DIGICULT Digital Art, Design & Culture Founder & Editor-in-chief: Marco Mancuso Advisory Board: Marco Mancuso, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo Publisher: Associazione Culturale Digicult Largo Murani 4, 20133 Milan (Italy) http://www.digicult.it Editorial Press registered at Milan Court, number N°240 of 10/04/06. ISSN Code: 2037-2256 Licenses: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs - Creative Commons 2.5 Italy (CC BY- NC-ND 2.5) Printed and distributed by Lulu.com E-publishing development: Loretta Borrelli Cover design: Eva Scaini Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS Valentina Tanni Evil Evolution ................................................................................................................. 3 Alessandro Massobrio Live Ixem 06…a Summary ........................................................................................... 6 Silvia Bianchi Avit C23, Pixels Want To Be Trusted ......................................................................... 9 Marco Mancuso Motomichi Nakamura, Japanes Hasta La Madre .................................................. 13 Silvia Scaravaggi Daan Roosegaarde. An interactive and sustainable world ................................. 18 Miriam Petruzzelli No Signal: Overseas Music ....................................................................................... 26 Silvia Bianchi John Duncan, Music Of Invisible .............................................................................. 31 Francesca Valsecchi Networking, The Net Like Art .................................................................................. 35 Lucrezia Cippitelli Arcangel Costantini, Hacking As Art And Life ....................................................... 48 Gigi Ghezzi Some Buoys For The Science By The Bay .............................................................. 54 Teresa De Feo Networked Nature: Nature And Electronic Art ..................................................... 57 Elena Bianchi Vairani My Space Vjing, Bullettin From The Net ................................................................ 60 Giulia Simi Interactive Pictures By Nicolas Clauss ................................................................... 63 Luigi Pagliarini Arcangel Costantini, Hacking As Art And Life ....................................................... 70 Monica Ponzini Blip Festival, Low-bit Art In Love ............................................................................ 76 Massimo Schiavoni Bigonzetti-plessi. All Standing ................................................................................. 78 Domenico Quaranta Nuovi Media E Museo: Un Caso Italiano? .............................................................. 83 Monica Ponzini Cory Arcangel, Re-costructing Code Art ............................................................... 88 Alessandra Migani New Music Shorts: New Talents Growin’up .......................................................... 93 Monica Ponzini Jonas Mekas, Video Art Of Improvisation ............................................................. 97 Evil Evolution Valentina Tanni stake (both nature and technology itself mature enough as to become a second nature) is now a topos. The recent short film Metalosis Maligna relates to this glorious and frequented tradition . The film was directed by the young Dutch film- maker Floris Kaayk (1982), founder with the coeval and colleague Sil van der Woerd (1982) of Microbia Films, a Technology progress miracles have little production house gathering both always generated utopia and works directed individually and those nightmares. Hopeful visions of a directed in pair. better future, but gloomy and catastrophic predictions too. The risk within the rash use of scientific discoveries and their products is a subject which, since the First Industrial Revolution, when the panorama of cities and suburbs started to show the signs of a firm “artificial” invasion, has been animating sociologic debates as artists, writers and filmmakers do. From Frankenstein to Blade Runner, where the dangerous connection was Metalosis Maligna (2006) can be between man and metal, between considered a docu-fiction: the short- nature and robotics- up to new film follow, at a stylistic and backgrounds opened by bio and iconographic point of view, the form nano-technologies, the subject of of the television documentary, telling rebellion and sequent loss of control the story of a mysterious, spectacular of man, of one of the two parts at and disturbing illness. Completely 3 fictitious but incredibly verisimilar. It isn’t the first time the two Microbia The bacteria ( streptococcus film-makers confront with the metalomaligna)’s infection attacks encounter/clash between natural and people with metal prosthesis. And if, artificial. While van der Woerd in Swim so far, the rejection of the hosting (2005) deals with fecundation with a organism was the only risk, the film terse and evocative style (including imagines a future in which the science fiction elements), Kaayk, with prosthesis is alive and dangerous, The Order Electrus (2005) had already interfering and ready to grow, showed his interest in adaptation branching within and outside organic mechanisms of natural environment tissues. They can even replace flesh, in to technologic invasion. In this short- an arborescent tangle of metal movie the main characters of this outgrowths. distopia are insects. A new species of “electric” beasties born spontaneously The fiction is effective and well built, within industrial structures capable of the stylistic elements of the reproduction, defence and attack. documentary are followed perfectly, and the union between traditional Shots, editing and performing voice shot and computerized graphics is too are taken by a common divulging perfect. The scenery, deprived of any documentary, maybe broadcast by scientific fundament, manages to Discovery Channel. The threat, as in result disturbing exactly because built Metalosis Maligna, comes from with rigour and control of the used evolutionary mechanisms’ language. extraordinary power. Capable of fighting and overcoming any human intervention, however interfering it could seem. It is an evolution which doesn’t mean just self-defence, but which looks like vengeance . www.microbia.nl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= . MfZd45I3g4k 4 5 Live Ixem 06…a Summary Alessandro Massobrio Grazia Mari and Luca Bossi (respectively at the violin, low clarinet and transverse flute) improvise controlled via game pad by Tommaso Perego. an electro acoustic session with an high performance level and with a delightful visual impact: the four musicians are one in front of each other so that they form, with a cross The last 17 th December there was the of looks and intentions, the track of 6th Edition of the Italian contest of the directions and of the executive electronic experimental music and and performative choices, that arts Ixem, at the Rialto Santambrogio starting from the interaction with the in Rome, in an intimate and cordial software (which is the 5 th element of environment; it was enough to dilute the ensemble) enter in a rather tidy the competitive tension which was game of goads and answers with long however present, to testimony the pauses and convulsive moments importance that the vaguely rhythmic. The live of Federico festival/competition of Antitesi has Placidi and Matteo Milani instead is on a national level. more organic, for double bass and laptop in the project U.S.O. Incastro di 10 projects were presented during the Mondi wins the opportunity of event which starts from the 6 and realizing a CD produced by Antitesi. finishes late at night with the proclamation of the winning project, Incastro di Mondi. Among the very few non audio-video participants together with Invisible fields in which Gianluca Beccuzzi aka Esa process at the pc stones and rubbles, Incastro di Mondi is a short performance in which three instrumentalists Mario Garuti, 6 . not on a technical-artistic level but for the attention of the details, the scenic After the pause dedicated to the presence and the capacity of dinner, la long night of Live!Ixem transforming the context into a real rallies round the Dutch Thomas performative space. It is also true that Ankersmit and Edwin Van der Heide, in the northern Europe the electronic members of the jury together with music is made very seriously, it is Domenico Sciajno and guests who, for something for everybody and it is the occasion, exhibit in two brilliant enjoyed, sold and used. So it has performances. If the Italian audience sense. It doesn’t frustrate the it is said- suffers from xenomania opportunity to not enjoy or to make a ever since in the music such as in the new delightful experience without politics, in the cinema, in TV and also entering for this reason in sterile in internet, it is in such cases that the dichotomies between lightness and thing maybe should be read as a gravity, seriousness and opening. But symptom rather than as a disease. maybe this is another question; it is more complex and social. The two Dutch give a lection of style 7 motionless, only with his laptop in the by now very popular LSP performance seen also at the Dissonanze in Rome and Mixed Media of Milan in the last year, immersing the spaces of Rialto into a perceptive very physical experience with luminous laser shafts flooded of smoke, which visualize the sounds generated and controlled via software with the space and on the . walls