PROGRAMMA / re-enactment of a sculpture

A super rare interactive light sculpture from the 1970s acquires new life in the virtual world, transformed into its digital twin with a generative NFTs collection delivered to the blockchain.

Programma is a generative image-composition NFT collection by artist Francesca Fini. In this collection, the artist created the official digital re-enactment of the interactive light sculpture “Programma” conceived in the 70s by her father, the modernist designer Gianfranco Fini, and produced in a very limited edition by the visionary Italian company New Lamp.

The original 70s IRL light sculpture is a stainless steel piece measuring 104X104 cm, with a backlit opaque methacrylate panel and 100 movable plates. The interactive manual opening and closing of the plates can create infinite light patterns and combinations. The piece is featured in “Luce lampade 1968-1973: il nuovo design italiano”, by Fulvio Ferrari e Napoleone Ferrari, Allemandi Editore.

New Lamp was one of the most innovative manufacturers of lighting in Italy at the end of the 1960s. Founded in Rome in 1968 by Mario Vento and his brother Gianni. Working with artists, architects, and graphic designers to develop original lighting designs, the company produced experimental lamps that were akin to works of art yet entirely functional designs.

While the precise number of Programma lights produced was never documented, the design was one of the more ambitious and expensive works by New Lamp and very few originals are known, often sold for tens of thousands of dollars at Christie's and other major auction houses.
In this generative collection, Francesca Fini works on the binary concepts of full and empty, off and on, which are the basis of the original IRL sculpture, transforming them into the digital variants that make up the infinite combinations randomly created at minting.

https://www.francescafini.com/programma