ROME, ITALY.- The Laboratory Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Rome La Sapienza will present Journo - Reversed Interactive Project, from January 11th - 31st, 2007. The exhibition was curated by Simonetta Lux and Domenico Scudero. Richard Journo, born in Tripoli (Libia) in 1958, to an Italian Family, lives and works between Rome and London. Journo has dedicated much of the last 20 years producing and directing documentaries and has participated to many exhibitions worldwide with his works of video, installation and large format digital art.

Journo's work expands from "art & science" to mathematics, cryptography, genetic codes, behaviour and music codes.

Reversed Interactive Project is a video installation conceptually created to make the audience interact and becoming part of the art piece. The Reversed Interaction is moved not by electronics, computers or new technological means but through a primal natural behaviour of human being: the contagious act of yawning. Scientific research on yawning has produced considerable results in the last 20 years, especially with new imaging technology today we have pictures of 3 months old unborn foetuses yawning.
Popular perception identify yawning with boredom and/or feeling sleepy; not exactly what you wish to happen during a successful exhibition? As a paradox that is the goal of Journo's work, provoking in the audience a chain reaction of yawning through its unstoppable and contagious potential. Yawning at an art exhibition is the subtext of Journo's message about the state of some meaningless contemporary art, based just on sensationalism and mere aesthetic look.

This exhibition is part of a series of events directed by Prof. Simonetta Lux and curated by Prof. Domenico Scudero at MLAC with the Lazio Region contribution for research on "new multimedia technologies applied to contemporary art".