Within the context of the Fantastic City — a project envisioning places and stations designed to offer visitors and citizens a total immersion in diverse aesthetic experiences — Fogliati conceived a device capable of continually self‑programming, thus avoiding the repetition of events. Resembling a kind of control tower, this apparatus would activate the various stations and their mechanisms in response to constantly evolving stimuli, ensuring the variety and uniqueness of each environmental experience.

Campo autonomo embodies this vision perfectly: a system of interconnected elements, each influencing and modifying the movement of its neighbors, generating a structured and continuously evolving dynamism. The machine is composed of small discs suspended in mid‑air by wires connected to a box fixed to the ceiling, inside which a mechanical apparatus produces a uniform rotational motion for all of them.

Each disc is suspended by means of a small hole, drilled directly into its surface and slightly off‑center, through which passes the wire linking it to the motor. This slight eccentricity creates friction among the discs, which tend to block one another, increasing the tension in the wires. Initially, the mechanical system imparts a uniform rotational motion to all the wires, but the interaction among the discs activates an organized and constantly changing result.

By “organized,” one means that the discs, in order to release the tension accumulated in the wires connecting them to the motor, must necessarily coordinate with one another. Since each disc, in releasing its own tension, temporarily hinders the release of tension in the neighboring discs, the system assumes a dynamic of reciprocal regulation: the discs must “come to an agreement,” creating an ever‑changing sequence in which one releases tension while the others wait, then pause to allow the next to do the same. This continuous balancing between tension and release generates a structured, harmonious, and perpetually shifting movement, from which the work takes its name: Campo autonomo (Autonomous Field).