For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway, 1940) unfolds against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, a struggle over the definition of the state’s identity within a deeply divided society. The war was a profound confrontation between opposing worldviews, each seeking to determine what Spain would become, what values would guide it, and what social order would shape its future. On one side stood the Republican forces, representing a vision of a democratic, secular, and pluralistic republic, striving for change and reform. Opposing them was the Nationalist side, which sought to establish a unified national identity, authority, and hierarchy, grounded in the army, the church, and tradition as anchors of stability and order.

The confrontation between the two sides did not unfold solely on the battlefield, but within society itself. In a reality of extremity, the present emerged as an extended existential space, in which action itself became the only way to grant validity to existence, even when the outcome was not assured.

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Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.

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Hemingway grants meaning to the present as an absolute time in which human experience fully takes place. Time assumes the status of an ultimate, almost prophetic authority, and the present moment becomes the sole source of meaning. In a reality where the future is not guaranteed, meaning is shaped through action and presence. This is a time that places existence itself at the center, demanding attention, closeness, and a sustained pause within the moment in which things occur.

The lab set out through visual research into sensory experiences, understood as a momentary experiential space and as a foundation for closeness. At its core lies a single, simple action: coming closer. Come Closer is conceived as a physical and cognitive movement inward, toward the experience, the sensation, and what unfolds in the moment of encounter.

The projects developed in the lab offer interpretations of sensory experience that lead toward closeness with the machine, and ultimately toward a closer encounter with the self: toward the body, attention, and what is stirred in the act of engagement. At times the experience sharpens perception; at others, it unsettles. It does not promise control or clarity, but rather offers exposure, slowing down, and a sustained dwelling within a state.

From these visual research processes emerged interfaces of short-lived experiences. Interactive experiences that do not aspire to duration, accumulation, or continuity, but exist only as long as presence and closeness are maintained. When distance is introduced, the experience dissolves. In this sense, the connection to Hemingway’s conception of time is not a point of departure but a contextual framework. Here too, meaning is neither stored nor guaranteed, but occurs in the moment itself.

The lab seeks to enable a close gaze, a zoom-in on a phenomenon or sensation, not in order to explain or interpret, but to dwell. Within a space where the boundaries between body, sensation, code, and consciousness blur, the encounter with the machine becomes a fleeting encounter with the self: a brief, condensed, and fragile experience that exists only here and now, as long as one chooses to come closer.