even pure delight. However, depending on the artefact, the artefact can instil less positive emotions such as sadness, fear or contemplation.

These emotions are an intrinsic personal experience of the visitor, and how they relate to the masterpiece or experience depends on the individual identity traits. Emotions are only a portion of what goes into a visit. Our focus and attention roam the exhibits as we make our way through the museum, each with our agenda.

In the absolute majority of cases, experiences end there. Nobody will know how we reacted when we saw Michelangelo’s David for the first time in real life. Nobody will know that we visited the Louvre and rushed through the first corridors only to be one of the first visitors in front of Da Vinci’s Monalisa. Was it about spending some time in front of the authentic masterpiece in awe for a few selfies before then casually strolling the rest of the seemingly endless museum? Nobody will know that Mondrian’s compositions competed with your Facebook notifications when you visited the MoMa. Nobody will know the reflective mood Caravaggio’s Beheading of Saint John put us in when we visited Saint John’s Co-Cathedral.

How often are these touchpoints noted, recorded or explored by who designs or manages the museum, exhibition or experience? These are all lost opportunities for curators and other stakeholders that hinder the possibility of improving the experience.

Museums and exhibitions empower us to value humanity’s past, recognise our identity and educate us on replicating good and avoiding situations that brought a loss of life and misery. For these reasons, SeyTravel embarked on the MAtics project to shed more light on the visitor experience using the latest technology. With such analytical insights into how visitors interact with a physical space, a rich feedback loop will be in place that can empower decision-makers to make more informed decisions.

When the right technology is provided to museum professionals, there will not be a need to wait every night for some magic that blows life into our exhibits to tell us what visitors experienced. Instead, museums will be able to know what is meaningful to their visitors when they need to while respecting everyone’s privacy. Such insights will empower museums to improve their business models, making them more sustainable while justifying applications for further funding.

This article is based on the MAtics (Museum Analytics) research project financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology, for and on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology through the Fusion: R&I Research Excellence Programme. For more information refer to https://www.seytravel.com/matics

Dr Dylan Seychell is the founder of SeyTravel Ltd and an academic in the department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta