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)

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E-publishing development: Loretta Borrelli

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Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS

Tatiana Bazzichelli Pcc. Pirate Cinema Reclaims The Cinema ...... 3

Monica Ponzini Eric Singer, Music For Robots ...... 9

Giulia Simi Game Game Game And Again Game… ...... 15

Maresa Lippolis Peer Production: The Wealth Of Networks ...... 20

Motor Collective Author, Shared Memory ...... 23

Massimo Schiavoni The Revenge Of Nico & The Vascellaris ...... 27

Tiziana Gemin Second Fest, A Great Event For Few… ...... 30

Redazione Digicult Skoltz Kolgen: Silence In The Rooms ...... 34

Marco Mancuso Struttura Organica 2007, Computing Nature ...... 41

Barbara Sansone Greenaway: Cinema Is Dead, Long Lives Cinema ...... 48

Marco Mancuso Thorsten Fleisch, The Fourth Dimension In Video ...... 52 Silvia Scaravaggi Alvarez-fernandez: Sound Amateur ...... 60

Silvia Scaravaggi Todo & Nada: Everything Or Nothing! ...... 66

Silvia Bianchi The Lab Style By Modeselektor ...... 72

Silvia Bianchi Missil, Miss Mash Up ...... 75 Pcc. Pirate Cinema Reclaims The Cinema

Tatiana Bazzichelli

www.piratecinema.no ), Paris , Amsterdam , London , Graz , Rostock not to mention Tarifa and Tanger. The statement at the opening of the local Pirate Cinema as well as the interview with Mikael of the Pirate Cinema Copenhagen explain that the idea of creating a citizen pirate cinema is the critical answer to a more and more restrictive cinema industry. Its main

The Film industry’s war against pirates objective is to convey everybody what is a war against reality. These is the is considered as a collective good, manifesto of PCC-Pirate Cinema that is to say the right to copy and Copenhagen ( www.piratecinema.net hand out intellectual achievements, ), a project founded last year in the making them available and for free Danish national capital. and overcoming the old-fashioned idea of intellectual property. Il Pirate Cinema Copenhagen follows a lucky track first followed in Berlin in This is a strategy to fight against a July 2004 by Pirate Cinema Berlin , image control politics, a more and conducted by Sebastian Lütgert and more strict politics whose previous Jan Gerber. This lucky track is ones teach something. Let’s go back nowadays composed by many stone- to the 80s when the game industry networks of independent cinemas, claimed the impending end of the gathered with the common aim of videogame era because of the game making available and free all the films floppy copies. But even before that, difficult spreading and, above all, they were the days in which the use copyright protected films. Since 2004 and reproduction of music cassettes up today, the Pirate Cinema’s network meant the music industry’s crack. has widespread, giving birth to new Time showed it was not true and on projects not only in Berlin and the contrary the more video or Copenhagen , but also in Stockholm musical products were circulating and (www.piratbyran.org), Oslo ( spreading, the more the cultural

3 imaginary grew wider and requested It takes the place and the role (as other products of this domain. hero) played by the Ungdomshuset (literally: the young house, a building occupied by young people), settled in Jagtvej 69 and destroyed in last March after a heated long-day riot with the local police.

Folkets Hus is in Nørrebro , that is also the neighboorhood of the Ungdomshuset. As well as this latter, the Folkets Hus has a long citizen tradition as it is part of the urban . renewal started in the 70s. This project’s goal was the creation of The Pirate Cinema’s several projects green areas and recreational facilities are a real reply and regaining for the local working class. During the possession and opening of new years, Folkets Hus hosted several channels for the free diffusion of collectives. Among them we knowledge. In this network the right remember the famous TV STOP (1987- of reproduction and availability to 2004) , an independent Danish TV information is one among its sender important for its activist soul. prominent aims. The network seems Now the Folkets Hus is the seat for to be very fruitful in the Scandinavian different groups, from the collective area, where projects like The Pirate TVTV ( www.tv-tv.dk ) to Radio 69, Bay (thepiratebay.org) or the and from dance and bio-cook Piratgruppen (piratgruppen.org), had associations to the already mentioned a favourable result. The first one is a Pirate Cinema Cph. free download platform for music, movies, software and games, whilst the second one is an independent collective project fighting for freedom in knowledge.

So it should not surprise that the project Pirate Cinema Copenhagen found a seat in the Folkets Hus (that is literally to say the folk’s house www.folketshus.dk), in Stengade 50 .

4 once a month but once a week. We want only to show pirate movies and Tatiana Bazzichelli: How did the in our web site you always find a link Pirate Cinema Copenhagen come up? for the download of the new movies, so that people not present at the Mikael: Pirate Cinema Cph was born projection have the opportunity to last year, it was the summer 2006. We watch it. whoever comes here gets took inspiration from the Pirate free copies and of course they can Cinema Berlin , a very useful project copy the movie on their turn. We get both on local and international field. all the movies through file-sharing We thought that the “copy” could give channels, but actually there many interesting results, and so we thought other ways. to start an independent film making also in Copenhagen . We did want a For example once a year in challenge with the concept of Copenhagen it takes place the copyright and intellectual property, CPH:DOX, Documentary Film Festival ( deciding alone and with no www.cphdox.dk). In spite of its valid constriction what we wanted and program, it is usually strictly could see at cinema. We show only controlled by copyright. We have a “pirate-movies” obtained by file- look and search for anything sharing and p2p. That’s why we interesting and then we get it through regularly confront with issues such as filesharing. We try in this way to have free access and diffusion of cinema a mix between what actually happens contents, and their free distribution in the city and showed locally and and reproduction. For instance we use what we can find on the web. Of to give all people in the cinema a CD- course everything shown is for free. Rom with the movie at the end of the We try to gather the everyday coping projection in order to let a chain files and watching movies with the distribution. free reproducibility of contents. Everyday people copy materials, it is Tatiana Bazzichelli: In your manifesto no wonder. We just drag it into the you can read that the fight against light and make it an “obvious” process, copyright is the fight against control. reproducible on its turn. Everybody What are your weapons against can get the movies we own and s/he cinema industry? can copy them. It’s like broadcasting a Mikael: Our intention is to give “social event” derived from a praxis of continuity to this project, and this copying and reproducing pieces of means not gathering for pirate cinema knowledge and materials. We don’t ask people to bring CDs to get a copy

5 of the movie, we already dispose of months before the official ready copies available for the public, distribution. and we sustain this proposal with our own finances. Tatiana Bazzichelli: Lets consider the activist scene present in Copenhagen , drawing much attention after the Ungdomshuset closure. Where does Pirate Cinema has seat in this network? Does sharing spaces with other collectives and associations in the Folkets Hus is your political choice?

Mikael: From one hand being in the Folkets Hus was a political choice, but

. we have to say that at the beginning our project was born in a commercial Tatiana Bazzichelli: Which is the Pirate environment. Everything was pretty Cinema Cph’s program? Which are the good, although the group hosting us criteria for picking up movies? was a bit disappointed because they thought we could be an economic Mikael: What we most appreciate help. Their expectations of people from file-sharing is that we can get buying several drinks at the pub or movies not available on a large scale. having parties after being at the Or hard or even impossible to find and cinema were disappointed. People buy. We usually offer rare movies or actually came to watch the movie, representing an interesting political drinking perhaps a couple of beers content. Sometimes we choose and then came back home. We hadn’t movies to have fun, like the got that kind of expectation. We don’t Hollywood movies that you find at the earn through pirate cinema. Entry is cinema or you will find. We try to offer free, there’s no ticket. For us it was different kinds of movies in our better to work in an independent scheduled programme. The movies environment such as the Folkets Hus. distributed by cinema are usually Folkets Hus has got a long tradition, anticipated by a “screening copy” it’s an occupied building but it’s not handed out long before the projection officially illegal. There are many of the film. In the file-sharing you groups taking part to it, they use the often find the reproduction of this rooms for their projects but we don’t version, also 2 or even 3 or more pay the rent, just some energy bills.

6 hearts we are pirate. And our work is piracy. It is a kind of regaining possession of the word while we give it a new context. Actually, the new meaning is its original one, despite the fact that there are people who don’t agree with piracy because they don’t understand, don’t use it and don’t see a purpose in it.

. Of course during this process of regaining possession, the word Tatiana Bazzichelli: The word “pirate” changes meaning, loosing its has a very strong evocative power in commercial feature and gaining a the city. I’m thinking for ex at the positive value. I think it is a good symbol of Ungdomshuset 69. I mirror to check how people are noticed that this is true for many moving and relating to these themes other Scandinavian cities, Oslo is one in North Europe , above all in the of them. There you find the pirate Scandinavian countries. Also the so skull as main icon of several called illegal raves here in independent places. In Italy people Copenhagen have become pirate- belonging to the so called “hacker parties for some years and the skull is scene” do prefer not to consider today a shared icon for radical culture. themselves pirates because this word According to us being pirates means usually recalls a negative meaning. measuring ourselves with the concept What does the word “pirate” mean in of intellectual property, also in image the Pirate Cinema di Copenhagen terms. project?

Mikael: The word “pirate” submits a change in meaning in this context. It was re-designed, re-evaluated. And not only in Copenhagen . Just recall the Swedish project The Pirate Bay and also the Swedish Pirate Party ( www.piratpartiet.se ) or the Piratgruppen in Denmark . All these projects change and claim for the word “pirate” because deep in our .

7 Tatiana Bazzichelli: And the future projects of Pirate Cinema http://piratecinema.net/ Copenhagen? http:// thepiratebay.org Mikael: At the moment we’re having summer break, but we will start to www.piratgruppen.org work soon. We are thinking to realise an open air cinema and create a new www.folketshus.dk festival. By the way you can find all www.ungdomshuset.dk the news in our website and get them periodically if you subscribe our www.jagtvej69.dk newsletter.

8 Eric Singer, Music For Robots

Monica Ponzini

contemplative sounds of Buddhist monks and the complex Lemurtron , which combines robots, video interfaces and interaction.

Those were some of the topics we discussed with Eric Singer, the talented founder of LEMUR (and of another artist colective, the Madagascar Institute) . Eric is a musician, artist, engineer, LEMUR, i.e. League of Electronic programmer and untiring creator of Musical Urban Robots . A group of instruments and musical applications. artists based in Brooklyn who design and make up musical robots, a synthesis of musical instruments and technology applied to interactivity and robotics. With their robots, LEMUR members are contributing to redefine the shape of performances by creating a completely new kind of performer.

Those robotic devices – a group of more than 50 “members”- can both . perform alone or together with human performers, thus moving Monica Ponzini: You have a pretty forward the borders of applied interesting background, you studied robotics and art. Examples of those music and computer science How did robots are GuitarBot , a stringed you decide to create and develop instrument , ModBot and its such kind of robots? percussions, the fascinating ForestBot Eric Singer: Sort of a natural with its bells fixed to long sticks, combination of my interests. For TibetBot , a device inspired by the

9 many years before I started this thing that robotic instruments can do, project, I was doing other kind of that humans can’t, is play in a electronic instruments to be played museum for 3 months. I mean: by humans. I created synthetic sound humans can do that, but would be and then, at a certain point, I thought hard to find somebody that would on it might be interesting to kind of an ongoing basis. They can respond in reverse that, have the information complex ways to the way humans come the other direction, out of the play, you can analyze human computer and play actual physical performances and extend them to sounds, that led to robotic musical robotic instruments – there’s a lot of instruments. new territory they allow you to explore. Monica Ponzini: People may have asked you: “Why robots”? Isn’t music also about feelings?

Eric Singer: Well, they are really just machines, they don’t play by themselves unless a human tells them what to do.

Monica Ponzini: But isn’t the human element missing in this process?

. Eric Singer: Not necessarily, we’re not bypassing performers. We’re adding a Monica Ponzini: At what point are you new kind of performer to the mix- a in this exploration? robotic performer. Some might say they do things better than humans, or Eric Singer: (Laughs) I think we are at worse than humans, but to me this is the point we’re at. We’re not at the not the point, the point is that they do beginning, middle or end. I guess things differently, it’s a new way of we’re somewhere in the middle. I playing music, a new way of think it’s better answered saying what composing, a new way of performing we have done and what we want to and it’s a process that involves other do. We have done installations in artists, other performers, composers, museums, we’ve done interactive designers, engineers and other installations where participants come people. So humans are definitely not in a help generate the music by missing in this from this mix. One means of interaction, whether is video

10 interacting, or sensors, or things like system as Lemurtron. Can you talk that. We have done installations that about it? Where did the inspiration are stand alone, where music just play come from and did you develop it? back on these live, physical, acoustic instruments, we have done Eric Singer: That’s our umbrella performances or pieces that are installation, to kind of integrating robotic only, we’ve done that were pretty much everything that we did. composed for the robots to play along The robotic instruments are arrayed with other musicians. So, we have around the space, a lot of the hung covered a lot of ground, a lot of from the ceiling, a lot of them around different areas, that was one of the the perimeter; at the center of the things that I wanted to do since the space, on the floor there’s a video beginning. Other things that we want projection, and that’s done by to do are: we want to create a lot bouncing a projection off of a mirror more music for the ensemble, that reflects it on the floor, so we can especially music involving live human project whatever kind of video and per formers playing along with the therefore whatever kind of generated ensemble. We are starting to invite video interface we want on the floor; and commission other people to overlaid on top of the video is a video come in and work for them and tracking mechanism, so there’s a compose for them. camera looking at the video on the floor; the camera’s picking up only We’re planning to start a series infrared light and we basically flood sometime in the fall called “Resident”, the scene with infrared light which which will invite people to apply and, reflects off people that walk though when selected, they will be able to the video and walk over the video, come in for a month and use the that way the camera can see the robots and the other kind of people, but is not interfered with by electronic instruments that we have the video projection. and create performances and at the end of that month there will be a show where they showcase their material. And we want to create a whole array of other instruments, with different tonalities and different playing methods.

Monica Ponzini: You’ve created lots of single robots as well as a complex

11 . various robots and the upload files to play the robots back; so we’ll have a The idea came from talks with other specification published and artist, I’ve done video tracking composers can log on and by software for a long time, I created an uploading files they can play the early video tracking plug-in to a robots and hear the results back live program called Max, that allowed through streaming, so a lot of people people to track video and movements around the world can play the bots. in a video image and convert them And also probably we’ll have an into sound, and now that’s a product interface where you and interact with called Cyclops. them and play them, so if you’re not a composer and you just want to see This system uses more sophisticated what they sound like and play some tracking methods and a program musical games on them, you can do called Jitter. What this allows us to do that as well. That’s a sort of on-going is put any kind of video interface on development, we’ve done various the floor, have people walk through it, versions of that at various times, at interact with it. One of the first ones some point we hope to get funding to we’ve done is like a game spinner, but do that as a permanent installation you can kick it virtually. The computer here. that’s generating the spinner is also watching for movement, when someone moves in the direction of pushing this arrow, it will spin, the spinning of the arrow will then generate a musical sequence played back by the robots. That’s one example of what you can do, there are many other things that we wanna do: we want to allow people to play virtual billiards, virtual balls, kick them around this video area so it’s a video . interaction space and it’s also an interface into playing the robots. Monica Ponzini: Besides this project, do you have any other plans for the In addition to that, we have a network future? interface that will allow people to log on and take control of a video camera, Eric Singer: LEMUR is my plan for the move that around the room and view future, continue to create the kinds of

12 instruments that I and other member of the group want to create, show . them around the world as much as Monica Ponzini: In your opinion, possible. We also do art and what’s the future of interaction technology education, so we want to between humans and machines, continue that, we want to bring other especially from a creative/aesthetic people into stage performances, also point of view? have the space open as a gallery, it’s really just keep doing what we’re Eric Singer: I don’t think anyone can doing on a grander and grander scale. say what the future is

Monica Ponzini: Do you have an Monica Ponzini: But how do you international network? immagine it?

Eric Singer: We’ve done gigs around Eric Singer: More and more pervasive the world for years, we’ve traveled interaction. For better or for worse with robots, we’re receiving invites computers, data collection, is going every week to various festivals. It gets on everywhere – I read an article once, a bit of money to get the robot someone talking about pervasive oversees, but we hope to do that computers, and had been saying that more and more someday there would be computers in doorknobs, then, as he was going in Monica Ponzini: Where did you find his hotel room, swiping his card, he more interest for what you do? realized that there already are- Eric Singer: I can’t say there’s any one Artistic interaction with computers is place that there’s more interest we’ve exploding now the means to do it is had. We’ve been in Asia, Australia , getting easier, less expensive, the Eastern and Western Europe We’ve tools are getting better and easier to not been in Russia , Africa, the Middle use, so more people are able to do it East or South America These are all you don’t need a degree in electrical territories to “conquer”. engineering –even though it helps-, but we’re teaching people how to work with microprocessors and program, and create interactive art, video, sound, music. All I can say about it is: it’s gonna keep going and becoming more pervasive.

13 www.lemurbots.org

www.ericsinger.com

14 Game Game Game And Again Game…

Giulia Simi

a past article by Rhizome, is a hypermedia poet, an artist mid way between a poet, a painter and a sound and image manipulator. He is an artist who has been long interpreting the web as a source of virtual and multimedia poetry, as shown by some projects in progress such as Speech/Media, Uncontrollable Semantic or A Tracing. There the user must interact with words so that 13 odd levels will set you free from poetry can be created from a starting cultural systems chains almost point in any order, direction, way and definable as dogmatic. The main appearance. objective of this play is, in the author’s mind, “to move around and think”. We have spoken with Jason Nelson and deepened the main idea and Game game game and again game is thoughts standing behind his project. the latest Jason Nelson ‘s work. With an ironical and amused perspective the author looks back at the amateur aesthetics and the mistake theory and creates this work which he defines “retro-game” . Here you find poems and family videos mixed together and found out by the main character during his weird adventure. And here are the character, a strange rolling ful ball, and its goal: the liberation from its own stereotypes – . www.secrettechnology.com/gamega me/gamegame.html Giulia Simi: In your works there’s always a game side. This feature, Mr. Nelson, as in his self-definition on beside giving the name to the title of

15 your project, calls back to the typical me to create more games like this videogame characteristics, of course one. The most part of the people with an ironical and in some way writing to me are normally not subversive approach. What is your interested in art nor they usually visit relationship with game culture and in art galleries and museums. Yet they which way can art and videogame are curious and enjoy so experimental work together? art works. Their comments are often “WTF” or “I don’t know what it is but I Jason Nelson: Many of my works are definitively like it”. I think this can be a derived directly from game code. This way to test the net-art potentials and Is How You Will Die uses the skeleton to understand how they can reach of an online slot machine to display its audience outside the traditional art interactive narrative. Ending: scene. Chemistry, a largely ignored work, never published, was created around a card game. And there are other works, like The Bomar Gene , that have game code within them, but where it is not a primary aspect. The most common understanding of what a game is doesn’t really apply to much digital work. Nor do I think it should. Most games have specific goals and consequences, competitions and scores. But with my work, I might . have consequences in the vein of Giulia Simi: How have you moved for responses to user actions, but I find this project? What did your work the notions of competition and score consist of? to be largely societal conceptions, false premises for cultural conquest. Jason Nelson: During my initial However if we extend the notion of research, I examined first person game to include play, then all my shooter game engines, dissecting the works contain game elements. open source code and fondling the folders for the images and sounds. Interesting in this latest project is that And once I’ve identified the purpose from its launch on the web for about 3 of certain images, I create transparent months, it has received more that 7 jpegs of the same name or insert million impressions and I’ve personally animated gifs of landscapes in the got thousands of e-mails requesting

16 place of character movement files. human and personal creation into the Although my results so far haven’t digital, via a retro-game style been very successful, the hope is the interface. game will eventually look nothing like and play nothing like the original or Through the artwork I tried then to any game. There is no way I can recontextualize some of the main compete with large multi million features of videogames. some of the dollar animation and coding budgets. main features of the game. For So why not corrupt the game format example, the score, replaced with entirely. To offer the hint that a arrows/characters, continually spins, user/reader/player is within a game responsive to game play but environment, but birth their 3- numerically meaningless. There are dimensional experience to not unlimited lives within the game, with resemble anything in the physical the only consequences of world. encountering enemies being pushed back to the levels starting point, and So this is how I started exploring announcing in a disembodied voice smaller, flash based, designs . After a “come on and meet your maker”. long research my first result has been Some levels use the “warp” function Game game game and again game , a to transport the creature to certain kind of digital poem, retro-game, an locations. This warping is taken to anti-design statement and a personal absurdity in the levels where the exploration of the artist’s changing character cycles through falling, and worldview lens. Much of the western represents the fruitless personal world’s cultural surroundings, belief investigation of belief and the always systems, and design-scapes, create altering lens. the built illusion of clean lines and definitive choice, cold narrow pathways of five colours, three body sizes and encapsulated philosophy. Within net/new media art the techno-filter extends these straight lines into exacting geometries and smooth bit rates, the personal as WYSIWYG buttons. This game/artwork, while forever attached to these belief/design systems, . attempts to re-introduce the hand- drawn, the messy and illogical, the

17 Giulia Simi: In the description of the operating machines masquerading as project you write: “Refuse the tyranny artworks, I want to see more unclear of clear and perfect design and and complicated, more roughly hewn, coolness belonging to the majority of and poorly made, more of the non- web-net art”. So yours is a kind of linear asides and oddly curious. The proposal to return to the analogical art world has somehow grown into design in order to fight the this industry, one that exists in technology’s standardising power. publishing houses.magazines, Can you explain this concept? dealers/galleries and academic arenas. This industry enforces certain Jason Nelson: Software such as understandings and formats, Adobe Flash or Photoshop largely everything must have a cleanly dominate the appearance and feel of written artists statement and clearly images and artworks. This is partially understood and easily written about due to the software’s data processing artist statement/theory.concept. The methods (Flash with vector drawings) joy, the mystery, the, dare I say, magic and the limited range of tools and of creating has waned….replaced by filters. The mouse (or data pad) also slightly deviations in the technical constrains the artist’s ability to escape manual. The expected understandings the software’s over-powering for the expected outcomes. Code as aesthetic, and thus removing or at code for code. least submerging much of the individual from many net artworks. Therefore this game/artwork began on paper, with charcoal and colored pencils, each level born from the immediacy and error/curve/(e)motion of electricity-less drawing. This hand drawn approach breaks the artwork away from both the oppressive control of software and much of design culture. . I think much of new media art is centered on new technologies and Giulia Simi: Throughout the whole 13 polished design. Everything had to levels you deal with the majority of work and work well within the power systems characterising our systems that new media artists society. Your piece of advice is the create. But instead of neat and cleanly liberation through poetics. According

18 to you, how can poetry fight against from. In society we create these pre-fixed schemes and models which modes of understanding, these bank chain us up? accounts and schedule books to account for and organize our lives. To Jason Nelson: Poetry can and should make us real within our artificial and hopefully will fight against the systems. Poetry and specifically modes, the fixed models of society. digital poetry takes the mind into But it wont be the traditional print itself and discards these systems, poetry, It will be poetry that uses the eliminating the ever-cancerous desire texts of the contemporary world. to place life/lives into cabinets and These texts have forms. Poetry is the dead weight and changed/altered/morphed/transform wings of a crumbling bureaucracy. ed from words into a dynamic and ever growing/deathing range of media languages. Poetics texts are now movements, and interactions, www.secrettechnology.com/gamega interfaces and games, images and me/gamegame.html videos. All of these create stanzas and www.secrettechnology.com/death/d metaphors. Poetry of this nature both eathspin.htm defies dissection and categorization, www.heliozoa.com/gene/bomargene and also seeks to patch and cut away .htm at the systems it builds/births/arrives

19 Peer Production: The Wealth Of Networks

Maresa Lippolis

from an economic approach, he claims new cooperation processes on line are threatening the industrial model on which the cultural production was based all XX century long.

Through the whole book Benkler clearly compares industrial information economy and the emerging networked information “A moment of opportunity and economy . When economists refer to challenge” that is how Yochai information and culture they are Benkler‘s book begins . In Italy “The perfectly aware they are not talking wealth of networks” was published by about a car or a tuna can. They are Egea a couple of months ago but can non-rival goods, that is to say goods be downloaded from the site which can be used again and again www.omniacommunia.org as well. without reducing their availability; once you produce them, you can The aim of the book is to describe the reproduce them again and again with mechanisms which are deranging no marginal cost. information and knowledge production starting from the use of technology and of the net and its cooperation strategies in particular. Still, Benkler is aware of what is going on around him and makes a challenge: he knows a legal battle will be fought in the next ten years to define the ecology of digital environment which will lead to the redefinition of content production as well as of the rights concerning them. Benkler’s thesis is . very simple yet accurate: starting

20 It is thus clear that if a large number emerging and absolutely peculiar of people can reproduce goods phenomenon of our times and thanks to the spreading of digital considers it much more effective than technologies and knock down prices commercial production. thanks to the net, then there are the sufficient conditions to give birth to new ways of knowledge production. In this respect Benkler outlines some profiles which define two different production strategies: on the one hand the romantic maximizer , amusingly called mickey, bases his production on exclusive-rights-based business; on the other the scholarly lawyer , referring to Lessig ‘s . arguments and Creative Commons ‘ models, gives up exclusive rights, These processes are causing wide and aware that commercial production is deep changes, which are also linked shifting from information to to the huge and ever-increasing group consultancy and the services related of people who spread culture for non- to it. commercial reasons, such as amateurs and well-financed non- Actually Benkler outlines a third profit organizations. “If, beside these model called Joe Einstein , which is innovations, we consider that in the the most interesting element of his most advanced economies thought. Benkler wants to emphasize information, culture and knowledge that, the decrease in costs and the have become the main activities with easy availability to knowledge is a high surplus value, it is evident that leading to sharing and cooperating we are experiencing a social and behaviour rather than commercial economic condition without production. To explain it he refers to precedents. Social behaviours which examples such as kernel linux model, were traditionally neglected in wikipedia or even more peculiar capitalistic economy have now situations such as slashdot.com become fundamental elements in community , underlining the dynamics advanced economies. Non- according to which it is possibile to commercial behaviours are becoming build systems which can spread extremely significant for information relevant, authentic and authoritative. and culture production. Culture Benkler is greatly attracted to this

21 sources, which outline our idea of the about which no law has been created world, have radically changed, shifting to both let it develop and protect it. from a strong reliance on commercial The construction of this ecology and media concentration to a more legal culture is the current battle field widespread model which is based on on which industrial production and many different people who are not the so called “peer production” are driven by imperatives such advertising fighting. or entertainment goods sale.” Today two different solutions seem This process leads to the possibile: the Lessig’s continuous strengthening of the concept of licence and authorization on the one autonomy, both meant as action hand, or the opening towards the ability and cooperation with other social practices of sharing based on people. It is based on the access to free access to commons as Benkler information goods which are hopes on the other. We won’t simply perceived as common goods, as well watch what is going to happen, we as on the ability to distribute them will be part of the conflict, whether horizontally and to organize know- we like it or not. how and intervention, that is to say p eer production (aiming at dignifying that peer to peer technical expression http://omniacommunia.org which has been often criticized). Those are the two basic concepts http://www.benkler.org

22 Collective Author, Shared Memory

Motor

ok, but please be at least coherent: no electric current, no buildings (don’t you know architecture uses a high quantity of technology ?) and so on.

Technology has always been part of theatre. As in new media, theatre relation with technologic has always marked art and the introduction of contemporary technologies (once it was the video, now it’s digital) moved An lightning text is ” Post dramatic several equilibrium. Scene machines Theatre ” by Hans-Thies Lehmann , often turn into an actor, covering an that faces the changes of the theatre evident part of the scene itself, not as and its fruition in the contemporary special effect, but as part of the theatre, transformations often marked narration. by hybridizations with new media. We must remember that theatre has always been related to the “scene machine”, that never hesitated to exploit the available technology of every époque.

Just think about architecture or acoustics necessary to build a Greek theatre, about the mechanic to create sounds or move the scenes or how did theatre changed from the invention of . the electricity, with lights and amps. This is the reason why I dissent The role of the author in new media, smiling when I hear people saying as in post-dramatic theatre, is getting how wrong the introduction of more and more faded and confused technology inside the theatre is, with the user one. In many operations, talking about a sort of pureness I’m the concept of text as founding

23 principle of the narration is often manipulated and up-to-date, build called into question and the author and destroyed. The aim is no more the creates contexts that other users will history of a family, rather the use to produce contents presentation of a character that hopes (collaborative writing or web artistic to be popular, or at least to be. The projects). identity must be searched inside the new media space, in any way. The public builds sometime contents even without a real authorial direction It’s not the victim cousins fault, when (see myspace or youtube). So an they modify a common photo, it’s not imaginary is generated and a memory the scholars fault if they film a bully shared (both from the technological scene and put it on youtube, it is not and cultural side). When once the the attacker fault if they move in front album was the house of our of a camera. Everyone do things like photographs and memories, now that not for the other, but for the everyone can see your images online media world. in myspace. The logic of the illustration is changing. The identity is being inside the programs, no more huge narrations (war, partisans, thirty-years worker in The family photograph album has a a factory, being part of the ’68 ). linear narration, historical. It grows Contemporary theatre often sees the has time goes by and represent a solid irruption of the everyday life (or vice reference. versa irrupt in the everyday life, maybe getting out from its location). The everyday that invaded the digital memories of all the sold equipment.

The spread of audio-video technology didn’t bring author films to multiply, but it actually made the everyday, the hyper-real blast. Billions of computers, cameras and video- cameras brought to the explosion of a highly debtor imaginary of the most . pop media culture, in aesthetic and The memory of the new media is language terms. Real-TV, truth survey coherent with our post-modern and TV-series. Anyway, fragmentation perception. Myspace sites are passed the denial of the theological

24 linearity. The deconstruction of the cinematographic experience, through the DVD player remote control, follows an hyper-real perception of the reality itself. The cross-media product concept exemplify the commercial realization and Spider- man is deconstructed both on the videogame and the movie.

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TV itself keeps its broadcasting profile, but less and less monolithic, less and less big brother. Actually, big brother is the public itself, that can finally influence real moments lived by the protagonists. I asked my barman how would he change DVD and he . told me: change histories! The other paradox is the creation of P2P network are a shared memory as worlds, crazy, coherent, but also well. Emule combines and defines the unfathomable and almost imaginary of desire and fear (filmic, incomprehensible microcosm, that musical, textual, visual) of its users. It’s demand the Ballard teaching of their a floating imaginary. Some objects own identity through the personal will disappear from the memory, pathology. Unheimlich turns into the some will have a little moment of unquestionable and media charm of popularity, some will be available for a the unsuspicious massacre of the long time only for some users, some neighbour (Ballard is once again a will suddenly appear from a hard disk prophet with his enclave of mansions disconnected until that real instant. and homicides). Database memory, not historical memory. Emule is strictly related to We’re talking about incomplete new media, as free-access archive narration, fragments. and content distributor platform.

25 26 The Revenge Of Nico & The Vascellaris

Massimo Schiavoni

from photography to design, from body to video, from music to installations. His polyhedral research always foresees an exhibition space, a public and a non-indifferent tax of improvisation and creativity, a new and suggestive energy that always and however communicates.

Themes of his works go from relation with nature, infinite source of He’s from Vittorio Veneto the most inspiration, to camouflage with interesting, charismatic and eclectic eccentric dresses and costumes, real thirty-year-old of the Italian art, and skins and new mental identities that he never failed. Nico Vascellari made draw on his own -maybe teenage- his name at the design department of imaginary, to original and rule- Fabrica and at the Superior Course of breaking videos and happenings. So Visual Art of the Antonio Ratti’s here’s Nico during a metal concert Foundation to turn into the winner of appearing from the crowd with a little the International Prize of the camera, recording a reality near to Performance of Trento . him. And now Nico on a forge of trunks, with musicians Stephen He attended the Italian Academy at O’Malley and John Wiese , playing and Columbia University and will be artist singing accompanied by the rhythm in residence with scholarship at the created by the lumberjacks that sharp American Academy of Rome . The timbers. Alpine procession or winner of the 2007 Prize for the esotericallyKate Moss ritual? He’s now mixing young art is a musician, as front-man different media, cuttingVogue a thousand America of of the With Love , underground group images and all the eyes part of the noise punk movement, inside the last , but most of all performer that proposing them obsessively in the interacts with several language codes, same position on a white paper .

27 the happening and mobile installation.

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This is Nico Vascellari , inexhaustible . artist, that turned his world into art, his nature into aesthetic, multi-visual Revenge is his last work, an artistic and global experience. He brought the site specific project curated by Paolo Social Centre to the maximum artistic Colombo and Monica Pignatti level, his yells to be listened inside the Morano, opened to the public from 10 Art Galleries and Festivals. His th June to 21 st November 2007 at the movements stagger the embarrassed Marceglia, outside the Arsenal of public, astonishing the art system, Venice for the Biennale . A seven now as never opened to the novelties, metres wall plenty of amps from the to the total. The personality of his different shapes and dimensions. style impresses such as his conviction Walls that bring you to the sculpture- that underground art is now free from performance room are made of wood, priggishness and hypocrisy, such as as the wall that sustains the amps. his unnatural and coherent tenacity That faces toward, in an extreme dark not to exclude anyone as protagonist. and poetic gesture, a wall made of flowerpots identical to the Venetian He’s born from music and music is the ones. Everything sounds. At the beginning of his art without obstacles. centre of the room, a parallelepiped of A digital Beethoven, if you want, not wood sculpted in simple and once without a Mejerchol’d, an electronic again gothic signs. Picabia not without a Kaprow. Acoustic art on stage, performance Revenge is a body performance, sound. Singing evolution and concert centred on an audio carpet with re-definition. New listening, new violent volume, executed only during efficient and penetrating sensibilities. the varnishing-day for the press in a Sine-acoustic representation, score of similar space/three-dimensional

28 sculpture. Nico comes from the top, screams for some ten minutes, from the peak of the amplifiers wall, inebriated by the public, on their with a rope. He arrives on the public heads, crashing on the floor. Lots of and, tempted from flying, he decides little pixies dressed like Nico sustain to remain on the improvised stage his microphone, dragging the thread (the parallelepiped) and scream his behind his frenetic movements. will to revenge . His entire imaginary is During the performance, Nico often finally the prince and no more sans flies on the public, so that the second papier inside the social centres of the day part of the public stood far from north-east, on time for the last the artist. hardcore concert. None of the soars has tragic consequences, some hurting noses and shocked misses. Nothing particular, Revenge is similar to a punk concert. The novelty is that Vascellari, with his t-shirts, videos DIY and underground experience can make his voice listened, and he wins the exposure inside the maximum art temple.

. Through Revenge an entire aesthetic and cultural scene is rewarded. Vascellari’s voice arrives at the mixer Revenge is the triumph of the nerd directed by John Wiese ( Los Angeles aesthetic that rules inside tribes ), musician of the international noise without government, that proliferate scene ( Sunn O))), Wolf Eyes, Merzbow in Vittorio Veneto as well as in New ). Wiese brings him back, to the same York . amps he has in front. Nico dances and

29 Second Fest, A Great Event For Few…

Tiziana Gemin

dance tents and start dancing and socializing, in more or less tactful ways.

There aren’t many people, which is not surprising since this is the first day and there aren’t many groups performing. We start warming up with Groove Armada’s dj set, and we finish with Toby Tobias . Some irreducible party addicts, among which it’s me, In the afternoon of 29th June 2007 I’m stay after the last performance of the anxiously waiting outside the gates of day and dance till dawn on pre- SecondFest , the huge musical event recorded tracklists and entertain one which will last all the weekend and another with juggler tricks made of during which a series of more or less coloured lights. famous artists will perform. A small and colourful crowd has already thronged at the entrance when, with a slight delay as regards the programme timetable, the gates open.

The venue of the festival, where I am going to spend the next three days, is so huge my sight cannot tell how wide it is. I try to orientate myself and, after having long wandered through food and drink stalls, raver clothes . stands, chemical toilets and camping tents, I finally spot the five different After having wandered here and there stages where artists are going to during the first day now that it’s perform. While in the air you can hear Saturday I move from one stage to music resounding from the first gigs another with confidence: from soul people gather around arenas and big singer Tawiah’s gig to New Young

30 Pony Club’s, from Tiga’s dj set, which . makes almost everyone dance, to the performance of the Londoner dj Gilles In the meanwhile the audience has Peterson , who created Acid Jazz label increased exponentially and in front of . Every now and then I recover the stage set up for Strangefates’ energies going to one of the performance the crowd is so huge I conference rooms which are nearly nearly cannot move. empty and I almost fall asleep on one The highest audience peak is for the of the theatre seats during a boring last performance on Sunday night. performance. That’s how I spend my Already one hour before the Pet Shop second day, while the audience keep Boys’ exhibition, which closes the on increasing. SecondFest, People gather in front of On Sunday afternoon I follow the the main stage. The dancers paw the electronic live performance of Dan backstage ground, the audience Berkson and James What , which is vibrates with impatience in front of rather exciting and so I decide to talk the arena and at last the British duo to them. The two English artists are shows up. Just after a couple of songs very kind to me: together we there are so many people crammed I remember their performance at Sonar cannot dance, I cannot even leave the last year and they give me an crowd, I cannot hardly do anything. indefinite number of interesting links And there I stand, stuck, impotently to videos and recordings available on jammed in the mud of the lag, till my the web. We have a long chat, until computer crashes the awaited performance of the well- All that happened durino the known dj David Mancuso , a real icon weekend between 29th June and 1st with no need for introductions, being July 2007, in a location that can be the founder of New York garage scene reached exclusively by those who at the beginning of the 90. Then I belong to Second Life virtual jump on the dancefloor again. community and that was expressly built for SecondFest.

31 by the virtual world of Linden Lab. Experiments on educational, social and commercial fields have been carried out within this 3D environment; and the way it is used has changed with the passing of time, as its residents have changed too.

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SecondFest has been the first huge event hosted within this metaverse which was created by the American artist Rosedale and by Linden Lab and is accessible from 2003. The event, supported by the English tabloid The Guardian and by Intel, presented a . series of both live and non-live musical performances in which both The most known multinational avatars corresponding to real corporations first were curious and musicians and artists exclusively colonized the virtual land, but then known in their digital disguises withdrew. Second Life did not seem performed. to favour commercial expansion and thus big brands’ interest has soon Some performances were audio- decreased; maybe also because the visual recordings of recent gigs; some number of active residents is other, maybe more interesting, were decreasing and does not reflect the performed live and broadcasted in figures regarding the number of real time to Second Life community. subscriptions, which greatly exceeds Some groups performed in front of a that of the actual population. camera exclusively for SecondFest, and transmitted images which were Only some brands keep on searching projected on big screens on the different ways of communicating with stages. Second Life’s community. Intel is a case in point and has recently Hosting events such as SecondFest is supported different events such as one of the many possibilities offered contests among developers, meetings

32 to promote online training, . environments for prototyping and conferences for technicians. This is Moreover, creating events in Second yet an experiment, and we do not Life is less expensive and complicated know whether the promotion of than its real life equivalent and that is editorial contents and of art or music why this virtual world could be events through Linden Lab creation considered the starting point for will be successful. artists to share and spread their works of art. It is thus impossible to foresee One of the interesting aspects the future developments of this regarding Second Life could be the microcosm: some say it will become a social dimension of its way of hybrid blending with other interacting, which, unlike other applications, some see it as a possibile methods of online information future browser through which surfing diffusion, offers a real time experience “physically” web sites, some others sharing within a community. consider it just a way to chat.

Maybe this phenomenon will simply fade out as a fleeting fashion; despite all Second Life will surely leave an enduring mark thanks to the echo it had in media world but mostly because of the influence the virtual had, in this case, on the real world.

33 Skoltz Kolgen: Silence In The Rooms

Redazione Digicult

“Ce ci n’est pas un film”. Paraphrasing Magritte, Skoltz Kolgen introduce the viewer/spectator through rooms that constitute the film-poem Silent Room. The conceptual game, built linking this work to the cinematic medium and denying it at the same time, resumes important aspects of the artwork: in between videomaking and filmaking, it highlights the connection between some features of The recent release of a wonderful experimental cinema and the latest DVD (presented during the Elektra developments of audiovisual Festival in Montreal and now language, from video art to livemedia distributed worldwide) represents the performances. newest chapter of Silent Room, a work by Canadian artists Skoltz Kolgen, started in 2003 and presented in different ways over the years, from video installations to AV live cinema.

Each one of these forms has been a different approach to re-think the original flux of audiovisual poetry, and to experiment various ways of narration. Moreover, the new DVD features a very stylish packaging, with . a double inside content (audio cd and video dvd full of extras regarding the Silent Room lies in the interstices backstage of the work) and a three- between different cathegories of the language booklet: English, French audiovisual language. The film, the and Italian! – enriched by astonishing movie, are used by Skoltz Kolgen to pictures. rethink one of the first fundamental characteristic of cinematographic

34 language: the construction of a story. every room. The physical body of each Each room is a ‘ tableau vivent’, a core character, too, becomes filter and that forms, together with the others, a manifestation of inner states. The modular form of storytelling, a alteration of the body talks is an narration composed of disparate organic externalization of existence’s elements, compounded time after anomalies. At the same time each time in constantly different paths, body is the metronome of a circular created by the viewer moving through and claustrophobic time, by way of installations or DVD tracks, or through repeated loop gestures and the remixing of live materials, mixing meaningless rituals. characters’ identities on five screens. Each life and story is a lonely monad, characters don’t show themselves, their stories are dumb, just joined by their separateness, by their enclosure in a state of being which is pure existence.

The similarity of their condition constitutes the link that helps find a common trace in the multiplicity: Silent Room is in fact a compound by . element; nevertheless at the same The Canadian artists describe, using time it is a poem, an organic work on close shots, details that mix 35-mm loneliness, in which every room is a footage, digital video footage and shade over the theme of alienation. photography, a time and space Each character is surrounded uniquely simultaneously product and cage of by his own self, in a condition where the same room, being both the the environment itself and the objects psychological projection of the around become embodiments of the character. A visual approach that does psyche. not talk but lets itself be deformed, Skoltz Kolgen use the object in a overwhelmed by the observed reality. surrealistic way, abandoning Claudia D’Alonzo: How was the functionality and turning it into a concept of Silent Room born? symbol, a lexeme of a language deprived by words, useful to write Skoltz Kolgen: Honestly, Silent Room “skies of silence” allowing the took shape gradually. First, we started audience to feel the mental space in with drawings, sketches on paper,

35 without a clear intention; we took our room. Following our intuitions, time and relaxed, in the morning illustrate the moment when someone during coffee time. As a way to projects himself in his interior life due stretch our life rhythm and dedicate to seclusion. It slowly transforms until time to introspection. it becomes an extension of their own state of mind. The place they live We gave shape to human bodies with becomes a shelter with no witnesses, pencil and coal-chalk, emotive where they can, without any external impressions, stretched forms, interference, develop an ever more distorted as their inner state would one-way psychological behaviour. have morphed their physical shape. Walls become their limits, objects Finally we met with a great number of reflect their personality. As if the room concepts that, time after time, were the extension of their interior encouraged us to proceed. Some of self. the themes have collapsed, creating associations and most of Silent Room Starting from these themes, we have ones started to have their own profile. elaborated some mini flexible storyboards. These abstract portraits have inspired context, aesthetic environment and creative focus of each room. Once begun, it was immediately clear we weren’t looking for a rigid and linear structure, rather helix constructions and temporal abstraction. This process is situated between the tableau vivant and poetry.

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Claudia D’Alonzo: How did you find the characters? Which is the meaning of the structure given by the rooms?

Skoltz Kolgen: The discussion about our drawings lead us to imagine and extrapolate certain situations, locations, characters. We wanted to create audiovisual snapshots for each . character in his private life, his own

36 Claudia D’Alonzo: How did you make for us to find peoplewho were shootings, built up the set and how naturally and physically similar to our did you edit the footage? characters. So, we especially concentrated on how spontaneous Skoltz Kolgen: Concerning the set, we they were during the shootings. improvised a studio inside an old Regarding the objects, furniture, clothing factory in Montreal . We clothes, tapestries, we found many locked ourselves up in the factory for things in fleas markets and from old more than a month. Every morning, boutiques, second-hand shops and so we built up the set, we chose the on. personal props and at the end of the day, until night-time, we shot with the About the shootings, we wanted to actor. We focused generally on one film with many simultaneous optics single room shooting per day. and points of view. We built up some synchronized camera systems. At the First of all, we did a casting to find the same time, we wanted to mix and actors. We didn’t want profesionals, compare a digital style with a more so we did casting in the streets and organic one of 35mm footage. met people. It seemed more suitable

37 with animals. They were present since we started drawing. So, putting togheter all our preliminary drawings, there were many animals. I think we were interested to the human/animal relationship, in its particular developments. But also in comparing the human and animal condition. There was probably the idea of pet animals, take to the extreme, and of . progressive mimetism of animals and humans in an extended cohabitation Claudia D’Alonzo: What kind of link condition. were you looking for between images and soundtrack? How did you work on sound?

Skoltz Kolgen: There were many working methods on sound as many rooms we had. For some of them, we had already imagined a sound-base during the shootings. For others, the sound architecture was built up before editing and we developed software to link the movement of . sound to assembling. In other rooms, like Usure du temps, the soundtrack Claudia D’Alonzo: How do you use the was created in parallel with original material for the Silent Room assembling, in a very intuitive way. presentations (Dvd, installation, live Each sound track was tailored for set)? each room, and all the sound sources were created by us Skoltz Kolgen: The original idea was to project every chapter in the old Claudia D’Alonzo: In some videos hotel rooms in Argentina . Try to there are animals. Do they have a imagine the smell of these rooms, specific symbolic value? Is there a link their faded walls and flower between animals and bodies? tapestries, the beds, the old objects The audience would have Skoltz Kolgen: Honestly speaking, we chosen the floor and the room didn’t have any specific will in working

38 numbers. They would have sat down intimate universe in the space. Each on Milka’s or Rudolf’s bed and they character was in the room via the would have a projection of what the video projection. The audience moved room had once been, surrounded by from one room to another through the character’s private objects. some corridors and could stay in the room as long as it wanted. . Fruition The idea was stimulating, but it was so completely different for each seemed risky for us to approach spectator, depending on one’s chosen contexts which allow this kind of path and rhythm. distribution. So, we simplified the concept and we decided to make a In the performance finally, everything linear version with all the tracks, in is much more intense, because we one whole sequence, to present the use 5 projectors simultaneously. This art piece within film festivals. In this allows us to compare together the version Silent Room was projected for identities of more characters. We more than 3 years. On the Dvd you opted for a surrounding sound can find this version, together with system, so the emotional tonality is unreleased tracks which had been very dynamic. excluded from the festivals’ version.

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. Claudia D’Alonzo: Silent Room is a The Italian festival Transart in Bolzano film-poem. It is an extremely poetic gave us the chance to present Silent art piece, if we consider poetry like an Room as an installation. We used impulse to a deep introspection, a some rooms in a barracks in a military reflection on individual and his camp. We prepared every room with existing condition. Do you think that some objects and animals which poetry has a role inside digital art introduce elements of the rooms’ today?

39 Skoltz Kolgen: Digital art is the use of addition inside digital processes, is the computer power to create artistic fundamental for us. works, with or without poetry. Reconsidering poetry notion inside contemporary digital art, and organic www.skoltzkolgen.ca

40 Struttura Organica 2007, Computing Nature

Marco Mancuso

models of Mother Nature, using maths to express perfection, as well as giving people common instruments of coding and interpretation of the technologic reality we are surrounded by through a relationship and a codified rapport with ideal organic, well, all of this is a chimera that art posed in front of itself since its born. From Leonardo da Vinci to Sol Le Witt

When we, in some years, will have , through the “unique formulas in the stiffness, and maybe time, to watch continuity of the space” by Futurists behind with the right critical spirit and to the architectural vision of Le with knowledge instruments more Corbusier and inside the and more mature and shared, I’m sure philosophical-multi-disciplinary that one of the most strong thematic thoughts of Ludwig Wittgenstein : “for will be the possible relation between everyone, maths must be applied to technology, nature and art in this nature – inside physics, from Galileo, systematic order. Struttura Organica it’s more and more applied – and it is 2007, video art and net art festival general opinion that geometry and from 7 th to 9 th September in San arithmetic describe the world”. Vincenzo – Livorno, is maybe the first Obviously the use and develop of Italian exhibition that turns the complex calculation instruments, the attention to these themes, through born of more and more dynamic and the well-known formula of festival, accessible software, the possibility of meetings, art works and live an exchange and share of knowledge performance. more and more spread in the Net, as It is not the fact that the analysis of well as the precocious born of virtual possible relations between man, its worlds to build and live in, they give a technologies, living organism and art vital atmosphere plenty of possibility. forms are new themes, of course. Degenerative digital art , bio art and Replicating dynamic and structure the most recent forms of media

41 architecture ( those of Zaha Hadid, We talked with the organizers through Libeskind, Nox and Novak, just to a multiple interview that evidence mention some ) are just some of the how Struttura is a project in evolution, most brilliant examples of what said. supported by a group of people, that have different competences, experiences and formations, even if all related to the multimedia and art world. The artistic direction take advantage of the richness brought by this plurality, so it’s cured by some subjects.

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Well, the 2007 Struttura edition analyses those themes through a series of works and meetings on the paths of possible interconnections between nature and science. Contact points expressed through those art . forms that have inside their DNA this strong dualism: electronic arts. Marco Mancuso: The relation between Central appointment of the San technology, art and nature is one of Vincenzo 3-days will surely be the the most actual themes of art and presentation of the book Art Biotech, communication of the new media. in the presence of its author Jens Struttura is a festival of video art and Hauser , but also the round table net art that during its 3 editions about generative art with Fabio focused on different thematic, Franchino and Alessandro Capozzo , searching for a theme analysis the installations and live by Otolab modality made through the (with their new work Animula) and exploration of several practices and Alessandra Cianelli , as well as the disciplines. How do you think to video collection proposed by Invideo ( conjugate the general themes of not to be missed the Torsten Fleisch analysis related to art in video and on videos ). the Net inside a bigger and multi- faces context (subject next year to

42 analysis), such as the dialogue on themes that are sometime too between human-nature-computer? much exclusive and niche. This is what distinguish the festival from the other: Francesca Nadalini: The choice of a 360° approach to themes. The organic art and the art forms that catalogue at the end of the explore the relationship between manifestation will collect all the technology and nature as unique contributions of people that will theme of Struttura 2007 is surely intervene during the exhibition, determined by the actuality of the recomposing an ensemble vision of theme. We understood that in this the theme, as it was for “Studi e case, more than in others, art is visioni sul mare digitale”, catalogue of evidencing to the public the social the 2006 edition. and cultural changes determined by the science and technological experimentation with reference to human and nature. As always, Struttura talks will deepen the aspects of the theme starting from the prospective research of means privileged to their interpretation thanks to the participation of experts of the art forms object of the program (video art, net.art and computer animation). Thanks to this approach, . peculiarities of the expressive Marco Mancuso: When video and net meaning will emerge in the have works that investigate the interpretation of the interconnections relationship and interpenetration between the natural and artificial between technology and nature, I got spheres, conscious that they cannot some doubts on some elements of be auto-referential and technical, but the program. For example the they must interpret the content of the conference on the procedural art, art work. recognized as excellent form of Gianfranco Toninelli: Struttura, as graphic design and software art, but project, is a collector of contributions, not form of machinery art quickly a gateway that promotes the proposed during the years because of participation of curators and artists codes and generative modular interested in the creation of languages. Generative processes confrontation and dialogue moments made by a computer can replicate

43 and remember the autonomous and existed until the discovery of the all-sufficient nature processes; don’t material electronic properties. The you find a simple and at least a non debate is therefore not the real parallel to the description of technocratic delirium, rather the complex processes that we’re still far evolution of the conscience to away from their replication with frontiers once unknown that now can machines in a sort of technocratic and must be taken in consideration. omnipotent delirium? (nature and universe are ruled by secret organic and chemical-physics processes, so non reproducible even if by the most evolved forms of A.I.).

Thomas Alisi: If the aim of procedural art would only be the replication of nature, it would surely be a little limitative. The investigation of meanings must be seen with more aims than the only creation of a . parallel, as the study of dynamics that, Marco Mancuso: Some of the partners can start from “organic” generative of Struttura work with video and processes, but also create new technology, such as Invideo and aesthetical and sense experience. Virtuality for example. Did you directly From a strictly scientific point of view, confronted with the programs they it is extremely elegant to recourse to proposed or did you leave carte quantum description that rules the blanche to the involved professionals? dynamics of the elementary particles (Apropos, really interesting the present inside the material and how Invideo exhibition and excellent they are described in probabilistic choice for Thorsten Fleisch). terms, just think to the Andreina Di Brino: In the case of the indetermination principle of Invideo archive, I did whatever I Heisenberg. In this optic, the wanted and proposed a selection of generative art can express the international character putting situation of an artist that, thanks to a together works of young promises, as brush, intervene to atomic level inside the French Delphine Hallis or the projects that have nothing in common Belgian “video-choreographer” De with A.I., rather try to gain a detail and Bemels, with the well-known name of expression level that simply didn’t

44 the international video-artistic traditional cartoon with a panorama as the American Susanna cinematographic mark etc It covers a Carlisle, multi-decorated author in the new expressive zone, waiting for US and Europe and that collaborated research and programs more with artists such as Woody Vasulka – modulated and structured, on which pioneer of the video art -, Bruce we already started to work. Hamilton or Joan La Barbara , and the German Thorsten Flesich, student of Kubelka and author of experimental movies presented in many festivals and manifestations.

Luca Carlucci: The collaboration with Virtuality Conference – a step forward for a future and more integrated partnership – has been possible thanks to the helpfulness of Maria Elena Gutierrez, art director of Virtuality and . Resfest Turin, that offered the Marco Mancuso: The panel “La selection of the digital short movies declinazione del vivente” and the that participated to the last edition of presentation of the book “Art Biotech” Virtuality (selection presented, out of by Jens Hauser seem really its original site, only in Milan). It is a interesting. I had the opportunity to selection of absolute value – some of read the English version of the book, the presented movies already became and one of the central theory is that little classics of the contemporary the so called “bioart” is an artistic computer animation – and practice that starts from organic and heterogeneous. And the theme of the natural processes, from chemical- dialectic organic body – digital body, physics reactions and scientific so fatally intrinsic to CGI animation, proceedings that have only a little to goes constantly and transversally share with computing and digital through the movies presented with disciplines in general. Apart from this different degree of centrality. Well, analysis, it is surely interesting, even if the Virtuality selection enters the a little short-sighted of some artistic theme of organic art in a project where the usage of computer discontinuous and heterodox manner, is integrated and even amplify the purely phenomenological, taking to organic proceedings (think about task visual and narrative forms that Evelina Dominitch and Dimitri goes from experimental to abstract to

45 Gelfand, Kurt Hentschlager and Cae ), approaches at the “living” theme, how does Struttura 2007 concept apparently analogue, start from the compare to the apparently opposite artificial life and intelligence thematic, theory exposed by Hauser? that art affronted during the 80′s. Who’s working as theoretical or artist Pier Luigi Cappucci: The approach to inside the world of biotech art knows biotech art substantially observe the those kind of experiences and organic dimension and insists on this consciously decides to follow other element as possible new dimension of way. It is not about being short- artistic experimentation. The book by sighted, rather focus and area choice. Jens Hauser, “Art Biotech”, published Anyway approaches and by Clueb-Mediaversi, integrated the experimentations able to integrate content of the French catalogue of the digital/technological component the world opening for biotechnology are allowed, even if outside the art (“L’art Biotech” of Nantes in 2002) current emphasis that sees it as with some unpublished essays. Other preeminent.

46 evolution inside the artistic, social, technological and communicational area?

Agnese Benassi: The edition of Struttura 2007 is configures as a “rite of passage”. The choice of the “Organica” theme has been a challenge to enlarge our border, building bridges between the studied

. practices in the past editions and other interdisciplinary artistic Marco Mancuso: Which are the experiences. Looking at the program, themes for next editions, the most even Sunday MultiMediasug follows interesting symptoms you notice in this direction, presenting the video and net art? Don’t you think heterogeneous projects that give that, arriving to a possible fourth back the vivacity and activism of the edition, Struttura needs a higher multimedia Italian panorama. conceptual point of view, with a bigger and inter-disciplines vision for a more structured table of the existing www.struttura.li.it

47 Greenaway: Cinema Is Dead, Long Lives Cinema

Barbara Sansone

and the pleasure to host one of the most brave and creative cinema directors of the international scene: Peter Greenaway. Well known, loved and hatred because of his movies, ” Drowning by Numbers , “, ” The Belly of an Architect “, ” The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover ” , ” The Pillow Book “, since 2003 the film director has been working on a multi- media project, The Tulse Luper Among the several places where Suitcases . Barcelona offers its cultural proposals there is the Teatre Grec, hosting and This work in progress is composed by giving the name to the famous 3 films, very innovative from the visual summer festival. Designed by the point of view, a TV movie, several architect Ramon Raventós in 1929, the books, 92 DVDs and CD-Roms, theatre in the open air has the typical collaborative participations on the structure of the ancient Greek web etc. The project deals with the theatres. Moreover you come in life of a writer who collects features of passing through a marvellous garden various celebrities: John Cage, Marcel fitted out with design illumination. Duchamp, Marshall McLuhan, Italio Thanks to its seat on the Montj uïc hill, Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Peter while waiting for the beginning of the Greenaway’s father and many others. show you can enjoy here an The writer’s life, represented through outstanding view of the city at sunset, 92 suitcases, several objects and perhaps with a glass of Spanish wine characters (everything is catalogued Cava or a cool beer in you hand. and numbered) is strictly bound to uranium, whose atomic number is On July 2007, the 13 th , this magic indeed 92. place had indeed the responsibility

48 In Barcelona Greenaway officially proclaimed the death of cinema. Afterwards, because of the need for renewal in art, of the obvious social and cultural revolution provoked by omnipresent pc and mobile phones, Mr. Greenaway together with the Catalonian actor Jordi Boixaderas showed 92 quotations about democracy, during the prelude of the . show “The Democracy Speech”. Maybe they were too much, but the The story of Tulse Luper is a story of symbolic number in this case was so captivity, where everything is pregnant that this exceed was stratagem for visual aesthetics, forgiven. celebration of architecture, colours, details and contrasting shades. Every shot complements each other perfectly, is superimposed, traps the others, has influence on the others. And then the shoots multiple in number and stagger, letters and numbers are no more communication instruments but aesthetical elements, becoming co-stars in this visual dance.

. Some short loops of these movies (and others of the artist) are the Therefore he exhibited in the new material for “Tulse Luper VJ Tour“. This stop of his VJ Tour, even if the project is an experiment coherent to the seems to be a real example of live Greenaway’s attempt to show that the cinema, rather than a graphic and underlying theme of a cinema product visual backing to a dj music. By the has not necessarily to be a text. And way, in this performance Peter as it is an already shaped material and Greenaway was accompanied by the because of its strongly experimental Dutch DJ Radar alias Serge Dodwell, soul, Greenaway had no difficulty in and supported by VJing’s system volunteering as VJ, a role that he developed by Beamsystems Holanda. wants to play ironically.

49 The device is composed by a huge touch screen (that represented an . impossible dream for any vjing in the In acknowledgment of this concept world because of the relevant cachet, the sources of sound were the same of the poor consideration they usually video clips’ audio tracks. In fact during have in clubs and their nature of the performance they were computer nerd) where the director elaborated in real time and set as chooses video clips drawn by his surrounding and well harmonised movies, standing in the midst of the backgrounds by DJ Radar. scene like a conductor and Unfortunately in some passages the supervising them on the three maxi- musician prevailed, obliging the screens. With any probability the audience to listen to too manipulating choice for more asymmetry or game rhythms and sounds. And this with all the screens would have provoked stops in the personal conveyed more dynamism and have process of feeling and perceiving, resulted in more interesting sound otherwise encouraged by the images, effects. sounds and abstract story. Yet Greenaway in person said at the On the whole, the performance was overture of his performance that he very interesting, especially if you was not a VJ. The project didn’t consider the process in inverted turn. consist of projecting imagines as Its power derives from the same backings for music during a concert or original sources, which are in a disco, but to offer a new way to performances, and their live use is just tell a story, dismantling and their natural continuation. In brief, the reassembling it in a chance and final result is not due to a real time unrepeatable way. This process let the manipulation of images, but to the spectator free to interpret and reconstruction of elements already perceive it in a personal way. present in the incredible director’s creations. While trying to contribute to the history of cinema, Mr. Greenaway has already made history.

www.barcelonafestival.com

http://petergreenaway.co.uk/

50 www.tulseluper.net www.djradar.com/music.html www.tulselupernetwork.com www.beamsystems.nl/

51 Thorsten Fleisch, The Fourth Dimension In Video

Marco Mancuso

flattening that turned lots of artists into similar copies, sons of an époque that sees the multiplication of festivals and exhibitions of any type, reachable through low cost flights able to interest a net of audio-video nerd that even a budding sociologist could recognize as the ideal melting pot of any aesthetic-cultural plateau.

So here’s the Berliner Thorsten Fleisch Thorsten Fleisch is one of those artists , an audio-visual artist in the most that with his works, in my opinion, analogical meaning of the term, a spontaneously gives meaning to director in the most modern meaning theory, currents, opinions, discourses of the experimental cinema, able to and discussions confusingly gathered brake down every artistic barrier, around a specific theme, anticipating, every definition, every primordial in this, modalities and analysis often instinct that often annoy the new- understood and shared but rarely media critic, that affirms: “well, expressed in a concrete way in a nothing special, already seen!”. work.

This is what’s going on in the video-art and audio-visual contemporary world, experimentations of sounds and images, audio and video through the obsessive use of digital and its instruments, it doesn’t matter if new software or tools for the managing of live flux. It is pointless to remember the consequent stimulations, aesthetics and representations .

52 Well, some of Fleisch’s works are the effect of a video projector with an already dated, clearly they’ve been optic sound; VideoSkin and SkinFlick, already seen. His most famous work, where the beams emitted by a TV are Gestalt, had the Honorary Mention at visualized observing the effects on the 2003 Ars Electronica and skin), 16mm recording techniques travelled around the video and new placed side by side to the ability to media art festival of the entire world. customize digital software and HD Unfortunately, it’s been travelling techniques, fascination towards the since three years ago, often fourth dimension theories and accompanied by some more exciting quaternary fractals to describe unreal companions, such as Energie!, universes, whose visualization is the Friendly Fire, Kosmos, Silver Screen, work itself (as in Gestalt and in the VideoSkin, BloodLust . What does it yet inedited Dromospehere ). mean? First of all, their works are, unusual in his area, without time. A unique character in the foreground They’ll live through the years and of the video art that, going back on emerge over the creative chaos of what said before, gives a living answer nowadays. Secondly, his videos have a to interpenetration between video art, unique concept, cinematographic set experimental cinema, audio-visual up, experimental approach between techniques and work modalities analogical and digital, and pure interconnected between analogical audio-visual aesthetical result. and digital.

I had the honour to chat with Thorsten Fleisch of his work. His favourite themes of the relation between body, nature, matter elements and technological instruments (as in Energie!, where an energetic electron beam is impressed on photographic paper; Kosmos and Friendly Fire, where the combustion processes of the film are visualized; . Silver Screen, where the modification of the light parameters and Marco Mancuso: Your movies seem prospective on a sequence of paper searching for a dialogue, a common sheets brings unexpected audio- sense and a unique and concrete visual dynamics; BloodLust, where interconnection between human the artist blood paints pattern under

53 body and its fluids, with nature ‘friendly fire’ or like the electrical strengths and phenomenon, of which discharges that sometimes made the audiovisual dynamics are beautiful holes in the photo paper (for descriptions of something powerful ‘energie!’) when the discharge was and out of control. With movies such very strong. I have to admit I very as Energie! (where an electron beam much like disastrous outcomes in my is impressed upon photographic visual experiments. paper), Kosmos, Friendly Fire (where film combustion processes are Marco Mancuso: And again. Looking visualized), Silver Screen (where the at your movies, you seem interested modification of light and prospective to the frailty and beauty of our body parameters on a sequential series of under the influence of machines, paper sheets brings unexpected energy and nature. I’m talking about audiovisual dynamics), you seem BloodLust (where the artist blood interested to both, as well as to their paints patterns under the effect of a possible interconnections and video projector with optical sound), reactions. VideoSkin, SkinFlick (where the beams coming out from a TV is visualized Thorsten Fleisch: Yes, it is true. you through the effects brought to our touched some key elements of what skin). I’m interested in. I like to look for patterns and new insights in nature Thorsten Fleisch: Yes, there is a lot of (which includes my own body) and beauty that needs to be seen. this is use technology to investigate it. what I hope to find, what motivates technology that I can understand and me. I like the tension that comes from use, technology that works on a visual regular order contrasting chaotic level. I use technology because it order. for example in ‘bloodlust’ the gives me a different perspective than chaotic order would be the patterns my own senses do. in using of the blood on the filmstrip which are technology I come across its put into order by the machinery of the limitations and the fabric of projector, the regular rhythm it gives technology itself which I then try to the chaotic texture. incorporate in my work as well. the result is sometimes a blending of the technology I’m using and the natural phenomenon I’m examining. sometimes the natural phenomenon even destroys the technology like the fire that burns the film material in

54 . the direction the dolly moves). so in a single frame I would also have Marco Mancuso: How do you usually movement (from position 1 to position work on you idea? What inspires you, 2) and thus time. now with moving where do you study the physics the tracks I could move in this 4d reactions described, how do you work spacetime. problem was it didn’t on set ups, on a video technique, on really look that interesting. so I tried audiovisual techniques and on the use other things and now came to the of possible digital instruments? solution that the most promising is to put 1:18 scale model sports cars on the Thorsten Fleisch: That depends on the dolly and move the camera around project I’m working on. I can give you them. so I have the car in motion but a very recent example of the film I’m at the same time very still like a speed working on now. it’s called sculpture. ‘dromosphere’. the original idea was to have a representation of einsteinian As you can see the concept pretty spacetime. to give a visual idea of 4d much changed from the spacetime space not in the geometrical sense concept at the beginning to the like I tried in ‘gestalt’ but more in the experiment in velocity and the physical sense. normally when you ask phenomenon of speed it is now (who people about the 4th dimension knows what will still change until I they’ll reply that time is the 4th finish the film). on the theoretical level dimension. that is true of the physical I now moved away from einstein to description by einstein, but of course jeremy clarkson with drops of paul it is not the only truth as it can also be virilio sprinkled upon to add a little described geometrically. anyway, so I philosophical flavor and a few grains wanted to give a visual representation of futurism for a touch of history. of 3d space with time included to make it a 4d space. to achieve this I build a camera dolly that could control the shutter of the camera. the camera would face perpendicular to the tracks of the dolly. at position 1 it would open the shutter and at position 2 ( a few centimeters after position 1) it would shut it again. after each frame I would move the tracks of the dolly in the direction of where the camera was filming (perpendicular to .

55 Marco Mancuso: Your movies are I’m very analogue (except for ‘gestalt’) appreciated and acclaimed by critics, because I’m not really a programmer both the experimental cinema and the or coder. I have only superficial electronics audiovisual professionals. knowledge of computer languages. Do you think the technologic dialogue also I find 3d modelling software between analogic and digital can be much too complex. I tried getting into the key to understand this polarity or maya but gave up. I think it is very is it all up to your abilities to create powerful but I’m too chaotic and suggestion, mixing different disorganized to work with it. the techniques to obtain something new problem with digital technology that I and never seen before? have is that you have to be really exact at what you’re doing. there’s not Thorsten Fleisch: Well, I come from much room for error and disaster. but experimental cinema and always liked I like errors and catastrophies which I the materiality of film compared to only get with the machinery that I the ones and zeros of the digital world build myself and that is not digital but but on the other hand working with mechanical and electrical mostly. of 16mm film feels more and more like course I’m aware of glitch art that deal being a dinosaur. I don’t like to with errors in the digital but to work fetishize the material. all this there you still have to have a good discussion 16mm against video I find understanding of computer very boring and not inspiring. it’s like languages. whether you like the old star trek better than the next generation. geek talk. nothing is better just because it’s done on film. both film and video are just media, carriers of visual and aural information. they differ because they represent different concepts of technology and also different times in history. on an aesthetical level I never really liked video in the past, but now with HD I find it is a very good visual medium to work with. .

I like the immediacy that you don’t Marco Mancuso: Talking about have with film. and also it’s so much Gestalt, lots of the avant-garde styles cheaper. what counts for me is how to (as Cubism, Futurism and generate the images. in that I think Constructivism) and some of their

56 most important artists (Picasso, parameters like diapers of my fractal Boccioni, Duchamp) were influenced baby. and fascinated by the potential and Marco Mancuso: Gestalt received a dynamics of the fourth dimension, Honorary Mention at the Ars principally in Nature, universe and Electronica 2003 Festival and it’s physics, not reckoning with any maths acclaimed all over the world as one of or scientific approach. With Gestalt the most innovative piece of you worked on the visualization of this experimental cinema. I think it’s a fourth dimension starting from perfect combination of what we were algorithms and scientific studies saying a few minutes ago, that is the about quaternary fractals, as engine of visualisation of algorithmic four- a real “expanse dimension”. How did dimensions sequences (as possible you work on those theories and how extension of 0 and 1 at the basis of the did you visualize/animate the electronic known world), with algorithmic transformations of the techniques at the borders between fourth dimension in a simple three- analogical and digital. A strong dimensional space? Did you use some contrast kind of special framework of spatial geometry or a particular software? Thorsten Fleisch: Well, sorry to correct you but ‘gestalt’ didn’t receive the Thorsten Fleisch: I first worked on 4d golden nica. it went to ‘tim tom’ a fractals using a photoshop plugin french computeranimation. ‘gestalt’ called KPT5 (kai’s power tools 5). it received an honorary mention’.) I think had a filter called frax4d and I used it that the visuals look really unusual to make small animations. but I soon from what the digital is usually reached the limits of this filter and associated with. once someone told when I learned that those 4d fractals me that he had a sort of deja-vu when were called quaternions a google he watched it as he dreamt about search brought me to a quaternion stuff like this before. personally I was image generator called quat. this little very interested in superstring theory freeware was much more powerful. at that time and liked the idea to after experimenting with it a while I explore a visual world of just a single wrote a small plugin to serialize the formula. and of course even more image generation process as I wanted exciting that it was originally from a to do animations. so it was basically complex. 4d geometry that can only the freeware that did all the work. I be seen by downgrading it to our 3d just spend months changing world

57 the new fabrics that offer new static characteristics for example. now there is not only the architecture of the actual buildings but also the architecture of the fabric. and with the help of computers these two parts will hopefully merge together for unseen buildings and cities in the future. well, that sounded probably a bit too optimistic. .

Marco Mancuso: One of the next idea of Digicult is the opening of Digimag – its magazine – to the form of the so called hyper-architecture. What do you think of those architects that work with digital software and precisely with the fourth dimension (as Hadid or Novak)? How is it possible to visualize their concepts, the architectural forms they foresee, in . our 3D world, urban space or city? Marco Mancuso: Have you ever Thorsten Fleisch: I’m very interested thought working with audiovisual live in these new architectural show or immersive installation for expressions. marcos novak’s work is example? Have you ever thought especially inspiring for me. he takes playing a little bit more with the the concept to the most extreme. it’s public, controlling some parameters a pity he no longer seems to pursue of your video live or using interactive his transarchitectures. I heard that sensors, instead of “filtering” the he’s now doing secret research about projection on a screen? nanoengineering/design which sounds superinteresting but there’s no Thorsten Fleisch: Hm, yes and no. solid information just rumours. I think every once in a while I think I should there is a lot of potential for really go into vjing for money’s sake as interesting architecture not only there’s really no money in because of the new means the experimental filmmaking. but then, computer offers but also because of I’m not really interested in the real

58 time aspect of abstract visuals. or the wouldn’t want to rely on other people performative aspect of it. also I when performing. when I make my wouldn’t really want to tour a lot. I like little films I don’t have to rely on to visit new places every once in a anybody except myself. now I’m not while but I don’t fancy a life in a bus or the perfect reliable person myself but on the plane. I’d rather stay at home I know myself pretty well so I can deal and do boring things like sleeping, with it; and I don’t have another reading or play video games. I was in a choice anyway;-) the only thing I’m metal band as a kid and we played a really interested in concerning the real few live shows. it’s not really what I time experience would be video enjoy (even back then I much more games. I’d love to be involved in enjoyed recording our songs in a developing an interesting game with studio). abstract gameplay. I think we need more experimental games! killing I’m nervous in front of a crowd, also zombies, aliens or soldiers is fine for a especially in new media performances while but sooner or later it’s getting there are ALWAYS technical problems. very boring even with new crispy HD even with the film festivals I travelled graphics. to to present my films there are very often problems with sound and/or image that delay the program a lot. I www.fleischfilm.com

59 Alvarez-fernandez: Sound Amateur

Silvia Scaravaggi

November –, his current work mixes and hybridizes electronic and artistic media in a research devoted to the connections between sound, art and physiology .

Works born from Álvarez-Fernández‘s research use electronic media united with traditional instruments and voice. He is writing a Ph.D. thesis in Musicology at the University of Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, young Oviedo that studies the connections sound artist and sound designer ( between voice and electro-acoustic Madrid , 1979), defines his background media. These theories are also the as a conventional one. Composition object of the DissoNoiSex project (the studies at the San Lorenzo de El trio Álvarez-Fernández, Kersten, Escorial’s Conservatory, composer in Piascik), where Álvarez-Fernández has residence at the Madrid “Residencia developed interactive installations de Estudiantes” from 2002 to 2005, such as Soundanism and improvement courses in Germany at Repressound. the Internationale Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik of Darmstadt, at the Stockhausen Stiftung of Kürten, and at the Elektronische Studio of the Technische Universität of Berlin.

Apart from some activities related only with electronic music – the score for “A Via Láctea” by the Brazilian director Lina Chamie , presented during the 2007 Cannes Festival, and the music for the electroacoustic . concert/performance live at the Neues Kunstforum in Köln, next 10 th Soundanism ( or Sonanismo , the

60 Spanish title), is an interactive sound consciousness and dream. The work installation created in 2006 along with evades the categorization as a single the German programmer and sound installation, as a performance piece or artist Stefan Kersten and the Polish as a musical instrument, but invites designer Asia Piascik . The work for interaction, either by trying to explores possible interactions control and dominate the system, or between music, breathing, simply by relaxing and just breathing. masturbation and sexuality. The visitor is part of a closed circuit, wearing a helmet and a mask with a little microphone inside. He provokes the sounds he perceives. The microphone captures the noises generated by the breathing, which are then analysed, digitally transformed in real time and transmitted through 14 micro-speakers placed inside the helmet. . At the same time, the collected This example of creative work by information about the respiration is Miguel Álvarez-Fernández clarifies compared with the characteristics of some of the themes questioned in his thousands of possible sonorities, works. We talked about them while stored in a database and connected in chatting about the next Festival PING! different ways with the idea of 04 in Mallorca , trying to reveal some sexuality (extracts from porn movies’ of the mechanisms at the basis of this soundtracks, rock guitar solos, research. We also talked about the screams of different animals, connections between sound and repetitive industrial machineries ). The sexuality, the themes at the origin of sounds that most resemble the this research. soundanist’s respiration are then triggered and transformed (in a Underlines Álvarez-Fernández voluntary or involuntary way) through his breathing. Miguel wrote an illuminating text on this argument, ” Del diálogo a la The work explores the idea of control ilusión de control: Procesos in an interactive system and lies on interactivos en la instalación sonora the border between public and Sonanismo“, that starts examining intimate event, between Sonanismo and then investigates

61 those aspects through the notion of the artist. <[ ] Is there a sort of direct interactivity. The work is analyzed in relation between this term and the all its conceptual and material contemporaneousness or modernity elements, describing in detail its lay- of the work? [ ] Can interactivity be out, and voluntarily omitting the considered as an aesthetic value? [ ]. particulars related to software and Inside the work, the function of the technology, to emphasize the subject, the soundanist, cannot be conceptual meaning of the separated from the object itself, the installation. installation, in a way that joins them together continuously, in a constant feedback process>.

In this sense, the idea of interactivity as a dialogue is investigated through a process that shows all its limits and sometimes its impossibilities. It is the breathing of the subject itself that generates an answer from the object, which is in this case another subject, or, better said, “the other” that lies . inside the uncontrollable respiration and the unconscious of the person Key themes at the base of the work who is breathing and listening. and of the artist’s thoughts emerge with the evidence of a perfectly written theory: the work poses some aesthetical problems related to interactive processes. Sonanismo proposes a critical reading of some typical hypothesis of the creative environment that surrounds digital, electronic and media art. Interactivity itself has now gained a stratification of meanings, often connected with positive and creative connotations, . but it still should be the object of numerous questions, sometimes In this dialogical situation, the ironical, that the work wants to soundanist accomplishes his arouse. interactive work mean?> says involvement in the process of

62 activation of this mechanism body/mind, material/immaterial, becoming both producer and subject/object, the consumer of the work. The conscious/unconscious,other consciousness of this duality appears human/animal, technology/biology, is during the time-lag after which the itself part of an attempt to refer to sounds arrive to the visitor, following the other, both in terms of sexuality and a delay the authors used to make less music, two areas where there is a direct and immediate the impression possibility or a need to get access to of an answer and therefore the or to the alter ego which is control of the work. inside everyone.

The dialogical component is thus Interactivity is also, for Miguel , a way performed through a constant wait, a to underline the political dimension of curiosity, a communicative tension art, in a cultural and social sense. He and through the attempts to affirms that it is necessary to be dominate the mechanism of the conscious of the fact that we decide installation itself. This dichotomy is to play the game and that this is also present in our relations with something we like. Interactivity is a music and sex, as sharply points out way to experience and share even the again Álvarez-Fernández. less evident aspects of our society and culture and all our doubts about them.

The crucial point that Álvarez- Fernández wants to enlighten is that sound and music, like sex, often seem to be the result of spontaneous attitudes, but they are actually products of different forms of education and cultural practices. Every work proposes a platform that . allows for the implication of the visitor, so he can enjoy experiences The constant contraposition inside the that try to represent the processes installation between image/sound, also found at the core of different public/private, outside/inside, cultural, social and political practices.

63 -white films are projected on an extended screen on the surface of a room. The furniture and the walls are painted in black and white, similarly to those recorded in the movie, so the world in the screen is amplified and enlarged in the real one.

The public, surrounded by those fictitious elements, can navigate

. through the micro-stories presented by the projections, short scenes of old This project tries to outline a parallel movies that at the beginning are cartography of the histories of music, stopped, darkened, or blurred. Only sound and sexuality. < The categories the sounds produced by the visitors of through which we think about music the installation with their voices or change through time – says Álvarez bodies can activate the Fernández –, and because of this fact cinematographic fragments. The the very concept of music is -must pitch, the intensity and the timbre of be- equally malleable, flexible, open the sounds produced control the [ ]>. He points out: . sequences, moving them forwards or backwards, modifying their temporal Another important and interesting structure, rendering them visible, or aspect of Álvarez-Fernández’s altering their visual aspect. research is related to the idea of voice as a primary interface – in its different modulations, sounds, breaths, sighs, words, accents, pronunciations –, as the first medium through which we express ourselves and represent the world. Voice (along with language, a cultural system full of significations) is an emerging element of the installation Repressound , which DissoNoiSex is now developing. Reality and its representation . compete with each other inside the installation through sound and Once again we find those images. Fragments of black-an- contrapositions that stimulate a

64 dialogical relation between work and taste for impure forms of art and audience: reality/fiction, time/space, media while remaining committed to image/sound, art/game , reinforcing the most substantial aspects of the and fading at the same time the piece, and thus reaching the nucleus distance between what we actually of each idea by preserving the live and what we could live. conceptuality of the work from the risk of a technical and technological Miguel Álvarez-Fernández redundancy. understands the research with new media as a way to explore realities through collaborative projects, as open and shared as possible. He is a http://miguelalvarez.es.kz professional amateur himself, with a www.soundanism.org/

65 Todo & Nada: Everything Or Nothing!

Silvia Scaravaggi

Code in Motion , a consideration about codes in electronic art, and C.STEM , the first Italian event whose main aim is the spread of generative and procedural systems in experimental digital art.

TODO & NADA realise projects for web sites, museums, galleries, clubs, theatres and among their clients there are BMW, Eataly, Meltin’Pot, TODO & NADA are twin souls, Arezzowave Festival, Virtual Reality e complementary elements, the two Multimedia Park . It’s hard to give sides of the same apple: it’s a well them an accurate definition because done union between creative heads they are like an erupting volcano, an and strong-headed professionals explosion of ideas, creative energy, working together in order to plan and communication power. And above all build up projection and development they’re fast fast fast . of projects strictly linked to media, design and interactivity, communication and fun.

TODO & NADA‘s headquarter is set in Italy –most precisely in Turin – but not only: they have offices also in Europe and all around the world. And more ANCPRA: they have intention to explore all country of the earth. Since 2005 up to now they have worked for the organization of cultural events. . Among them we find BIP – Building Interactive Playground, an exhibition Silvia Scaravaggi: I’d like to start with dedicated to interaction design and the beginning of your activity, so I taking part to the festival Elettrowave, would like you to shortly tell me how

66 you started, how you gathered and 2006 some friends of Mr. Olivero and which are the main bond elements. Cionini jointed the group: Fabio Franchino , Andrea Clemente and TODO: TODO is composed by a Alessandro Capozzo . planner group working out the conjunction between interaction, And this is the group core: 5 communication and fun. At the permanent members and a lot of beginning Giorgio Olivero, once he collaborators and friends, living in Italy got his master by the Interaction and all over the world. It’s a balanced Design Institute in Ivrea ( Northern mix between friendship and Italy ), together with Fabio Cionini, complementary and professional tired of his work as programmer by a skills. The freelance dimension was big company, decided to dedicate to too tight for us, we needed a new experimental projects. And they got organization and this was clear to all an excellent receipt for interaction, of us. Now we have become a brand visual creativity and custom-software: new society and with this shift from the main “ingredients” are people, “collective” group into “company” the environments and relationships. In challenge is far more interesting.

67 track. NADA’s establishment cleared the ambiguity of our association: when we work for a cultural event we don’t work for commercial purposes. Moreover from now on we have an instrument to call for aids and institutions different from those needed for TODO. NADA is an independent subject and its aim is the promotion and spreading of design . culture, as spokesman for digital art and new media on the whole. Silvia Scaravaggi: Let’s explain me: who is TODO and who is NADA? Are Our efforts are focussed not only on they 2 different entities? In what they the production of events, shows and complement each other? NADA was the like, but also on education. So we born after. Can you explain me why realized the course in and from what? DesignByNumbers for kids affected by dyslexia and dysgraphia or the TODO: TODO’s main activity is in the workshop Touchdown on game project field. Our materials are mass controllers d.i.y. What’s more –and medias and technologies applied to perhaps the only case in Italy- we communication formats. Meanwhile dedicate also to the promotion of we have focussed to the planning and research in these domains. Our organization of cultural events, such ultimate goal is to create a link as BIP with Elettrowave, Code in between the developing realities of Motion with ClubTOClub and C.STEM. our country and the international In these projects, our best results, we network. Of course this ambitious aim worked more as curators and needs a lot of time to be producers rather than projectists. accomplished. So it was clear in our minds the link between the job of planners and a cultural and educational activity. For these projects we always worked following a no-profit logic. The foundation of the Cultural and Research Association NADA in last April was the consequent result of this

68 . chooses the projects in interaction design fitting with the definition of Silvia Scaravaggi: Which are the main ‘interactive playground’: the play issues of your commitment? Has aspect can’t miss. Elettrowave, an anything impressive happened and electronic music festival, hosts BIP, gave you a serious motivation to go consequently we have there a very on with your work during the last different audience from the usual one years? Just tell me a couple of typical of media art. Offering these occasions. works to people who have maybe never seen such a thing is very TODO: We are omnivorous, strong- exciting. You learn a lot. BIP could be minded and obstinate researchers. defined as the model of the From Feynman to Harry Potter, we are contemporary amusement park, or not afraid to get bored. In fact, we maybe the contemporary era is more have got much experience: three of us and more an amusement park, who graduated in Studies in knows! We just know that it’s the right Communication Science, that is to say formula, it works and people like it. we know a bit of everything. Other We are finishing the video of what two of us have an artistic formation. happened in July and as soon as it is And our commercialist has periodic ready it will be available on the Nada’s crisis because he cannot give a site. definition of our job.

Silvia Scaravaggi: Let’s speak about your work in creation and programming of BIT. How do you work? Which are the answers of the places where you showed this project? In the Italian edition which took place in Florence , which are the general features of the Italian overview dealing with these languages? And how has the public . reacted? Silvia Scaravaggi: Can you draw me a TODO: BIP, building interactive balance for the present and tell me playground, is a strange, beautiful and what do you expect for the future? only creature. The programming is very funny and very exhausting! BIP TODO: It is a positive balance. In fact

69 we got good results and found a congenial position in the market. . Meanwhile we managed to create a Silvia Scaravaggi: Do you think that society with a united and eclectic Turin can be the right place for your structure. This is a pretty good activities? starting point. Now we are trying to improve our programming and TODO: A journalist for New York Times production skills, redoubling once defined Turin like the tourist researches and updates because equivalent for Edgar Allan Poe’s novel nowadays you can’t live on an The Purloined Letter , that is to say a unearned income. well kept secret. Turin is our home and headquarter. We stay very well Silvia Scaravaggi: How do Italian here. But staying for 100% of our time institutions reply to your projects? in Turin would be not healthy. That’s TODO: Sometimes it seems we don’t why we follow the job. And in few speak the same language and their words that means travelling and often reactions come a bit later than go to Milan , for example. And then expected. The concrete thing we can we are tempted to go to China , we’ll do is change our attitude in the see. We have contacts with US relationship, being more proactive companies, Fabio is going to settle in and trying to see from different points Canada . Another ex colleague wants of view. And so we don’t expect help to advertise us in Island and then from institutions, on the contrary we next year there will be the Turin World give them instruments to understand Design Capital. And I’m sure that nice and be closer to the new realities we surprises are waiting for us. deal with. Nada was born also with Silvia Scaravaggi: Now you are this purpose, to become a cultural working for new interesting projects “mediator”. It should mediate among as the one for the inauguration of the domains needing mutual back-up and new Cinquecento in Turin . There you a common lingua franca. We are asked people to send a message and optimist about it. tell their opinion about the Cinquecento’s identity. Can you tell me more?

TODO: Yes. Nope. In this moment we are working on some projects with different development levels. The interesting point is that we use

70 different standards and medias . exploring in this way new communication and interaction Silvia Scaravaggi: Which importance strategies. We like to work with handy does game have in your work? In few technologies. These everyday words if you could evaluate your technologies became for us like pleasure from 1 to 100 what would transparent and natural extensions of your mark be? our hands. In the inauguration of TODO: There were that intro of a Cinquecento the relationship between beautiful funky track, I think it was Sly the private way of communication and the Family Stone, which sounded (through sms) and its use in a public, “struggling is the blessing”. This is our wide, collaborative environment was work. A game for adults: planning, a very interesting experiment. many efforts, pleasure for challenge and risk, self-control. And then you get many gratifications. We would never change it for anything.

www.todo.to.it

www.associazione-nada.org

www.cstem.it

71 The Lab Style By Modeselektor

Silvia Bianchi

for an electronic dance music live set to be able to shift wih irony from one music genre and style to another : from hip hop to dubstep, from drum’n’bass to techno music. It is still rare to find a producer able to let different digital sound influences mix together: djing techniques blending with sounds from the pulsing 8bit music , traditional electronic beats brought together with analogic The Modeselektor, namely Sebastian sounds which have been found in the Szary and Gernot Bronsert , first met huge melting pot of the Net. in Berlin in the early 90s in the illegal parties of the city’s outskirts. Five “In our latest work – the Modeselektor years later they met again in a say – there are more collaborations recording studio and realized their and more vocal parts than in “Hello musical taste was similar. That’s how Mum” , and that’s why we thought they started producing music under that’s more than an album. While we the name of Fundamental Knowledge. were working the biggest influence came from hip hop. We sampled Modeselektor project started in 1996 everything. No matter what style the and in 2000 joined the B-pitch album belongs to: like our sets it Control’s rooster , the famous Berliner spans over rap, dubstep and techno label owned by Ellen Allien. Their live music. In our album we’ve hosted set, much sought after at festivals all artists such as Puppetmastaz, Paul st. over the world and performing at hilaire, Otto Von Schirach, Siriusmo, Milan Leoncavallo on 15th September, the TTC . Most collaborations develop uniquely succeeds in combining through the Internet – the two quality and beat and sound research producers say – and thanks to the together with its natural tendency Internet we are able to record even in towards dancefloor music and its the middle of a tour and to work with original alchemies. It is not common artists all over the world”.

72 we become friend. From that time, we started playing togheter e we never stopped, and this year we decided to record the flower of our collaboration. So, Moderat was born.

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We met the Modeselektor when they came to Italy to perform at the first edition of Florence Elettrowave festival and asked them to talk about their album and the way they perform . live. Their second album “Happy Birthday” , has been out in September Silvia Bianchi: Last year you published with special guests such as TTC, Thom the dvd Labland thanks to the Yorke, Maximo Park and Apparat . cooperation with the collective Happy Birthday is the celebration of a Pfadfinderei, published by the Paris year during which they made clubs’ label Dalbin. How did you work to dancefloors hot all ove the world, create the sound for Labland dvd? from Iceland to Australia before they Modeselektor: The approach to an stopped in Berlin since they are both audiovisual work is different time to about to become fathers. time. Pfadifinderei are seven and we Silvia Bianchi: How has the are two, so you can imagine how cooperation with Apparat for Moderat 9people-working could be. Very project started chaotic. We tryed to work togheter as much as possible and we understood Modeselektor: We me Apparat in 1999 that sometimes images are very in a club in Berlin, we played togheter important, so we tried to find a beat but we didn’t know each other. The creating a specific atmoshpere. In funny thing was that, while Apparat other moments, sound goes on so was playing many girls filled up the Pfadfinderei have to find good images dancefloor and we thought: “hey, look fitting well with the beat. There’s no at this guy”. We started speaking and rule. Sometimes we’re wondering

73 about perfect comination .

Silvia Bianchi: A Labland live version Silvia Bianchi: You’ve been long for the theatre and cinema has also cooperating with with Pfadfinderei. been created. How has it felt like to Have you ever worked with other work in such a location? visual artists?

Modeselektor: It’s very interesting to Modeselektor: Never. We have been play in a situtation in which the playing with Pfadfinderei, in this club attention is focused on videos, and in Berlin called Kurvenstar, from 1998 people come to watch at the video for five years; every thursday you more than to listen to the music. So, if could join audiovisual performances. you are able to catch their attention THe club was an hip-hop club, but the with your music, your work is more owners liked our work, so the Lab- important. There are many chances Style resisted on thursday night. Our for the audience to listet to good collaboration with the guys started music, but less to watch at good there. Now we work togheter in the videos. same building, and we work togheter for commercial works too, in which we support them in the sound-design activity.

www. modeselektor.com

74 Missil, Miss Mash Up

Silvia Bianchi

was hip-hop culture.

“With my crew, the BMC, I organized lots of parties. Rumble in the jungle, Bassmassive, Breaker’s Delight. I started realizing flyers for those parties and the covers of the mix tapes, then I realized I needed to express myself even throughout different modalities and a started mixing hip-hop, reggae, ragga etc I Between the beautiful surprises then discovered electro music, break brought to us by last ElettroWave, I beat, drum’n’bass, broken beats, surely flag the young Missil, one of the electro, and I learned to range all the new international djing promising, genres”. guest for the first time during an Italian festival.

We met Missil just a few minutes before the show and we stopped for talking to her, to know how did her career started up. Missil is only 25, but already considered by the international press as the new feminine djing promising and one of the protagonists of the changes that hit the Paris electro scene, becoming . once again strong and creative in the international panorama. She said We asked Missil how breaking everything started when she was through in France is. She explained young and realized flyer and covers that her success grew gradually for her crew parties, with whom she thanks to her crew membership that painted the Paris wall. She’s been organized parties not only in Paris , suddenly fascinated by everything but in the entire nation. We talk about

75 the hip-hop French scene, and she with that music. This is maybe the answers that it’s still rich and plenty of additional value of this 25-years-old valid artist and interesting crew. But girl by the bright eyes and the the real Paris boom is linked to disarming smile, the fact that she hit electro, a phenomenon that allowed the point of the mixing lessons about the opening of tens clubs during the the creation of sets that go from hip- last years, so that he had the hop to grime, from reggae to breaks opportunity to play in lots of discos to electro. Her sound is so versatile herself. that she entertains all the publics.

His artistic path started with the Missil played during the last year with writing and the party graphic, and this artists such as Cold Cut, Laurent is an history similar to many other Garnier, RZA, Afrika Bambaataa, hip-hop dj’s. The approaching to SuperGrass, Dj Premier, Carl Craig in music inevitably derive from the more than 25 countries through the 5 everyday living in a reality where continents. This dynamicity at every music itself is the pillar of every level, more than connotes her sound, activity and its mash-up stile is a clear gives her the ability to go with talent result. in her entire production, that includes arworks for her CD’s, website, flyers This world gave Missil an incredible and clothes. sensitivity in building various and grooved sets, and obviously also a Missil still draw as writer and during multi-discipline approach to art. last years realized some interiors of important Moscow , Paris and Turkey clubs. Her puppets will turn into toys and she’s working to create a real fashion line.

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She tells about the spontaneity that she had in approaching the turntables, spontaneity of someone that grew up

76 . more. But the only moment when she can think about it is when she Her coloured graphics are feminine answers to journalists questions. but aggressive. We ask how was for a Writing really taught a strenght girl to grew up in a boysh discipline. environment such as the writing one and then jump into the boysher djing. She answered that respect is hard for everyone, but for a woman even www.missill.com/

77 Link index

Pcc. Pirate Cinema Reclaims The Cinema http://www.piratecinema.net/ http://www.piratecinema.no/ http://www.tv-tv.dk/ http://www.cphdox.dk/ http://www.piratpartiet.se/ http://piratecinema.net/ http://%20thepiratebay.org http://www.piratgruppen.org http://www.folketshus.dk http://www.ungdomshuset.dk http://www.jagtvej69.dk

Eric Singer, Music For Robots http://www.lemurbots.org/ http://www.ericsinger.com/

Game Game Game And Again Game… http://www.secrettechnology.com/gamegame/gamegame.html http://www.secrettechnology.com/gamegame/gamegame.html http://www.secrettechnology.com/death/deathspin.htm http://www.heliozoa.com/gene/bomargene.htm

Peer Production: The Wealth Of Networks

78 http://www.omniacommunia.org http://omniacommunia.org/ http://www.benkler.org/

Collective Author, Shared Memory The Revenge Of Nico & The Vascellaris Second Fest, A Great Event For Few… Skoltz Kolgen: Silence In The Rooms http://www.skoltzkolgen.ca

Struttura Organica 2007, Computing Nature http://www.struttura.li.it

Greenaway: Cinema Is Dead, Long Lives Cinema http://www.barcelonafestival.com http://petergreenaway.co.uk/ http://%20www.tulseluper.net%20 http://www.tulselupernetwork.com http://www.djradar.com/music.html http://www.beamsystems.nl/

Thorsten Fleisch, The Fourth Dimension In Video http://www.fleischfilm.com

Alvarez-fernandez: Sound Amateur http://miguelalvarez.es.kz http://www.soundanism.org/

Todo & Nada: Everything Or Nothing!

79 HTTP://www.todo.to.it http://www.associazione-nada.org http://www.cstem.it

The Lab Style By Modeselektor http://www.modeselektor.com%20

Missil, Miss Mash Up http://www.missill.com/

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