Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
OLE .01
F E S T I V A L
INTERNAZIONALE
della Letteratura
Elettronica
a cura di
Lello Masucci Roberta Iadevaia
LIGUORI EDITORE
DOMINI
AVVERTENZA
Sul sito dell’editore (http://www.liguori.it/schedanew.asp?isbn=6450) è di-
sponibile la funzione “cerca nel libro”: una straordinaria risorsa, un motore
di ricerca testuale che consente di interrogare il documento rimandando per
ciascun nome, luogo, opera o termine alla sua esatta collocazione e pagina
del libro.
ANTOLOGIA OLE.01.
FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE
DELLA LETTERATURA ELETTRONICA
a cura di
Lello Masucci e Roberta Iadevaia
Liguori Editore
Copertina e grafica di Francesca Fasulo e Martina Scala
Liguori Editore
Via Posillipo 394 - I 80123 Napoli NA
http://www.liguori.it/
Aggiornamenti:
————————————————————————————————————————————
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
INDICE
1 Introduzione
1 Lello Masucci
13 Roberta Iadevaia
33 Capitolo 1
OLE.01 Master
33 Olivier Auber
35 Philippe Bootz
40 Caterina Davinio
42 Fred Forest
46 Dene Grigar
50 Lello Masucci
54 Jason Nelson
59 Capitolo 2
Artisti finalisti dell’OLE.01
59 Salvatore Carannante
63 Collettivo Sine
65 Elena Demidova e Oleg Makarov
69 Aude François
73 Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos
77 Jesualdo Yair López
80 Yara Mekawei
82 Martin Romeo
87 Stefano Silvestri, Marcella Martusciello, Rosita Vallefuoco, Pietro Lama, An-
tonio Mastrogiacomo
90 Antonio Mastrogiacomo
vi INDICE
93 Capitolo 3
Eventi
3.1 Musica elettronica
93 Orchestra dell’Officina Arti Soniche del Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella
di Napoli
116 Roberto Paci Dalò
123 Capitolo 4
Conferenze e seminari
123 Federico Bucalossi
125 Daniela Calisi
134 Paola Carbone
139 Agata Chiusano
150 Paolo Cirio
164 Mario Costa
166 Matteo D’Ambrosio
171 Giacomo Fronzi
179 Marco Maria Gazzano
190 Mario Rotta
193 Valentino Catricalà
INTRODUZIONE
di Lello Masucci
Credo che un discorso sul cinema come lingua espressiva non possa ormai
cominciare senza tener presente almeno la terminologia della semiotica.
Perché il problema, in parole molto semplici, è questo: mentre i linguaggi
letterari fondano le loro invenzioni poetiche su una base istituzionale di
lingua strumentale, possesso comune di tutti i parlanti, i linguaggi cinema-
tografici sembrano non fondarsi su nulla: non hanno, come base reale, nes-
suna lingua comunicativa. Quindi, i linguaggi letterari si presentano subito
come leciti in quanto attuazione al sommo livello civile di uno strumento
(un puro e semplice strumento) che serve effettivamente per comunicare.
Invece la comunicazione cinematografica sarebbe arbitraria e aberrante,
senza precedenti strumentali effettivi, di cui tutti siano normalmente uten-
ti. Insomma gli uomini comunicano con le parole, non con le immagini:
quindi un linguaggio specifico di immagini si presenterebbe come una
pura e artificiale astrazione. Se questo ragionamento fosse giusto, come
pare, il cinema non potrebbe fisicamente esserci: o, se ci fosse, sarebbe una
mostruosità, una serie di segni insignificanti. Invece, il cinema comunica.
Vuol dire che anch’esso si fonda su un patrimonio di segni comune1.
1
P. P. Pasolini, Empirismo eretico, Garzanti Libri, Milano, 2000.
2 INTRODUZIONE DI L. MASUCCI
2
È giunto il momento di pensare anche che lo stesso termine di Letteratura sta assumendo
significati nuovi, più estesi.
INTRODUZIONE DI L. MASUCCI 3
3
L. Bardier, Produrre, esporre e archiviare opere d’arte e documenti contemporanei; un processo di
convergenza. In: Atti del PAN – Palazzo delle Arti di Napoli, Gruppo Mondadori Electa, 2006.
4 INTRODUZIONE DI L. MASUCCI
Lello Masucci
INTRODUCTION
4
P. P. Pasolini, Empirismo eretico, Garzanti Libri, Milano, 2000.
5
Now is the time to think that the same term of Literature is taking on new, most ex-
tensive meanings.
8 INTRODUZIONE DI L. MASUCCI
6
L. Bardier, Produrre, esporre e archiviare opere d’arte e documenti contemporanei; un processo di
convergenza. In: Atti del PAN – Palazzo delle Arti di Napoli, Gruppo Mondadori Electa, 2006.
INTRODUZIONE DI L. MASUCCI 9
more then computers. Such a situation puts forward theories and techniques
of the art that can no longer deny the existence and use of these devices
and their programming within the production, historiographical, critical and
museum system typical of art itself.
Nevertheless, today we have artists who do not know programming
languages. Programmers who do not know the history of art, or what ever
the Electronic Literature is. Curators and art historians who do not even
have the idea of what the e-lit is and all those works that arise from this
epochal technician change are. We are in the fourth largest transformation
of production, cultural dissemination and artistic creations technical systems:
after orality, writing and printing, here is the digital revolution that puts to
rest forever alleged supremacy of the author on the viewer, transforming
in a complete and radical way all the basics concepts of art system as it
had come through even the latest changes due to market, real driver and
destroyer of the capitalist era.
There is a widespread ignorance of computer use by the majority of
the audience and Italian Universities which, while having Professors who
accepted thesis on Electronic Literature, do not create chair of the same
contrary to what happens for some time in most foreign Universities. Finally,
many scholars who forget that there would be neither history nor criticism
and theory of art without artists who have practiced it.
For these reasons, we are last in the standings on a field which may
be the only hope of industrial convertion for a sustainable development in
Italy. This Country, that has in culture and art the largest deposit of the
world, it has the raw material that should be the basis of any of our think-
ing of development and instead we let it go down the drain as a function
of misguided policies when they are not thieves and dishonest.
So here is what OLE.01 International Festival of Electronic Literature
wants to be, a cultural incubator with the vocation to be a center of inter-
national documentation and training where young people can find the tools
and the ways in which they can build their future.
At this time of technical and cultural hybridity it is necessary to know
how Electronic Literature is thought by cultural operators that someway
bind their critical, historical and artistic work as well as their research on
new technologies. For this reason, I thought it important to invite and en-
gage in this first edition of the festival personality of heterogeneous cultural
backgrounds but who are having to deal, by choice or by imposition of time,
with electronic and digital techniques. Ideas are many and often conflicting.
Technological thinking struggles between an existence coming from human
and a completely dehumanized one.
10 INTRODUZIONE DI L. MASUCCI
complexity that comes from it, their freedom will be call into question. So
you do not have to endorse theories, even of art, which eliminate or do
not give proper value and weight to the possibility that man has complete
control of the technologic f low and its possible aesthetic but also ethical,
social, political and productive outcomes.
Technology is technical means as it was the oil painting and the use of
acids for sculpture. We must be wary of a “romanticism” of technologies. A
theory of this type, in addition to not respond to reality, justifies leaderships
of technological owners at the expense of common knowledge that at this
time can only be solved by open source. Technological flow and its pos-
sible aesthetic stems from the design of man, it has a precise meaning and
significance from which it can not be removed; otherwise the dehumaniza-
tion of computer systems and the consequent possibility, by strong private
powers, to manage to their liking any implication and resolution your can
have of the same.
So we hope a broader knowledge of software and hardware systems
programming languages on which those languages must act. This is primar-
ily, therefore, for the artists whose freedom, it is easy to understand, depends
precisely on whether or not they have knowledge of those languages: it
would be absurd to think that artists such as Leonardo, Raphael, Rubens,
Picasso delegated to others the realization of their work because they could
not paint. Some contemporary art (or deemed as such) allowed, through the
instrument of the market, such imposters pretending to be artists endors-
ing as “conceptual” the realization by others of their works then sold to a
good money to rich, stupid and ignorant audience. Conceptual Art has as
its sole creator Marcel Duchamp. Its latest artistic research arrived to the
ready-made, beyond which there is only the technological flow of digital art.
For these reasons, the Festival aims to be a time of planning dialogue
on these issues with the artistic, social and political forces thus making it
possible projects aspiring to the requalification of a cultural and educational
offer in Italy and, especially, in Campania, that takes into account the grow-
ing importance in the world of electronic and digital languages.
Lello Masucci
Introduzione
Sintesi
Introduzione
Nel 1992 William Gibson compose una poesia di trecento versi e la me-
morizzò su un floppy disk; la stessa poesia fu poi adattata al supporto car-
taceo dall’artista Dennis Ashbaugh che ne fece un libro d’artista. L’opera fu
chiamata Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) in virtù di una sua peculiarità: sia la
versione elettronica che quella cartacea erano state progettate in modo da
auto-cancellarsi dopo la prima lettura.
Agrippa aveva scelto deliberatamente l’oblio come riflessione sulla natura
effimera della memoria; le opere d’arte digitali – quelle cioè che si avvalgono
della capacità e dei contesti forniti dai computer o più in generale dei media
digitali per la loro creazione, fruizione, diffusione e archiviazione – avranno
anch’esse la possibilità di scegliere o sono destinate a perire, disciolte dalla
fluidità del mezzo di cui esse stesse incarnano l’estetica?
14 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
Sostenibilità digitale
L’ansia da digital dark age – il pericolo di perdere i file o di non avere più
accesso ad essi – è forse lo stato emotivo che meglio caratterizza la società
contemporanea des Immatériaux, gli immateriali, per rifarsi al titolo della
manifestazione internazionale organizzata da Jean-François Lyotard già nel
(lontano) 1984. Control + S spasmodici, cloud, back up ossessivi, pen drive
appese al collo, auto-invii di documenti tramite posta elettronica sono solo
alcune delle piccole manie dell’homo digitalis, nuovi rituali che sfidano la
sempre più rapida obsolescenza di formati, supporti, software e hardware
determinata dal progredire delle nuove tecnologie.
Se in molti si confrontano con il problema della conservazione digitale
nel quotidiano, forse non tutti sono consapevoli di quanto tale tematica – che
abbraccia non solo la conservazione tout court, ma anche il rinnovamento,
il restauro, la selezione, la distruzione e il miglioramento delle opere1 – sia
importante per l’arte digitale e naturalmente per la letteratura elettronica:
come osserva Katherine Hayles nel suo famoso saggio Electronic Literature:
What is it?2 del 2007, le opere rischiano di diventare inaccessibili dopo un
decennio o meno a causa della “natura fluida del mezzo”; di conseguenza
la e-lit rischia di perdere l’opportunità di costruirsi quella tradizione che
invece vanta la letteratura tradizionale. Allo stesso modo Richard Rinehart
fa notare come – a causa della mancanza di metodologie standardizzate di
documentazione e del voler bypassare valori e pratiche del circuito artistico
tradizionale, le opere di media art “stanno diventando vittime dei loro stessi
volatili intenti”3.
Le differenze tra letteratura elettronica e quella tradizionale, nel campo
della preservazione e conservazione, non si esauriscono certo qui: Joseph
Tabbi, nella Prefazione di Acid-Free Bits4, sottolinea infatti che, mentre le
1
Cfr. P. Innocenti, Theories, methods and testbeds for curation and preservation of digital art.
In: IS&T Archiving 2010 Preservation Strategies and Imaging Technologies for Cultural
Heritage Institutions and Memory Organisations Conference, The Netherlands, The Hague,
1-4 Giugno 2010. La traduzione è mia.
2
Cfr. K.N. Hayles, Electronic Literature: What is it? In: Preservation, Archiving, and Dis-
semination, v1.0 2 Gennaio 2007. <http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html#sec4> La traduzione
è mia.
3
R. Reinehart, The Media Art Notation System: Documenting and Preserving Digital/MediaArt,
2007 <http://www.coyoteyip.com/rinehart_leonardo.pdf> La traduzione è mia.
4
Cfr. J. Tabbi, Preface: Acid-Free Bits and the ELO PAD Project. In: Nick Montfort, Noah
Wardrip-Fruin Montfort, Acid-Free Bits. Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic Li-
terature v1.0, 14 Giugno 2004 <http://www.eliterature.org/pad/afb.html> La traduzione è
mia.
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 15
Il meglio che gli attuali archivi digitali hanno compiuto infatti – nota
ancora Tabbi – è una casa, non per la letteratura, ma per riviste acca-
demiche; a essere preservati sono i file di testo linkati alla grafica, non i
programmi; ad essere indicizzati sono i lavori individuali e non quelli di
network. Abbiamo una grande quantità di informazione ma pochissimo
contesto; di conseguenza gli scrittori di letteratura elettronica, a differenza
di quelli tradizionali, hanno dovuto compiere l’enorme sforzo di costruire
l’ambiente per le proprie opere5.
L’arte digitale (ma il discorso può essere naturalmente esteso alla lette-
ratura elettronica) mette in discussione molti degli assunti fondamentali
del mondo dell’arte: che cosa è un’opera d’arte nell’era digitale? Cosa
dovrebbe essere conservato per il futuro? L’input, l’output, l’hardware?
Quali aspetti di un determinato lavoro possono essere modificati e cosa
deve rimanere invariato affinché il lavoro mantenga l’intento dell’artista?
[...] Che cos’è la proprietà? Qual è il contesto dell’arte digitale? Chi o cosa
è lo spettatore? Un essere umano, un agente artificiale? L’opera esiste solo
nella mente dello spettatore?
Gran parte dei quesiti avanzati da Innocenti erano stati avanzati anche
in tempi meno recenti (si veda ad esempio il saggio Littérature numérique:
préservation et valorisation des œuvres di Serge Bouchardon, Marie Lissart e
Nicolas Esposito7), a dimostrazione non solo della portata di quella che forse
è la sfida più difficile lanciata dalla rivoluzione digitale, ma anche della “asso-
luta necessità di un intervento interdisciplinare, che veda la collaborazione di
5
Ibid.
6
P. Innocenti, Theories, methods and testbeds for curation and preservation of digital art, cit.
7
S. Bouchardon, M. Lissart, N. Esposito, Littérature numérique: préservation et valorisation
des œuvres. In: Actes des journées Questions autour des poésies numériques, France, 2008
<http://www.utc.fr/~bouchard/articles/bouchardon-preservation-valorisation-litt-nume-
rique-%20fevrier2008.pdf>
16 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
Benché esistano diversi tipi di strategie per la preservazione dei dati digitali
nel tempo – tra cui refreshing, migrazione, duplicazione, emulazione, utilizzo
dei metadati o degli oggetti digitali certificati, reinterpretazione9 – nessuna
di esse è adatta per tutti i tipi di dati, di contesti o di istituzioni e ciascuna
ha in sé rischi e limiti: ad esempio, nota ancora Innocenti, eseguire la mi-
grazione significa modificare il codice più e più volte e dunque uno sforzo
continuo e considerevole; l’emulazione equivale ad aggiornare una macchina
virtuale conservando ciascuna delle tecnologie obsolete coinvolte mentre
la reinterpretazione – che consiste in nuova creazione dell’opera mediante
tecnologie completamente differenti dall’originale – può essere decisamente
pericolosa senza il consenso o la supervisione dell’artista10.
Si potrebbe dunque pensare, come suggerisce il Prof. Masucci a un
dispositivo in grado di conservare l’hardware, il software e i linguaggi di
programmazione usati nell’opera originale come il tutt’uno che essi effetti-
vamente rappresentano, al fine di non snaturare il lavoro e il suo contesto11.
Allo stesso modo è possibile citare numerosi esempi di iniziative volte
alla preservazione digitale, come Xena, software libero per l’archiviazione
basato su Java che può essere installato su qualsiasi PC e che converte do-
cumenti proprietari, elementi grafici e file audio in formati aperti; Dspace,
8
L. García, P. Montero Vilar, The Challenges of Digital Art Preservation. In: e-conservation
magazine, No. 14, 2010, pp. 43-53 <http://www.e-conservationline.com/content/view/884>
9
<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservazione_digitale#Strategie>
10
P. Innocenti, Theories, methods and testbeds for curation and preservation of digital art, cit.
11
Da una conversazione personale. Il Prof. Masucci specifica inoltre che tale strategia non
avrebbe ragione di essere applicata alle applicazioni per computer e dispositivi mobili né alle
opere realizzate in forma di siti Internet.
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 17
software open source che accetta dati digitali in diversi formati (testo, video,
audio), li distribuisce attraverso il web, li indicizza e li conserva nel tempo
o ancora l’Open Archival Information System (OAIS), modello di riferimento
per un sistema aperto di informazioni sull’archiviazione12.
Tornando alla letteratura elettronica, appare utile soffermarsi, seppur
brevemente, sul già citato pamphlet realizzato da Nick Montfort and Noah
Wardrip-Fruin nell’ambito del progetto di Preservazione, Archiviazione e
Disseminazione (PAD) promossa dalla Electronic Literature Organization
(ELO), dall’eloquente titolo Acid-Free Bits (bit senza acido)13, con l’allusione
a quei tipi di carta trattati con gli acidi, come quella di giornale, che si de-
teriorano nel giro di pochi anni rendendo il contenuto illeggibile.
Il pamphlet contiene una serie di raccomandazioni “digital sostenibili”
destinate in primo luogo agli scrittori elettronici: oltre alle summenzionate
strategie di emulazione e migrazione, per preservare le opere nel tempo i due
autori suggeriscono di corredare sempre le opere di indicazioni e commenti
al fine di poterle ricreare con facilità nel futuro.
Alcuni consigli sulla realizzazione di opere durevoli nel tempo sono
invece riassunti in tredici punti dai quali si evince, evitando di soffermar-
si su dettagli troppo tecnici, che i sistemi aperti e partecipativi sono da
preferire a quelli chiusi e proprietari così come i formati testuali (come
l’HTML) sono più “sostenibili” di quelli binari (come Microsoft Word), che
è buona norma commentare il codice e adoperare un “codice convalidato”
e che, infine, è bene non solo permettere, ma addirittura incoraggiare la
duplicazione e al diffusione delle proprie opere all’interno di altri siti e
piattaforme online.
Restando nell’ambito della conservazione delle opere di e-lit, sono da
segnalare il progetto di ricerca collaborativo europeo Electronic Literature as
a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP)14, nato nel 2010
e diretto da Scott Rettberg, professore associato di Digital Culture presso
l’Università di Bergen; i due volumi della Electronic Literature Collection pub-
blicati rispettivamente nell’ottobre 200615 e nel febbraio 201116 dalla ELO,
presieduta da Dene Grigar; il progetto I love E-Poetry17 (2011) diretto dal
Prof. Leonardo Flores, l’archivio degli autori italiani pubblicato dalla Officina
12
<http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservazione_digitale>
13
N. Montfort, N. Wardrip-Fruin, Acid-Free Bits. Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic
Literature, cit.
14
<http://elmcip.net>
15
<http://collection.eliterature.org/1>
16
<http://collection.eliterature.org/2>
17
<http://iloveepoetry.com/>
18 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
L’OLE.01 Festival
18
<http://www.elettroletteratura.org/>
19
A. Liu, D. Durand, N. Montfort, M. Proffitt, L. Quin., J. Réty, N. Wardrip-Fruin, A
Framework for Migrating Electronic Literature, v1.1, 5 agosto 2005 <https://eliterature.org/
pad/bab.html>
20
L. Somma, La letteratura elettronica per la valorizzazione della cultura italiana. In
wikielettroart, Ottobre 2010 <http://www.wikielettroart.net/wordpress/?p=16>
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 19
“rovina”21 o una replica22? C’è una “età-valore”23 per opere d’arte digitali? Chi
prevarrà nella migrazione durante il processo di conservazione di un’opera
d’arte multimediale: il curatore, l’artista, il finanziatore, il quadro normativo,
le nuove tecnologie,lo spettatore?”.
Vi è poi il problema della forma: solitamente (ma non sempre) le opere
di e-lit sono descritte in maniera piuttosto accademica e, nella stragrande
maggioranza dei casi, in inglese; ostacoli questi che possono essere decisivi
per una più ampia diffusione dei lavori elettronici. Infine vi è la questione
spinosa dell’appiattimento derivato dal sincretismo derivante dall’archivia-
zione indiscriminata: come ha osservato il Professor Pasquale Belfiore al
seminario design & cultural heritage svoltosi presso la Seconda Università degli
Studi di Napoli24, per la prima volta nella storia, e sostenuti in questo dalla
tecnologia, l’uomo non si sta più assumendo la responsabilità di decidere
cosa conservare e cosa no, contravvenendo all’antica quanto salutare norma
della selezione naturale determinata dal corso della storia, generando quella
che può essere definita una vera e propria “ipertrofia conservativa”.
Appare evidente allora che lo sforzo congiunto dell’intera comunità
rappresenta una impellente necessità. Citando nuovamente Hayles
esplorare e comprendere tutte le implicazioni di ciò che comporta la
transizione dalla pagina allo schermo deve necessariamente esserci uno
sforzo della comunità, un compito epocale che richiede un pensiero il-
luminato, una pianificazione visionaria e una profonda considerazione
critica. È in questi sensi estesi e capienti che la letteratura elettronica ci
sfida a ripensare a ciò che la letteratura può fare ed essere25
21
Brandi C., 2005, Theory of restoration, Florence, G. Basile; [ed. it. or. Teoria del Restauro,
Nardini Editore, Roma, 1963]
22
S. Barassi, The modern cult of replicas: a Rieglian analysis of values. In: replication, Tate
papers, 2007 <http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07autumn/barassi.
htm>
23
Riegl A., 1982, Der moderne Denkmalkultus, seine Wesen und seine Entstehung, Vienna, 1903,
pp. 21-51 [trad. ing. The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin, Oppositions 25].
24
<http://www.artcom.unina2.it/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/SEMINARIO_DESIGN_
AND_CULTURAL_HERITAGE_26_GIUGNO_2014.pdf>
25
K.N. Hayles, Electronic Literature: What is it? In: Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemina-
tion, cit.
20 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
26
POR Fesr 2007/2013 Ob. Op. 1.10 “La cultura come risorsa” DD. 125 del 03/06/2011.
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 21
la frase “I love you” scritta in verticale e ripetuta più volte in diversi colori su
un fondo nero, oscilla e si deforma in base ai rumori captati da un software
che la rendono di fatto illeggibile, o meglio “leggibile solo nel silenzio”.
Infine Nelson, poeta elettronico, net artista e docente presso il College
of Art della Griffith University in Australia si propone – con il suo poema
digitale interattivo The Required Field – di esplorare criticamente, pur senza
rinunciare alla componente ludico-liberatoria che spesso contraddistingue
le sue opere, l’intrico asfissiante rappresentato dai vari moduli burocratici e
dagli interminabili documenti, spesso inutilmente complessi o confusi fino
all’inverosimile, che reclamano con snervante formalità la compilazione dei
vari campi obbligatori, appunto. Il fruitore, attraverso questa acuta tradu-
zione poetica, potrà finalmente concedersi una piccola ma sentita rivincita
contro questi “mostri del quotidiano” e riflettere al contempo sul carattere
immaginativo e la poetica della rielaborazione che contraddistinguono la
e-poetry.
Roberta Iadevaia
Introduction
Summary
Introduction
In 1992, William Gibson wrote a poem of three hundred verses and me-
morized it on a floppy disk; the same poem was later adapted to the paper
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 23
by the artist Dennis Ashbaugh, who made an artist’s book. The work was
called Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) by virtue of its characteristic: both the
electronic version and the paper one were designed to self-cancel after the
first reading.
Agrippa had deliberately chosen oblivion as a reflection on the ephemeral
nature of memory; works of digital art – that is, those who make use of the
capabilities and contexts provided by the computer, or more generally of
digital media for their creation, use, dissemination and storage – will also
be able to choose or are they intended to perish, dissolved by the fluidity
of the medium of which they themselves embody the aesthetics?
Digital Sustainability
Digital dark age anxiety – the risk of losing the files or no longer have
access to them – is perhaps the emotional state that best characterizes
contemporary society des Immatériaux, the intangible, to refer to the title
of the international event organized by Jean -François Lyotard already in
the (distant) 1984. Spasmodic Control + S, cloud, obsessive back up, pen
drive hung down necks, auto-emailng of documents are just some of the
little mania of homo digitalis, new rituals that defy the increasingly rapid
obsolescence of formats, media, software and hardware determined by the
progress of new technologies.
If many people are confronted with the problem of digital preservation
in everyday life, perhaps not everyone is aware of how this issue – which
embraces not only the conservation per se, but also the renovation, restora-
tion, selection, destruction and the improvement of digital works27 – it is
important for digital art and of course for electronic literature: as Katherine
Hayles points out in her famous essay Electronic Literature: What is it?28 of
2007, works are likely to become inaccessible after a decade or less because
of the “fluid nature of the medium”; consequently e-lit may lose the opportu-
nity to build that tradition that instead traditional literature claims. Similarly
Richard Rinehart points out that – due to the lack of standardized methods
of documentation and to the will of bypassing the values and practices of
27
Cfr. P. Innocenti, Theories, methods and testbeds for curation and preservation of digital art.
In: IS&T Archiving 2010 Preservation Strategies and Imaging Technologies for Cultural
Heritage Institutions and Memory Organisations Conference, The Netherlands, The Hague,
1-4 June 2010.
28
Cfr. K.N. Hayles, Electronic Literature: What is it? In: Preservation, Archiving, and Dis-
semination, v1.0 January 2, 2007. <http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html#sec4>
24 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
traditional art circuit, works of media art “are becoming victims of their
own volatile intention”29.
The differences between traditional and electronic literature in the field
of preservation and conservation, do not end here of course: Joseph Tabbi,
in the Preface of Acid-Free Bits30, points out that, while the locations of the
literature on paper are so many (Amazon, bookstores and libraries) that few
writers are concerned with the preservation, similar destinations do not exist
for born-digital works.
29
R. Reinehart, The Media Art Notation System: Documenting and Preserving Digital/Medi-
aArt,2007 <http://www.coyoteyip.com/rinehart_leonardo.pdf>
30
Cfr. J. Tabbi, Preface: Acid-Free Bits and the ELO PAD Project. In: Nick Montfort, Noah
Wardrip-Fruin Montfort, Acid-Free Bits. Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic Lit-
erature v1.0, June 14, 2004 <http://www.eliterature.org/pad/afb.html>
31
Ibid.
32
P. Innocenti, Theories, methods and testbeds for curation and preservation of digital art, cit.
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 25
tion et valorisation des œuvres by Serge Bouchardon, Marie and Nicolas Lis-
sart Esposito33), demonstrating not only the range of what is perhaps the
most difficult challenge launched by digital revolution, but also the “a nar-
row transdisciplinary collaboration becomes absolutely necessary between
all the agents involved: stakeholders, artists, curators, conservator-restorers
and collectors. Organizations, museums and organisms that collaborate
in research projects in search of solutions are increasingly collaborating
with each other”34 as well as scholars and experts in the humanities and
sciences.
As for environmental sustainability, therefore, also the digital one re-
quires the joint efforts of the whole community; it shall consist of an ap-
proach non targeted to the solution in the short term, but flexible, active and
ongoing and aimed at creating a proper infrastructure containing methods
that facilitate the access to and availability of digital material in more or
less distant future.
Although there are different types of strategies for the preservation of digital
data over time – including refreshing, migration, duplication, emulation, use
of metadata and digital certificates objects, reinterpretation35 – none of them
is suitable for all types of data, contexts or institutions and each one contains
risks and limitations: for example, Innocenti notes again, to migrate means
to modify the code over and over again and then making a continuous
and considerable effort; emulation means upgrade a virtual machine while
preserving each of obsolete technologies involved and the interpretation –
which consists in creating a new work by technologies completely different
from the original – can be very dangerous without the consent or supervision
of the creator36. We might therefore think, as suggested by Prof. Masucci, to
a device that can keep the hardware, software, and programming languages
33
S. Bouchardon, M. Lissart, N. Esposito, Littérature numérique: préservation et valorisation
des œuvres. In: Actes des journées Questions autour des poésies numériques, France, 2008
<http://www.utc.fr/~bouchard/articles/bouchardon-preservation-valorisation-litt-nume-
rique-%20fevrier2008.pdf>
34
L. García, P. Montero Vilar, The Challenges of Digital Art Preservation. In: e-conservation
magazine, No. 14, 2010, pp. 43-53 <http://www.e-conservationline.com/content/view/884>
35
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation>
36
P. Innocenti, Theories, methods and testbeds for curation and preservation of digital art, cit.
26 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
used in the original work as that unit that they actually represent, in order
to avoid distorting the work and its context37.
Similarly, it is possible to cite numerous examples of initiatives aimed
at digital preservation, as Xena, free software for archiving based on Java
that can be installed on any PC and that converts proprietary documents,
graphics, and audio files into open formats; DSpace, open source software
that accepts digital data in different formats (text, video, audio), distributes
them across the web, indexes them and saves them in time, or the Open
Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model for a open system of
information about storage38.
Returning to electronic literature, it is useful to discuss, albeit briefly,
on the above-mentioned pamphlet produced by Nick Montfort and Noah
Wardrip-Fruin within the project Preservation, Archiving and Dissemination
(PAD) promoted by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), having
the eloquent title Acid-Free Bits (bits without acid)39, with the allusion to
those types of paper treated with acids, such as newspaper, which deteriorate
within a few years, making the content unreadable. The pamphlet contains
a series of recommendations “digital sustainable” primarily designed for elec-
tronic writers. In addition to the above mentioned strategies of emulation
and migration, to preserve the works in time the two authors suggest to
always combine the works of indications and comments in order to be able
to recreate them easily in the future. Some tips on building long-lasting works
are summarized in thirteen points which show, not dwelling on too much
technical details, that open and participatory systems are preferable to those
closed and proprietary as well as text formats (such as HTML) are more
“sustainable” than binary ones (like Microsoft Word), that is good practice
to comment the code and use “validated code” and, finally, it is a good idea
to not only allow but even encourage duplication and dissemination of their
works in other sites and online platforms.
Staying in the field of the conservation of e-lit works, we have to re-
port the collaborative European research project Electronic Literature as a
Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP)40, born in 2010 and
directed by Professor Scott Rettberg, associate professor of Digital Culture at
37
From a personal conversation. Prof. Masucci also specifies that such a strategy would
have no reason to be applied to applications for computers and mobile devices or to works
produced in the form of websites.
38
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation>
39
N. Montfort, N. Wardrip-Fruin, Acid-Free Bits. Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic
Literature, cit.
40
<http://elmcip.net>
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 27
OLE.01 Festival
From what we have said above, it is clear that the issue of preservation of
digital works is perceived as an urgent necessity, an essential requirement
for the preservation of digital heritage beyond – or rather precisely because
– of the many questions still unresolved; in fact issues as much complica-
ted than those already mentioned have to be added: if the acceleration of
technological advances led to the anguish of the loss of identity that has
to pass through the preservation and conservation of memory, one has to
wonder what kind of identity and memory may represent works that by
their nature are essentially ephemeral and ever-changing, dynamic and fluid.
If it is true that “the spread of electronic communication has created a
new anthropological mutation, bearer of a culture dominated by ‘secondary
orality’ that has striking similarities with the older one for its participatory
mystique, for the sense of community for the concentration on the present
and even the use of formulas”46, how can we preserve these works/perfor-
mance without altering their immediacy and uniqueness? And yet, what
41
<http://collection.eliterature.org/1>
42
<http://collection.eliterature.org/2>
43
<http://iloveepoetry.com/>
44
<http://www.elettroletteratura.org/>
45
A. Liu, D. Durand, N. Montfort, M. Proffitt, L. Quin., J. Réty, N. Wardrip-Fruin, A
Framework for Migrating Electronic Literature, v1.1, August 5, 2005 <https://eliterature.org/
pad/bab.html>
46
L. Somma, La letteratura elettronica per la valorizzazione della cultura italiana. In
wikielettroart, October 2010 <http://www.wikielettroart.net/wordpress/?p=16>
28 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
47
C. Brandi, Theory of restoration, Florence, G. Basile, 2005.
48
S. Barassi, The modern cult of replicas: a Rieglian analysis of values. In: replication, Tate
papers, 2007 <http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07autumn/barassi.
htm>
49
A. Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin, Oppositions 25
1982, pp. 21-51 [Eng. from Der moderne Denkmalkultus, seine Wesen und seine Entstehung,
Vienna, 1903].
50
<http://www.artcom.unina2.it/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/SEMINARIO_DESIGN_
AND_CULTURAL_HERITAGE_26_GIUGNO_2014.pdf>
51
K.N. Hayles, Electronic Literature: What is it? In: Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemina-
tion, cit.
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 29
tronic literature – seems still far from being realized beyond disciplinary and
well-precise academic boundaries. Hence the importance of the creation of
dedicated events, of virtual and physical structures involved in the preserva-
tion and dissemination of works of e-lit, with a multidisciplinary approach
to the subject, of the conception of appropriate channels of distribution
and training because maybe what is still lacking, especially in Italy, it is
primarily the culture of electronic literature, as pointed out by Professor
Paola Carbone. Then OLE.01 Festival, conceived by Prof. Lello Masucci
and promoted by the cultural association Atelier Multimediale of Naples,
co-funded by the Campania Region52 wants to represent an important op-
portunity of comparison and encounter to create an “increased community”
who can question and reflect on digital sustainability and other sensitive as
fascinating and problematic characteristics inherent in the large historical,
social, anthropological, cultural and artistic phenomenon called electronic
literature.
Through a widespread programming in a whole month and that includes
disciplines united “from the creative use and aesthetic of new technologies”
(electronic music, VJ’s performance, installations and interactive works, per-
formances of e-dance and e-theater, computer animation, film and e-poetry),
the Festival want to offer an overview of what can rightly be defined new
languages, living expressions of contemporary art, so Italy – currently far be-
hind the international comparison – could become a center of excellence and
to avanguard in this relatively young but already very rapid expansion field.
The aim of the Festival is also the (re) discovery of our artistic and
cultural heritage, in an unusual and evocative blend of tradition and innova-
tion, which sees seminars on the history of electronic literature at the Italian
Institute for Philosophical Studies, experimental electronic music concerts
performed at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in Naples and at two
prestigious squares of Gesu Nuovo and Dante; lectures and panel discussions
by scholars and renowned artists at the hall of St. Thomas at the Convent
of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples; interactive sound installations and
performances of e-dance and e-theater to Villa Bruno’s foundries and the
gardens of Villa Vannucchi, both in San Giorgio a Cremano; projections
in two of the landmarks of Naples Castel dell’Ovo and Maschio Angioino;
finally, the exhibition of young artists from different countries around the
world who responded to the Call at the Palace of the Arts in Naples and
the exhibition, at the Doric room of the Royal Palace of Naples, of works
specially designed by the seven illustrious Master of the Festival Olivier
52
POR Fesr 2007/2013 Ob. Op. 1.10 “La cultura come risorsa” DD. 125 del 03/06/2011
30 INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA
Auber, Philippe Bootz, Caterina Davino, Fred Forest, Dene Grigar, Lello
Masucci and Jason Nelson.
Auber, artist and research associate at the Global Brain Institute of the
Free University of Brussels, presents his installation Digital Blood where the
well known ancient Neapolitan rite of the blood of San Gennaro is reworked
in an artistic, social and participatory manner; a collective ritual, therefore,
focused on immediate interaction unmediated by censorship, “an invitation
to consider what distinguishes the human from non-human”.
Bootz, active in the field of electronic literature since 1977, present in
numerous anthologies and digital magazines as well as President of the
European Network of Digital Literature DDDL, with his two combinatorial
generative works Play music for my poem and Play music for my narrative wit-
tily puts the wreader in position of having to choose between, respectively,
play music or read the text and play the role of player, composer or reader
through a careful dialogue among different semiotic systems in the name
of paradoxical expressive and aesthetic short-circuit.
Davinio, artist and writer, one of the pioneers of digital poetry and
responsible for the birth of the net-poetry in Italy, presents Big Splash, instal-
lation obtained from a revision in computer graphics of twenty-five digital
photographs on the theme of water.
The flow is also the main component of the work Flux et reflux la caverne
d’Internet, participatory site designed by Fred Forest, a pioneer of video art
and co-founder of the Movement of Sociological Art of the Aesthetics of
Communication. To use the words of the artist, “the site aims to highlight
both the differences of culture on the Internet both the reverse phenomenon
of standardization of media content due to the effects of globalization”. As
the title suggests, the work is a critical reflection on the functioning of the
media and the distorted and misleading reality-like the shadows on the walls
of Plato’s cave – which offers us the spectacle thereof.
Grigar, author of works of net-art and President of the Electronic Litera-
ture Organization, aims to tell the story of a man facing the forces of nature:
her e-poetry titled Curlew, is both a multimedia and oral performance using
the technology of motion tracking and interactive apps for smartphones and
desktop computers. The work can thus establish a meeting point between
the uniqueness and immediacy typical of the performance and reproduc-
ibility and conservation that are essential as well, as we have seen, for digital
art creations.
Masucci, artist and researcher active in the field of digital technologies
since 1990, creator of the Officina di Letteratura Elettronica (OLE) presents
an audio-visual poetry installation called Love needs silence: the title of the
INTRODUZIONE DI R. IADEVAIA 31
work, almost a warning, is in fact the only immutable text on the screen
while the phrase “I love you” written vertically and repeated in different
colors on a black background, swings and deforms according to the noise
picked up by software that make it actually illegible, or better “readable
only in silence”.
Finally, Nelson, electronic poet, net artist and lecturer at the College of
Art at Griffith University in Australia intends – with his digital interactive
poem The Required Field – to critically explore, without giving up the game-
release component that often characterizes his works, the suffocating tangle
represented by the various bureaucratic forms and by the endless documents,
often unnecessarily complicated or confused beyond belief, claiming with
unnerving formalities the compilation of the various fields, in fact. The user,
through this acute poetic translation, will finally take a short but heartfelt
revenge against these “everyday monsters” and at the same time he/she
will reflect on the imaginative aspect and on the poetic of reworking that
distinguish e-poetry.
Roberta Iadevaia
Capitolo 1
OLE.01 MASTER
Digital Blood
Internet sta annunciando l’avvento del cervello globale di cui noi, esseri
umani fatti di carne e sangue, saremmo gli agenti come i robot e altre crea-
ture. L’opera Digital Blood è un invito a prendere in considerazione ciò che
distingue l’umano dal non-umano.
Da solo o con altri, partecipando a un’opera artistica sociale online
chiamata Poietic Generator, ognuno può contribuire a liquefare il sangue di-
gitale umano. Il suo comportamento è il risultato immediato delle nostre
interazioni collettive non censurate via Internet.
Lasciate che prenda tutte le forme e i colori, persino facendoli danzare
e poeticamente ballare nel suo reliquiario presentato nella mostra OLE.01.
La sua immagine è disponibile ovunque e può essere visualizzato dove si
desidera.
Partecipa tramite smartphone o PC e interagisci con gli altri: http://
poietic.net
Per visualizzare l’immagine: http://live.poietic-generator.net
Sito di riferimento: http://poietic-generator.net
34 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Digital Blood
The Internet is announcing the advent of the Global Brain, of which we,
human beings made of flesh and blood, would be the agents as well as
robots and other creatures.
The work Digital Blood is a call to consider what distinguishes the
human from the non-human. Alone or with others, by participating to an
online social artwork called the Poietic Generator, everyone can contribute
to “liquefy” our human “Digital Blood”. Its behavior is the immediate result
of our uncensored collective interactions via the Internet.
Let it take all shapes and colors, even make it poetically dance within its
reliquary presented into the OLE exhibition. Its image is available everywhe-
re and can be displayed where you want.
Participate (via mobile phone or PC) and interact with others: http://
poietic.net
Display the image: http://live.poietic-generator.net
Reference site and Do IT Yourself: http://poietic-generator.net
Technical Requirements
Plug and play reliquary, 2 computers, 2 beamers, 1 free wifi hotspot, 2 square
shape screens, 1 support of the reliquary.
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Play music for my poem is the installation version of the performance poème
percutant. In this piece, the poem is a set of 4 moving and generated strophes.
The generation is combinatory for each strophe but based on different
principles. A combinatory generator composes the music.
Sounds are produced by a set of 3 original percussive instruments in-
vented by Nicolas Bauffe. Each instrument manages the visibility of 1 or 2
strophes. Only racket can made the text totally readable. The reader interact
mixes the music.
Will he choose to play music, or to read a text?
Technical Requirements
3 PC, 1 audio mixer desk, 2 screens, 2 videoprojectors, speakers or
headphones on 2 PC, 2 mouses.
40 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Caterina Davinio (Foggia 1957), artista e scrittrice, è attiva nel campo dei
nuovi media come autrice, curatrice e teorica. Tra i pionieri della poesia
digitale nel 1990, ha creato la net-poetry italiana nel 1998, coinvolgendo in
progetti on-line centinaia di artisti e i maggiori esponenti dell’avanguardia
verbo-visiva internazionale.
Ha esposto in oltre trecento mostre in numerosi Paesi del mondo, tra cui
sette edizioni della Biennale di Venezia ed eventi collaterali, la Biennale of
Sydney, la Biennale de Lyon, la Athens Biennial, la New Media Art Biennial
di Merida, E-Poetry all’università SUNY Buffalo, New York, e all’Università
di Barcellona, Polyphonix, Parigi e molte altre.
OLE.01 MASTER 41
Big Splash
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Caterina Davino (Foggia 1957) Artist and writer, she deals with new media
art as an author, a curator and a theorist. Among the pioneers of digital
poetry in 1990, she created Italian net-poetry in 1998, engaging hundreds of
artists, and major exponents of international visual and performance poetry,
in on-line projects.
She has shown her works in over three hundred exhibitions in many
countries, including seven editions of the Venice Biennale and collateral
events, the Biennale of Sydney, the Biennale de Lyon, the Athens Bien-
nial, the New Media Art Biennial of Merida, E-Poetry at the University
SUNY Buffalo, New York, and at the University of Barcelona, Polyphonix,
in Barcelona and in Paris, Artmedia at Salerno University, and many
others.
42 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Big Splash
Technical Requirements
Noi invitiamo a una riflessione critica sul funzionamento dei media e sulla
realtà distorta e manipolata che ci offre lo spettacolo della stessa. Questa
riflessione critica e partecipativa è proposta in tempo reale per gli utenti che
possono commentare i documenti rilasciati.
Un mastino spunta ripetutamente e in maniera incontrollata, interrom-
pendo l’intero programma, facendoci cioè soggiacere, metaforicamente, alla
frenesia e alla violenza dei media in un maelström in cui si scontrano e si
fondono politica, spettacolo o terrorismo.
L’individuo-cittadino – sopraffatto da questa valanga di immagini che
mescolano finzione e realtà, pubblicità e notizie, politica e spettacolo – non
ha alcuna pretesa di essere in grado di sfuggire ai loro permanenti assalti.
Non ha più alcun modo per riconoscerli... se non fare un passo indietro per
un’osservazione critica, condivisa da tutti.
Questo sito, nella sua prima realizzazione, è stato creato presso il Centro
d’Arte LELAIT di Albi per uno spazio che evoca la caverna di Platone:
un sistema provvedeva alla registrazione delle ombre in movimento dei
visitatori, determinando contemporaneamente la diffusione delle stesse sulle
pareti delle sale.
L’artista ha anche sfruttato, in tempo reale, le gocce d’acqua di una fonte
naturale che cadeva dal soffitto: una rottura del silenzio per farci riappro-
priare di un silenzio originale e salvifico.
Ciò che offre in realtà questo sito è di ridare voce ai cittadini, cioè
all’individuo, nel momento in cui prevale una certa inflazione ideologica
nel riguardi del collettivo.
Scheda Tecnica
Schermo piatto molto grande davanti al quale a una certa distanza è di-
sposto un espositore ad altezza d’uomo per far maneggiare al pubblico un
computer connesso alla rete. Occorrono inoltre degli altoparlanti per un
suono corretto.
English Version
Fred Forest was born in Mascara, Algeria; he lives and works at the same
time in Brooklyn, Paris and Anserville, within the M2 Territory.
Pioneer of video art (1967), art by telephone (1970), art on the TV
(1972), art on the radio (1972), art in the clipboard (1972), art with electronic
OLE.01 MASTER 45
diodes ( 1986), art on the Internet (1996), art in Second Life (1988), he is
also a pioneer in legal action against the institutions for a resolutely critical
practice against the system of contemporary art (Centre Pompidou, 1982).
He is the co-founder of the Movement of the Sociological Art with the
sociological art collective (1974) and of the Aesthetics of Communication
together with Mario Costa (1973).
Self-taught, he received rather late the Doctorat d’Etat at the Sorbonne
and, after having been professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art
of Cergy Pontoise, he became professor at the University of Nice Sophia
Antipolis. He represented France at the 12th São Paulo Biennial, at the
Documenta 6 and at the Venice Biennale in 1976. Has published a dozen
books of which the last is titled L’œuvre-systéme invisible in which he develops
its new theories about the future of art.
This site aims to highlight both the differences of culture on the Internet,
both the reverse phenomenon of standardization of media content due to
the effects of globalization.
Its title – Ebb and flow, the cave of the Internet – alludes to Plato’s cave.
In this metaphor, the Internet represents a misleading reflection of the me-
dia as they were the shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave. We invite to
critically reflect on the functioning of the media and on the distorted and
manipulated reality that offers us the show thereof. This critical and parti-
cipatory reflection introduced, in real time, to users who can comment on
the issued documents.
A mastiff appears repeatedly and uncontrollably, disrupting the entire
program, namely making us succumb, metaphorically, to the frenzy and
violence of the media within a maelstrom in which politics, entertainment
or terrorism collide and merge.
The individual-citizen – overwhelmed by this plethora of images mixing
fiction and reality, advertising and news, politics and entertainment – has no
claim to be able to escape from their permanent assaults. He no longer has
any way to recognize them... save taking a step back for a critical remark,
shared by all.
This website, in its first realisation, was created at the Art Center LE-
LAIT of Albi for a space that evokes Plato’s cave: a system provided for
the registration of moving shadows of visitors, which were simultaneously
spread on the walls of the rooms.
46 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
The artist has also taken advantage, in real time, of the drops of water
from a natural source that fell from the ceiling: a break of silence to make
us take an original and redeeming silence back.
What this website actually offers is to give back voice to the citizens,
that is the individual, in a moment when a certain ideological inflation in
the concerns of the collective prevails.
Technical Requirements
Curlew
Le parole del poema sono proiettate sulla parete centrale. Suoni e musica
registrati accompagnano la parola parlata per fornire un’esperienza senso-
rialmente ricca per il pubblico.
Il narratore controlla le videoproiezioni e i suoni attraverso i suoi movi-
menti, un fenomeno reso possibile da un sistema di gioco chiamato Kinect
– una tecnologia in commercio basata su sensori che permette agli “utenti”
di interagire con i media attraverso il movimento fisico. Quando il narratore
alza le braccia, il movimento innesca la proiezione video di Catsinas che
getta interiora di pesce per i chiurli in bilico e fa partire il file audio con le
grida degli uccelli.
Dal momento che la performance è una forma d’arte effimera, Curlew
include anche una app interattiva scaricabile gratuitamente per computer
desktop e dispositivi smart che fornisce la documentazione del lavoro in
una forma da Grigar soprannominata “app-book”.
Realizzata con semplici linguaggi web (HTML5, CSS3, Javascript), l’app-
book struttura la poesia in 10 schermi di un tablet. Gli spettatori possono
toccare le parole del poema visualizzate sullo schermo del loro tablet e
richiamare i media associati alle parole. Questo formato di Curlew consente
una documentazione durevole del lavoro e l’acquisizione di una parvenza
di esperienza della performance.
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Dene Grigar is Associate Professor and Director of The Creative Media &
Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver who
works in the area of electronic literature, emergent technology and cogni-
tion, and ephemera.
She is the author of net art works, like Fallow Field: A Story in Two
Parts and The Jungfrau Tapes: A Conversation with Diana Slattery about The
Glide Project, both of which have appeared in The Iowa Review Web, and
multimedia performances and installations, like When Ghosts Will Die (with
Canadian multimedia artist Steve Gibson), a piece that experiments with
motion tracking technology to produce networked multimedia narratives.
OLE.01 MASTER 49
She also co-authored, with Brett Oppegaard, Fort Vancouver Mobile and
The Grand Emporium of the West, projects funded by a 2011 NEH Start
Up grant and a 2012 We the People grant, respectively, that focuses on
location-aware nonfiction content for mobile phones to be used at the Fort
Vancouver National Historic Site.
She is also a recipient, with Stuart Moulthrop, of a 2013 NEH Start Up
grant for a digital preservation project for early electronic literature.
She is President of the Electronic Literature Organization and Associate
Editor of Leonardo Reviews.
Curlew
Curlew is a work of e-Poetry that tells the story of one man’s encounter
with the forces of nature. It is both a multimedia, spoken-word performance
piece involving motion tracking technology, and an accompanying web-
based, interactive app for desktop computers and smart devices that provides
documentation of the work.
The narrative centers on Catsinas, a fisherman living alone in a makeshift
shack on Curlew, one of several barrier islands in the Gulf Coast known as
the Chandeleurs. Based on a true account, the story chronicles the man’s
futile attempt to save Curlew’s shoreline from the storm’s destruction of his
adopted home.
The multimedia, spoken-word performance features one live performer
who acts as the narrator of the poem. Two virtual characters, Catsinas and
his dead father, and the virtual chorus of curlews – birds after which the
island is named – appear as video projections on two walls on the left and
right of the performance space.
The poem’s words are projected on the middle third wall. Recorded
sound and music accompany spoken word to provide a sensory-rich expe-
rience for the audience.
The narrator controls video projections and sound through her move-
ments, a phenomenon made possible by a Kinect game system – commer-
cially available, sensor-based technology that allows for “users” to interact
with media through physical movement.
When the narrator lifts her arms, the movement triggers the video
projection of Catsinas tossing fish entrails to the hovering curlews and the
audio file of the bird’s cries.
Because performance is an ephemeral art form, Curlew will also inclu-
de a free downloadable, interactive app for desktop computers and smart
50 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Technical Requirements
Platone afferma nel Simposio che amare consiste nel “fare, da due, uno”.
L’opera fa in modo che un flusso etico-estetico possa biunivocamente coin-
volgere attraverso se stessa lo spettatore divenuto attore e l’autore divenuto
spettatore.
Scheda Tecnica
Il lavoro ha bisogno di un computer su cui gira il software, di 1 microfono
sensibile che raccoglie i suoni dell’ambiente circostante e di un video pro-
iettore che rende visibile l’opera. Sia il videoproiettore che il computer e
il microfono devono rimanere occultati in modo che il video possa essere
l’unico elemento che testimonia del rapporto tra lo spettatore e l’opera. Sulle
pareti laterali sono disposti i progetti dell’istallazione.
English Version
Lello Masucci is an artist who since 1990 focuses on new technologies with
OLE.01 MASTER 53
Technical Requirements
Scheda Tecnica
The Required Field è stato creato con una combinazione di Jquery, Html5,
CSS e altri script interattivi. Per lanciare l’opera c’è bisogno di un computer
OLE.01 MASTER 57
English Version
Technical Requirements
Spare Parts Sound Project nasce nel 2011. È un progetto che mira al riciclo
di oggetti e materiali d’uso comune in strumenti musicali.
Gli oggetti e i materiali vengono equipaggiati di un sistema (o setup)
elettroacustico. Nella fattispecie si tratta di installare piccoli altoparlanti e
microfoni negli oggetti. Oggetti come contenitori e tubi sono principalmente
equipaggiati di un altoparlante di dimensioni adatte all’oggetto. Invece tubi
più piccoli o oggetti come corde armoniche e molle sono dotati di microfoni
a contatto (a contatto o ad elettrete).
60 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
English Version
Born in Naples, he lives in Bacoli. Electroacoustic Composer and Pianist. He
studied at the Conservatory San Pietro a Majella in Naples, graduating in
Piano under the guidance of Maestro Eugenio Fels and in Electronic Music
with Maestro Agostino di Scipio.
Musician, he directs his studies toward the contemporary and expe-
rimental music, spreading the various arts of sound through old and new
instruments, with a particular interest in the human-machine-environment
interaction.
Many of his sound projects aimed at the recycling of everyday objects
as musical instruments. Finalist for the national award of the arts – edition
2009/2010, 2011/2012 – as Composer of Electroacoustic Music.
As Sound Director he edited various electronic music events, Disso-
nanzen 2009, Scarlatti-Lab, Art of Sound – Sound of Art, La Terra Fertile,
Collettivo Neaphonis.
Vita Media
Vita media è un’opera transmediale in cui parola poetica, musica elettronica
e video-arte si intrecciano per dare vita ad una performance la cui cifra sta
nell’interazione tra le diverse medialità.
64 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Scheda Tecnica
I mezzi tecnici che permettono questa sinergia in live sono computer, tablet
e altri oggetti elettronici come radio e generatori di interferenze elettriche.
In essi sono presenti algoritmi di nostra ideazione e creazione in sistemi vari
(programmazione a oggetti, linguaggio C, java...) che permettono la gestione
e l’interazione di tutte le macchine presenti.
In alcuni contesti abbiamo realizzato sistemi reattivi e installazioni con-
testualmente allo spettacolo tali da coinvolgere l’ambiente circostante an-
nullando la tentazione dello spettatore passivo e al di fuori.
English Version
Collective Sine was born from the conflagration of ideas, people and tools.
In the name there is the mark of heterogeneity and contradiction: Sine as
synesthesia, as Sineciosis, as “without” – counterpart of expressive fullness
of the media of which the collective relies for its shows.
Sine proposes itself to the audience as bad shaped body composed of
intertwined limbs: the poetic word that emerges and sinks in the flow of
electrical and electronic music, the sound in fights with the video and the
image that glances of defiance the verb.
The collective is composed by Irpinian artists Ettore Pastena, Antonio
Vittorio Gaurino, Carmine Masiello and Vincenzo Ricciardelli.
Vita Media
Vita Media is a transmedia work in which poetic word, electronic music
ARTISTI FINALISTI DELL’OLE.01 65
and video art are interwoven to create a performance whose style is the
interaction among the different mediality.
It is offered to the viewers the deformed body of sounds, words and
images, the dystopian nightmare of a future lit by the gloomy light of techno-
logical apocalypse. On this line, the performance follows a narrative divided,
in three acts, according to the classical criteria.
It opens with the impact of an individualistic statement, in which content
is easy to discover the features of the new hero: a violent burst that throws
him against the world, society and gods. An adamant and huge “I” is reborn
from itself discovering and strongly affirming its existence.
It ends with the fall of the technocracy, inhumane and so never much
human, of gods-machine and the appropriation by man of his own huma-
nity.
Technical Requirements
The technical means which enable this live synergy are computers, tablets
and other electronic items such as radios and generators of electrical inter-
ference. They contain algorithms and various systems designed and created
by us (object-oriented programming, C language, Java..) that enable the
management and the interaction of all the machines.
In some contexts, we designed reactive systems and installations at the
same time in the exhibition such as to involve the surroundings by cancelling
the temptation of a passive and outside spectator.
Myrrh Streaming
Gli artisti esplorano la divinità dell’ispirazione poetica. Quest’opera è
un tentativo di sacralizzare il sacro, la ricerca di un modo per conciliare
il genio e il popolo, l’ordinario e lo straordinario, il naturale e l’artificia-
le. La poesia, materializzata nel libro – nell’oggetto ordinario del mondo
materiale – viene trasferita in un mondo idealistico. La poesia viene sma-
terializzata ponendo la sua incarnazione di carta in un sarcofago di pietra.
Nel sarcofago non è possibile accedere al “corpo”, ma il divino comincia
a secernere mirra. Vi è un piccolo buco nelle pietre. La presenza del vero
libro di carta tra le pietre è importante ed è un momento di iniziazione,
di traduzione della poesia da uno stato all’altro.
Il “Divino” in questo caso è rappresentato dalla casualità. I libri sono stati
selezionati in modo casuale. Estratti casuali di poesia vengono selezionati
dal programma e suonano come una reazione ai movimenti dello spettatore.
Così lo spettatore stesso può influenzare il flusso del dematerializzazione
della poesia spostandosi all’interno dell’installazione.
Spostandosi lentamente, lo spettatore può completare la sua dichiara-
zione poetica. Muovendosi velocemente o a gruppi è possibile viene creata
una composizione sonora di rumori sovrapposti dai vari strati di poesia.
ARTISTI FINALISTI DELL’OLE.01 67
Ventuno libri di poesia sono stati utilizzati nel progetto e sono letti dalla
voce elettronica del programma di lettura.
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Myrrh Streaming
The presence of the real paper book between the stones is important
and is the moment of initiation, of translation of poetry from one state to
another.
“Divine” in this case is represented by randomness. The books have been
selected randomly. Random pieces of poetry are snatched by the program
and they sound like a reaction to the viewer’s movements. Thus the viewer
himself can affect the flow of the poetry dematerialization by moving inside
the installation.
By moving slowly the viewer can complete his own poetic statement.
By moving quickly or in groups you can create a sound noise composition
from layers of poetry.
21 books of poetry are used in the project, and also the electronic voice
reading program.
The special program patch named The Field of Myrrh Streaming was
written. When the viewer finds himself inside the installation, the program
reads out his movements in this field and produces sound pieces that may
be the beginning, the end or the middle of the poetic phrase or even a pause
between phrases. Thus, the random part of a random poem in a random
sample of the authors is produced.
Technical Requirements
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Length: 25 minuti
Year: 2013
Technical Requirements
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Technical Requirements
Mareas
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Mareas
Lopez overflows in the specific case tour poetry of the experimental basis of
poetry: sound, visual and written projected by means other than through the
use of technology with a customs scripts and programs make out by him.
Texts speak primarily of eroticism and woven as a tribute to women.
Projected images on the screen are the result of his adventures at sea, wor-
king as a sailor.
80 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Sound is one of its main resources through field recording and sound
experimentation. the voice is a resource that comes from the root of human
history as a primitive instrument. About the space, dark place for the opti-
mum performance of video beam, good sound system and screen.
Technical Requirements
Yara Mekawei è nata nel 1987 a Il Cairo, Egitto, dove attualmente vive e
lavora. Ha studiato presso la Facoltà di Educazione Artistica e realizzato
opere di video arte, arte sonora e di musica elettronica.
Le sue opere risentono del suo interesse verso le connessioni tra i sim-
boli astratti e le relazioni umane; il concept dei suoi progetti è incentrato
sull’uso della memoria umana ai concetti di vita, che riflettono la cultura
delle comunità, in particolare gli elementi ricchi della società egiziana e gli
eventi storici.
Mekawei ha curato ed eseguito numerosi laboratori artistici, mostre
ed eventi di performance dal vivo a Berlino, Francoforte, Londra, Spagna,
Tunisia, Algeria e Italia.
Pharynx
Mirry Mounib in cui si parla della relazione tra donne e uomini. Conver-
sazioni in lingua araba egiziana sono inserite nella musica rock elettronica.
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
Yara Mekawei born in Cairo, Egypt 1987, where she currently lives and
works, she studied in the Faculty of Art Education, works in video/audio
art, composing electronic music with interests in connection between the
abstract symbols and human relationships in her art works; the concept of
her projects centered on the use of human memory in life concepts, that
reflect the culture of the communities, especially the rich elements of Egyp-
tian society and historical events.
Mekawei curated and performed many artistic workshops, exhibitions
and live performance events in Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Spain, Tunisia,
Algeria and Italy.
82 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Pharynx
Egyptian radio program Abla Fadila, voice over in television program about
the sea world and an radio interview with old actor “Mirry Mounib” she
take about women and men in relationships. Egyptian Arabic language
conversations inserts electronic rock music.
Technical Requirements
Lo Scenario
Videoinstallazione interattiva
Dimensioni: 4×3×0,2 metri
Anno: 2012
Scheda Tecnica
English Version
The Scenario
soon as the audience access to the closed space, the installation comes to
life: the bags assume structure and presence, and emerge from their position
starting a story and creating human figures projected on them.
Despite being a story predetermined by the artist, it is enabled only on
the passage of the viewer. The story, from being immaterial and belonging
to the world of the imagination, takes concrete form through a random
process (the passage of the viewer) that activates a predetermined logic.
The staging, consisting of moving images, is therefore subject to inter-
ruptions and changes in speed during its development, which correspond
to the changes in the status of the installation: immobility or movement
of the bags. With the passage of time, the plot develops until it reaches a
peak. Its complete execution depends on the duration of the presence of
spectators. At a time when the viewer moves himself to the sides of the
space, the installation reveals complete angles of projected figure, showing
the three-dimensional of the body inside the container-bag.
The dynamic yield of the installation assumes different facets as the
projection of the figures has the opportunity to expand also in the surroun-
ding space, over the bags, with the prerogative to abandon the hosting space,
leaving the bags alone, naked, and finally empty.
In addition, the installation changes the frequencies of the sounds in
according to the movement of the viewer in the space in relation to the
actions themselves of the projected figure.
In my proposal are presented visual, sensory and auditory stimuli to in-
vite the viewer to his participation in order that s/he can undertake a path.
The idea is to build two parallel screens placed one in front of another,
7 meters wide by 3 meters high, used as supports of projection. Then the
corridor that will be created will be activated by passers-by by their presence
triggering the display of moving video images projected on the two supports.
These images follow, and, in contemporary, guide the viewer to move in the
path formed by the architecture of the installation. The videos are triggered
whenever someone enters in the installation and continues the path taking
into account: the artistic action composed by the body, the importance of
the presence and the aesthetics derived from visual element. The attempt
is to reach the awareness of our role within the process.
This mechanism is triggered by sensors that visually allow the progress
of the images to the presence of a passer-by in the work. Diving yourself in
the work becoming the protagonist, point of care, it involves the relationship
with the other to get in a relationship with a situation created by the artist,
but left to the realization of the unpredictable elements that make it up and
complete it as the viewer.it involves the relationship with the other to get in
ARTISTI FINALISTI DELL’OLE.01 87
a relationship with a situation created by the artist, but left to the realization
of the unpredictable elements that make it up and complete it as the viewer.
Technical Requirements
Biosignals
Scheda Tecnica
Mixer min. 4 canali; scheda audio min. 4IN/4OUT; sensori; elettrodi; schede
Arduino; cavi e componenti elettronici vari; prese multiple.
Biosignals
The basic idea of the project is to detect the potential difference present on
groups of cells of the body under normal conditions, then on tissues and
ARTISTI FINALISTI DELL’OLE.01 89
Technical Requirements
4 channel (minimum) mixer; Sound Card min 4IN/4OUT; Sensors; Elec-
trodes; Arduino boards; Wires and various electronic components; power
distribution plugs; Laptop station.
90 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
[No.Lu/o/go] 20TEMPORANEA14
postemporanea@mail.com
All’interno del contesto OLE.01 FILE, che propone opere caratterizzate
da un uso fantasioso ed estetico delle nuove tecnologie (E-creativity), nello
spazio magico del Refettorio di S. Domenico Maggiore di Napoli, accanto
allo Staff, che sarà a tua disposizione per ogni tipo di informazione e per
programmare percorsi personalizzati all’interno del Festival, [No.Lu/o/go]
20TEMPORANEA14 offre lo spazio di una fermata per chi transita nel
complesso monumentale.
Operazione di passaggio nel raccordo dei vari eventi che animeranno
la sala comune, la sala san Tommaso d’Aquino, mostra allo sguardo di chi
l’attraversa vari territori in cui si animeranno diverse esperienze, riconducibili
a uno spazio funzionalizzato in un’ottica di studio-laboratorio.
Logiche ed esigenze diverse muoveranno i tempi di queste parti, se-
condo la specificità trattata: da un lato ascolto di musica elettroacustica,
visualizzazione di audiovisivi, ricezione e condivisione di dati in un archivio
temporaneo, secondo una modalità open dei materiali; dall’altro, fatto af-
fidamento sulla parola parlata intesa come medium, dialogo tra esperienze
diverse in forme quali reading, workshop, conversazioni che si confrontino
con la letteratura proposta.
In questione gli ambiti delle scienze umanistiche e del politecnico delle
arti, reciproche interazioni e sviluppi di un percorso condiviso in rapporto
alle nuove tecnologie. “La musica elettroacustica rappresenta un campo
interdisciplinare dove s’incontrano arte, scienza e tecnologia. Diverse com-
petenze s’incontrano, devono superare lo specialismo dei rispettivi linguaggi,
in qualche modo alzar lo sguardo al di sopra del proprio territorio per co-
struire insieme un sapere, un fare, un esprimere”; di tale tempra lo spirito.
Incontrare sguardi altri, nel tempo di una fermata.
ARTISTI FINALISTI DELL’OLE.01 91
English Version
[No.Lu/o/go] 20TEMPORANEA14
EVENTI
Elio Martusciello
Programma
Dario Casillo
Cristian Sommaiuolo
sizione per video e altri tipi di produzione dei media. Nel 2001 ha scoperto
la sua passione per la musica elettronica e il grande potenziale che questa
dimensione può offrire.
Nel 2005 ha dato vita al suo progetto musicale: Groupzero, con il quale
sperimenta diversi tipi di produzione sonora, come il circuit bending. Nel
2006 entra a far parte, come compositore, del gruppo teatrale I pedoni dell’a-
ria. Per questo gruppo, ha creato le musiche per diversi spettacoli: 4 Waiting
For Platone (2008), Me/Dea (2009), Trauerspiel (2010), Trasumanar (2011).
In alcuni di questi progetti, ha collaborato con Neil Leonard (Docente
di Produzione audio e nuovi media del Berklee College di Boston). Nel
2010 ha collaborato con I pedoni dell’aria per dare vita ad una performance
per musica elettronica, videoproiezione e voce recitante: Sonata per parole
e Altre Rovine.
Ha studiato musica elettronica al Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella
di Napoli con Agostino Di Sicipio ed Elio Martusciello. Nel 2013 entra a
far parte, come compositore, del gruppo teatrale Lifero Bestiario. Nel marzo
2014 partecipa con Lifero Bestiario al Rapp 2014 organizzato da Labora-
toriet – performing art research and development ad Aarhus (Danimarca)
con il progetto di ricerca CIMATICA.
Nobilis Nebula
Stefano Silvestri
Stefano Silvestri (Napoli, 1984), studioso delle tecnologie della musica e del
suono, è laureato alla specialistica in Musica Elettronica e Nuove Tecnologie
EVENTI 99
Studio Sonoro III è un brano per sintesi digitale su nastro ed elettronica dal
vivo. In esso viene sperimentata una tecnica di sintesi non standard deno-
minata “Wavetable multiplexing”, documentata nell’articolo Introduzione alla
Sintesi Wavetable Multiplexing (atti del CIM-CVIII, Torino-2010).
La parte in tempo differito è stata realizzata con appositi algoritmi di
100 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Pietro Lama
Ways of Consciousness
Andrea Arcella
Vincenzo Gualtieri
Dopo aver svolto l’attività di pianista si dedica sia alla composizione di mu-
sica acustica che a quella di musica elettronica. Segue pertanto da un lato i
corsi di composizione di G. Manzoni presso la Scuola di Musica di Fiesole,
di A. Solbiati e A. Guarnieri presso la Civica Scuola di Musica (MI), di A.
Corghi presso l’Accademia Chigiana di Siena; mentre dall’altro segue i corsi
di musica elettronica di R. Doati e A. Di Scipio. Alcune sue opere sono
state eseguite a New York, Bourges, Santiago del Chile, Pechino, Siviglia, e
in città italiane fra le quali Torino, Roma, L’Aquila, Palermo, Cagliari, Siena,
Mantova, Bolzano, Latina, Padova, Caserta e Napoli, (Università Federico
II, Università L’Orientale e in rassegne come Dissonanzen ed Eclettica). In
più occasioni ha inoltre curato la regia del suono di lavori propri e di altri
compositori. Le opere Hemiolia ed Item, sono state finaliste in concorsi na-
zionali di composizione. L’opera Field ha vinto il primo premio (ed. 2004)
nel Concorso Internazionale di Miniature Elettroacustiche di Siviglia CON-
FLUENCIAS – Arte y Tecnologia al Borde del Milenio e, sempre nel 2004,
è stata selezionata dalla Federazione CEMAT per essere pubblicata nel
primo CD della collana di opere elettroacustiche dal titolo: Punti di Ascolto.
Pubblica per la Casa Editrice TAU-KAY di Udine. È titolare della cattedra
di Composizione presso il Conservatorio di Musica di Avellino.
BachToForward
BackToForward è un progetto sonoro che nasce dall’osservazione di alcuni
fenomeni di retroazione in ambito audio. Sono formalizzate con Supercollider
o con Kyma (Symbolic Sound), le condizioni sistemiche per creare – all’in-
terno di un ambiente in cui è già in atto un feedback audio tra microfoni
e altoparlanti – una rete d’interazioni circolari ricorsive tra un sistema in-
terattivo di elaborazione digitale del segnale e uno strumento acustico. In
seguito a tali esplorazioni, vengono raccolte informazioni (digitali e analo-
giche) con le quali organizzare formalmente uno o più percorsi di suoni.
Il brano in questione è il frutto del montaggio (in tempo differito) di tre
brevi percorsi sonori estrapolati da una performance in live electronics di
più ampie dimensioni.
torio Nicola Sala con il M° Luigi Turaccio. Studia Musica Elettronica presso
il Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella di Napoli prima con il M° Agostino
Di Scipio e ora con il M° Elio Martusciello. Ha realizzato composizioni
strumentali, elettroacustiche e diverse installazioni. Ha iniziato di recente un
nuovo percorso dedicato all’improvvisazione con il mezzo elettroacustico.
Nata a Napoli nel 1987, studia violino sotto la guida del M° Marco Serino
presso il Conservatorio Nicola Sala. Ha prestato la sua opera come violinista
in diverse orchestre sinfoniche (Orchestra Giovanile del Sannio, Orchestra
del Conservatorio Nicola Sala, Orchestra del Cinema) con le quali ha ma-
turato una notevole esperienza nel repertorio Sinfonico e Lirico. Nel 2012
ha partecipato al concerto “I remember – Memorial Pasquale Pappano”
dove è stata diretta dal M°Antonio Pappano. Sempre nel 2012 ha inciso con
L’Hortus Conclusus, ensemble specializzato nella musica barocca, le Quattro
Stagioni di Antonio Vivaldi. Il cd è stato pubblicato dall’etichetta Sannio
Neumi. È iscritta alla scuola di Musicoterapia Carlo Gesualdo.
Nata nel 1982. Cantante e compositrice, vanta una lunga militanza nella
musica Bossanova e Jazz, frequentando scuole (tra cui Fondazione Siena
Jazz, Saint Louis College, Conservatorio di musica “N. Sala”, etc.), corsi
musicali in diverse città italiane ed esibendosi in molte rassegne, concerti e
104 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
In ascolto
Ensemble di improvvisazione per elettronica e strumenti
Christoph Pennig
Artista sonoro nato a Colonia nel 1980. Dal 2002 studia musicologia, fisica
e folclore europeo a Friburgo e sta terminando gli studi in Musikinformatik
a Karlsruhe.
Memento Mori
Per tape e trombone
English Version
The Orchestra comes within the class of electronic music at the Conser-
vatory of Naples. A class frequented by open and curious young people
looking with longing toward the future, toward the research, towards a
EVENTI 105
distant horizon. A minority look in the current context that is instead often
folded back into the past, where the future is perceived tend bleak. The new
technologies, coupled with the thought of art, seem to contain chiefly this
promise of the future, this desiring forward gaze, this imagination in the ma-
king. Other musicians from other classes within the Conservatory, however,
have greatly contributed to the creation and development of this project.
The latter, with their instruments belonging to the music tradition, but
often used with unorthodox and personal techniques, have allowed that
game of contamination between past and present, which is the specificity of
this Orchestra. This group of people, namely the class of electronic music
plus all those who participated coming from the outside, is what we like to
call the “historic core” of the Orchestra; the latter, however, is to be consid-
ered as an “open structure”, able to contemplate the addition of many other
musicians who in turn contribute to its multi-identity constitution. All this
is possible thanks to the beating heart of this officina (workshop) composed
of the language of improvisation that, although controlled through always
different procedures, allows maximally the dialogue between different identi-
ties – for us it is just to “share the otherness”.
The objective of this Orchestra (it is also evident from the name that we
have given to us) is the sound as such, its grain, the stamp, the parameter
most uncontrollable and complex of the sound. The note, the height, the
length are an historic attempt to simplify and reduce the sound experience
in the direction of control. For us, however, it is a sort of back to basics,
something that has to do with almost primitive aspects of “feel”, a pre-
linguistic form of perception designed to capture the sound as sound event
in itself, making a short-circuit of the habit of considering what to whom
the sound refers (“trivial listening”), its vicarious dimension. This complex
auditory experience to whom the work of our Orchestra aims, has allowed
us to understand that the quality, the specificity, the peculiarity of music,
its original “vocation” is all back in its destructive addressing to the ear.
Considering the “sensitive” root of thinking, it is understood that develop,
guide, encourage this important “sense”, it means to broaden and expand
the human capacity to think and to think of themselves in the world.
To develop listening means questioning ourselves, to deconstruct our
own perspective of listening, broadening our horizons of space and time. Do
not forget that listening means to internalize – the ear follows and withstands
the time of the sound, and listening requires silence – then, the sound and
the silence are supportive. The ear is set up as the “sense” of hospitality
and reception, tool of opening and “transcendence”. Here the practice of
improvisation we diligently experience within our workshop, with its social
106 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Elio Martusciello
Program
Dario Casillo
Cristian Sommaiuolo
He began studying piano at the age of nine years. During his training, he
studied home recording, harmony, video composition and other types of
media production. In 2001, he discovered his passion for electronic music
and the great potential that this dimension can offer. In 2005 he started
his own musical project: Groupzero, with whom he experiments different
types of sound production, such as circuit bending. In 2006 he joined, as
a composer, the theater group I pedoni dell’aria. For this group, he created
the music for several shows: 4 Waiting For Platone (2008), Me/Dea (2009),
Trauerspiel (2010), Trasumanar (2011). In some of these projects, he has
collaborated with Neil Leonard (Professor of “Audio Production and New
Media” at Berklee College in Boston). In 2010 he collaborated with I Pedoni
Dell’aria to create a performance for electronic music, video projection and
narrator: Sonata per parole e Altre Rovine.
He studied electronic music at the Conservatory San Pietro a Majella
in Naples with M° Agostino Di Sicipio and Elio Martusciello. In 2013 he
joined the theater group Lifero Bestiario as a composer. In March 2014 he
participates with Lifero Bestiario at Rapp 2014 organized by Laboratoriet –
Performing Art Research and Development in Aarhus (Denmark) with a
research project CYMATICS.
Nobilis Nebula
Stefano Silvestri
Pietro Lama
Ways of Consciousness
This composition Ways of Consciousness comes from a first study on the
quadraphonic, from the first steps in computer music and electroacoustic. It
represents the desire to realize seen or imagined paths, paths that accompany
the composition in streets that it has not yet covered and that it learns to
know little by little. Some of the sounds, as well as reverbs, were written
with the open source software SuperCollider and subsequently filtered with
other software.
112 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Andrea Arcella
Andrea Arcella (1971) has had training on the borderline between music
and science. He graduated in Physics at the of University of Naples Fede-
rico II, with a thesis on the automatic recognition of musical timbres and
later he earned a degree in Electronic Music with Agostino Di Scipio at the
Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella of Naples. He has held professorships in
major projects of the Ministry of Education for technological and musical
experimentation. He has been a contract lecturer in courses on Analysis
and synthesis of sound at the University of Naples Federico II, in courses
on Music Technology at the Conservatory of Salerno and Padua and in
orientation courses for schools at the Conservatorio S. Pietro a Majella in
Naples. His scientific and musical research activity has resulted in several
publications for academic events in Italy (CIM – Colloqui di Informatica
Musicale, Understanding and Creating Music Conference) and abroad (In-
ternational Conference on Information Technology in Education).
In parallel to his research and teaching activity, he has been working as
a composer and performer of electroacoustic music. His compositions have
been performed at international festivals of electro-acoustic music including
Live! Ixem, Altera, Di_Stanze, Terra delle Risonanze, Art of Sound-Sound of
Art, EMUFEST, Silence Acusmatica; in public events (May of Monuments in
Naples, Neapolis pearl of the Mediterranean), in theaters and on the radio;
he published compositions with netlabel and in CD. He currently teaches
computer science in schools, collaborates on projects and lessons with the
University of Naples Federico II and he teaches in Conservatories. He wri-
tes for websites that deal with contemporary music and holds seminars in
Universities and cultural centers.
with the voice of the actor; sometimes they accompany it, more often
they compete against the latter. The tromblauto is a flute played with an
unconventional technique, which creates an ancestral and evocative sound.
The tromblauto is a non-existent instrument for organology as well as
they are non-existent in our eyes the myriads of souls who arrive on our
shores.
Vincenzo Gualtieri
BachToForward
Born in Naples in 1987, she studied violin under the guidance of Maestro
Marco Serino at the Conservatory Nichola Sala. She worked as a violinist
in various orchestras (Youth Orchestra of Sannio, Nichola Sala Conserva-
tory Orchestra, Cinema Orchestra) with which she has gained considerable
experience in Opera and Symphonic repertoire. In 2012 she participated in
the concert I remeber-Pasquale Pappano Memorial where she was directed
by Maestro Antonio Pappano. Also in 2012 she recorded the Four Seasons
by Antonio Vivaldi with The Hortus Conclusus ensemble specialized in Ba-
EVENTI 115
roque music. The CD was released by Sannio Neumi label. She is enrolled
in the School of Music Therapy Carlo Gesualdo.
Listening
Improvisation Ensemble for electronics and instruments
Christoph Pennig
Sound artist born in Cologne in 1980. Since 2002 he have been studied
Musicology, European Folklore and Physics in Freiburg and he is finishing
his studies in Musikinformatik in Karlsruhe.
Memento Mori
For trombone and tape
116 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Memento Mori is part of the Degree Thesis project and it was born during
his stay in the city of Naples.
English Version
Italian artist Roberto Paci Dalò – musician, film maker, theatre director,
visual artist – active for years on the international scene, creates his work
starting with sound and drawing, then expanding to sculpture, installation,
music, film, performance, and collaborative projects, between institution, the
independent scene, and pop culture. His work has been presented throu-
ghout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, China, Japan,
Russia, Middle East, Israel and Europe. His work has won him international
admiration from – amongst others – John Cage, Robert Ashley, Giya Kan-
cheli and Aleksandr Sokurov. Art, science, and nature are the key words
of his oeuvre. A pioneer in the use of Internet in art and integrating ana-
log and digital technologies, his work areas include: sensorial design, radio
transmission, telematic networks, persistence of classical tradition in contem-
poraneity, psycho-acoustics, robotics, cybernetics, man-machine interaction,
real-time sound-image elaboration, soundscapes (acoustic city portraits). In
defining his own work Paci Dalò coined the definitions: media dramaturgy
and theatre of listening.
Project
Roberto Gilli (Trieste, 1967) è considerato uno degli autori della prima spe-
rimentazione di letteratura e poesia elettronica in Italia. Inizia a sviluppare
ipertesti e poesie ipertestuali nel 1992.
Negli anni novanta collabora con artisti europei, statunitensi e australiani
per la creazione di opere digitali basati sulle gif animate, ipertesti e piccoli
frammenti di audio. La prima opera di grandi dimensioni, premiata nel 1999,
è ULE una complessa narrazione ipertestuale.
Negli anni successivi esplora le potenzialità del multimedia e delle realtà
virtuali concentrando sempre di più la sua attenzione sugli aspetti poetici e
strutturali delle opere. L’utilizzo della programmazione e della grafica vet-
toriale gli permettono di creare opere per il web con strutture generative e
ipernarrative sempre più complesse.
Negli anni che vanno dal 2004 al 2008, Gilli sperimenta la fusione tra
forme classiche (scrittura metrica tradizionale come sonetti, terzine, sestine e
madrigali), video e strutture interattive e generative. Le sue opere sono pensa-
te principalmente per DVD video anche se poi vengono presentate sul web.
Dal 2008 al 2012, Gilli lavora sull’utilizzo dei blog e di twitter per la cre-
azione di flussi poetici e narrativi. Sviluppa inoltre delle narrazioni transme-
diali utilizzando social network e tecniche di mashup narrativo.
Attualmente sperimenta applicazioni di intelligenza artificiale e tecno-
logie mobili nel campo della letteratura elettronica.
Wanderung Digitale
English Version
Roberto Gilli (Trieste, 1967) is an author of the first Italian wave of elec-
tronic literature and poetry. He begins to develop hypertext and hypertext
poetry in 1992. In late ’90, he collaborates with artists in Europe, U.S. and
Australia to create digital works based on animated gifs, hypertexts and small
fragments of sounds. ULE, the first large work awarded in 1999, shows a
complex hypertext narration. In subsequent years, he explores the potential
of multimedia and virtual reality, focusing more and more on the relationship
between poetic and structural aspects in digital art. Vector graphics and
coding allow him to create web-based works with increasingly complex
and generative structures.
In 2004-2008, Gilli experiences the merging between classical forms
(traditional metrics such as sonnets, tercets and madrigals) with videos and
interactive or generative structures. His works are mainly designed for DVD
video even if they are presented also on the web.
From 2008 to 2012, Gilli works on the use of blogs and Twitter to
create poetic and narrative flows. He also develops transmedia narratives
using social networks and mashups techniques. Currently he is experiencing
applications of artificial intelligence and mobile technologies in the field of
electronic literature.
Digital Wanderung
Digital Wanderung is a 3D digital poem made in 1999. DW is a virtual space
that simulates (with words, sounds and drawings) a physical and mental
120 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
space. The play takes place by moving into this space as we move into a
digital game, the point of view is first person. The work is a reflection on
the relationship between mind and space, time and poetry. The movement
of the player becomes the wandering of the romantic wanderer: there is no
goal, only the wish to get in touch with the universe as he speaks, describes
and gives himself to the observer. The work does not present a realistic
3D as the environments that the user has to explore are more mental than
physical: spaces examples are “waking up” or “family’s memories”.
The spaces can be described as inner moments that reflect, in some
way, the physical locations where the event takes place or show them
metaphorically.
The structure of the work is complex. The spaces are tied together
in clusters of meaning, and interconnected by not bidirectional flows (the
flow of time in a day). The whole structure is enclosed on itself, but due
to numerous “secret gardens”, it is possible to explore it many times. The
work is also available on DVD-Video. In the DVD, the flow is controlled by
chance: the user becomes a spectator in a continuous, infinite, flow within
the spaces of the work.
Scheda Tecnica
Una coppia di casse attive, amplificate 600 Watt (circa), un video proiettore,
1 lettore cd/dvd, prolunghe elettriche, computer, mixer.
English Version
Technical Requirements
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI
English Version
Do you feel out of place? Do you feel uncomfortable in this system? Don’t
think you are different. Know you are! Declare yourself not human to take
away from the template.
The work of Federico Bucalossi revolves around the concept of “nothu-
man” as a critical reflection on the present condition of the body and the
self in the contemporary digital society. Bucalossi has been working on the
critical interferences between the digital and the bodily since the ’90s, coming
from punk experience and the Italian counterculture scene. As part of the
Strano Network collective and individually, in 1998 he developed a series
of project on the subject of “being not/human”, combining different media
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 125
Nasce a Torino nel 1974, dove vive e lavora. Artista, autrice, docente e
designer si occupa di poesia, tecnologia, letteratura digitale e culture del
web. Come artista dal 1994 esplora le possibilità del testo poetico nell’era
dei nuovi media e ragiona su come evolvono le interfacce di scrittura e
lettura poetica in un contesto caratterizzato da interattività, ricombinazione,
molteplicità, modularità e mutabilità.
Ha prodotto installazioni urbane e performance correlate alla new media
poetry, ai testi collaborativi, alla street poetry.
Sperimenta strutture testuali complesse che si realizzano in nuovi oggetti
testuali che chiama “Poetry Machines”.
Ha creato il sito internet “Content(o)design: la poesia nell’epoca dei
nuovi media”.
Fondatrice della rivista di cultura e letteratura digitale Meccano: nuovi
assemblaggi possibili, ha curato il progetto editoriale, visivo e tecnologico del
canale di cultura digitale e innovazione Smart Web per il portale RAI.it di
cui è stata anche content provider.
È stata Coordinatore dell’Area Nuovi Media per la Fondazione Fitzcar-
raldo, docente di Piattaforme interattive presso il Master in editing e scrit-
tura dei prodotti audiovisivi dell’Università degli Studi di Torino e insegna
webdesign e info visualization presso l’Istituto Europeo di Design di Torino.
Fondatrice dell’associazione ManaMana ne ha curato la comunicazione
strategica e i progetti SenzaMoneta e Ri.nuovi.
Il suo percorso artistico è iniziato nel 1994 con il Dap 1 (Distributore
Automatico di Poesia) al quale sono seguiti la performance urbana Dap 2
– Attraverso (1998) e la serie di installazioni ambientali Dap 3.0 (2002)– I
Cartografi, Dap 3.1 – Il narratore molteplice (2003) e Dap 3.2 Rifugiàti (2004).
Nel 2006 ha iniziato la serie di “Poetry machines” tra cui Capace di Cam-
biare – Scatola con poesia (2006) Alberi (2007) e Poetry machine – Change (2007).
Dal 2009 collabora con la marionettista Cristiana Daneo. Il connubio tra
126 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Quando, nel 1999, preparavo la mia tesi sulla New Media Poetry, ero spinta
da un’urgenza che mi molestava già da qualche anno. Essere poeta, son
poeta, era stata una definizione sempre problematica, che mal si conciliava
con gli Spiral Tribe, la goa trance, i libri di William Gibson, il villaggio
cyberpunk a ridosso del muro di Berlino, il pc overcloccato, gli orecchini
fatti con le resistenze, quel filo di abs a girocollo e come ciondolo un mam-
muth cromato.
Come avrebbe dovuto essere la poesia per competere ad armi pari con
Mork e Mindy, la teoria delle stringhe, i Videogame di strategia, i lan party
con Doom…
Quel “Non chiederci la parola”1 prendeva una strana piega: troppe anse
e incisi e ripensamenti, verità doppie e multiple, personas, livelli, sincronie,
fatti e buchi per poter mettere tutto in fila su un foglio di carta o anche solo
poter dire, parola dopo parola, una parola per volta.
Artificio
L’autore digitale crea strutture, sistemi parametrici nei quali possono fluire
altr(u)i discorsi, altr(u)i percorsi2. Coloro i quali godono della sua opera sono
essi stessi, in grado diverso ma non con più basso grado, autori. E creano
opere proprie sulla base del, ed entro il, quadro formale da lui delineato.
Per la sensibilità digitale gli autori creano strutture formali. Lentini il
sonetto, Mallarmé lo spazio bianco, Will Wright i giochi di simulazione.
1
E. Montale, Ossi di seppia, Mondadori, 2003.
2
N. Balestrini, Tristano, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1966.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 127
Immersione
Ma poi Eduardo Kac mi aveva parlato delle sue poesie olografiche in cui il
testo fluttuava nello spazio antistante l’opera, cambiando significato a secon-
da delle posizioni e dei movimenti del lettore. Alle mie mostre la gente si
doveva sedere al computer come in ufficio; ma io avrei voluto vederla ballare.
Posi la questione a Enrico Saletti e realizzammo il D.A.P.3, Terzo Distri-
butore Automatico di Poesia. Era la mia terza installazione stradale: un’inter-
faccia di lettura che rilevava i movimenti dei passanti tramite fotocellule e li
faceva interagire con un testo ricombinante proiettato sui muri circostanti.
Il testo, nove versi, era scritto con una struttura a pettine che permetteva,
per ciascun verso, di aggiungere una serie potenzialmente infinita di varianti
a patto che ciascuna di esse concordasse con tutte quelle degli altri versi.
L’interazione, presentando sempre nuove combinazioni coerenti, dava vita
3
P. Kotler, Prosumers: A New Type of Customer, Futurist (September-October), 1986.
4
G. Pozzi, Poesia per gioco. Prontuario di figure artificiose, il Mulino, Bologna, 1984.
128 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Materia
Scopro i tempi più quieti che ha la materia: legno, carta, ottone, gesso, fil
di ferro. La nuova serie di Poetry Machines fa a meno dell’elettricità. Sono
interattive, mutanti, calde, sporche, umane… Normali. Sono oggetti reali, e
come la realtà, portano ormai inesorabilmente inscritte le conseguenze di
decenni di digitale. Questo imprinting è sotteso al processo di scrittura e
concezione, e si deposita in cicli ricorsivi di traduzioni linguistiche, tecno-
logiche, materiali e immateriali, dei medesimi testi7. Dopo la prima stesura,
la progettazione di uno o più modelli cartacei interattivi, poi la simulazione
digitale dei meccanismi di lettura, poi ancora modelli cartacei o in legno,
fino al definitivo montaggio manuale8.
Nel 2011, apre il Fab Lab di Torino: macchine a controllo numerico
sono rese accessibili anche a non-tecnici, designer e sperimentatori. La ma-
nifattura delle Poetry Machine si digitalizza e diventa replicabile. Il testo
vettoriale di Poetry machine – change è miniaturizzato e intagliato al laser
da un braccio robotico in una tavola di legno, le parti interattive vengono
poi meccanizzate dalle mani sapienti della marionettista Cristiana Daneo. Il
risultato finale è una serie di spille interattive in legno, ottone e filo d’acciaio,
indossabili come gioiello.
5
J. Baudrillard, Lo scambio simbolico e la morte, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2002.
6
R. Queneau, Cent mille milliards de poèmes, Gallimard, Parigi, 1961.
7
J. D. Bolter, R. Grusin., Remediation: Understanding New Media, MIT, Cambridge (Mass.),
1999.
8
G. Anceschi, Basic design, fondamenta del design, in: L’ambiente dell’apprendimento. Web
design e processi cognitivi, McGraw-Hill, Milano, 2006.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 129
Libro
English Version
Born in Turin in 1974, where she lives and works. Artist, author, lecturer
and designer, she deals with poetry, technology, digital literature and culture
of the web. As an artist she has been explored the possibilities of the poetic
text in the age of new media since 1994 thinking about how to evolve the
interfaces of poetry writing and reading in a context characterized by inte-
ractivity, recombination, multiplicity, modularity and changeability.
She produced urban installations and performances related to new media
poetry, collaborative texts and street poetry.
She experiments complex textual structures which become new text
objects that she calls “Poetry Machines”.
9
<http://idpf.org/news/epub-3-specification-public-draft-released>
10
<http://www.pubcoder.com>
11
C. Heibach, Sprachkunst als Vernetzungsphänomen: Eine Re-Formation der Literaturwis-
senschaft?, 2005 <http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/DigiLit/heibach/sprachkunst_vernetzung.
html>
130 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
She created the website “Content (o) design: poetry in the age of new
media”.
Founder of the magazine of digital culture and literature Meccano: nuo-
vi assemblaggi possibili, she oversaw the editorial, visual and technological
project of the channel of digital culture and innovation Smart Web for the
portal RAI.it of which she was also content providers.
She was Coordinator of New Media for the Fitzcarraldo Foundation,
Professor of Interactive Platforms at the Master in editing and writing for
audiovisual products of the University of Turin and she teaches Web Design
and Information Visualization at the European Institute Design of Turin.
Founder of ManàManà Association, she oversaw its strategic commu-
nication and also the projects SenzaMoneta and Ri.nuovi.
Her artistic career has started in 1994 with the Dap 1 (Poetry Vending
Machine) which was followed by the urban performance Dap 2 – Through
(1998) and the series of environmental installations Dap 3.0 – The Carto-
graphers (2002), Dap 3.1 – Multiple Narrator (2003) and Dap 3.2 Refugees
(2004).
In 2006 she began the series of “Poetry machines” including Capable of
Change – Box of poetry (2006) Trees (2007) Poetry and machine – Change (2007).
Since 2009 she collaborates with puppeteer Cristiana Daneo. The com-
bination of manual skill and poetry has allowed her art to evolve translating
the poetical text language in language and support in support, passing re-
cursively from the digital to material and vice versa.
Since 2013, she is Tech Evangelist of interactive digital publishing sof-
tware, PubCoder.
How should poetry has been to compete on equal terms with Mork
and Mindy, String Theory, Videogame Strategy, lan parties with Doom...
That “Non chiederci la parola”12 took a strange turn: too many handles
and engraved and thoughts, twin and multiple truth, personas, levels, syn-
chronicities, stuff and holes in order to put it all in a row on a sheet of paper
or even just to say, word after word, one word at a time.
Artifice
12
E. Montale, Ossi di seppia, Mondadori, Milano, 2003.
13
N. Balestrini, Tristano, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1966.
14
P. Kotler, Prosumers: A New Type of Customer, Futurist (September-October), 1986.
15
G. Pozzi, Poesia per gioco. Prontuario di figure artificiose, il Mulino, Bologna, 1984.
132 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Immersion
But then Eduardo Kac had spoken to me of his holographic poems in which
the text floated in the space in front of the work, changing meaning depen-
ding on the positions and movements of the player. At my shows, people
had to sit at the computer as in the office; but I wanted to see them dance.
I put the question to Enrico Saletti and we made the DAP3, Third Auto-
matic Poetry Vending Machine. It was my third road installation: an interface
for reading which noticed the movements of passers-by by photocells and
made them interact with a recombinant text projected on the surrounding
walls.
The text, nine verses, was written with a comb structure which allowed,
for each line, to add a potentially infinite number of variants as long as each
of them agreed with those of all other verses. Presenting ever new coherent
combinations, the interaction gave life to the invective of the sailor Giovanni
Parola (John Word) against the Cartographers, guilty of giving form to a
protean and hostile world.
I connected the permutations of the text to the reproductive model of
DNA16 and for the reading mechanism, I took inspiration from the model
of Cent Mille milliards de Poèmes17.
But I wanted there was the reality inside. In the following years, with
the association ManàManà, we sampled and recombined dozens of inter-
views with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The D.A.P. 3 hosts two
different “Multiple Narrators”; each of them tell with one voice the endless
stories of those painful trips full of hope: our new fellow citizens. I sketched
a primitive text editor for mutant texts to enable the group to collaborate.
Matter
I find the quieter times that the matter has: wood, paper, brass, plaster,
wire. The new series of “Poetry Machines” get along without electricity.
16
J. Baudrillard, Lo scambio simbolico e la morte, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2002.
17
R. Queneau, Cent mille milliards de poèmes, Gallimard, Parigi, 1961.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 133
They are interactive, mutants, hot, dirty, human... Normal. They are real
objects, and as the reality, the lead inexorably inscribed the consequences
of decades of digital. This imprinting is underlying to the process of writing
and design, and lay down in recursive cycles of linguistic, technological,
tangible and intangible translations of the same texts18. After the first draft,
the design of one or more interactive paper models, then digital simulation
of the mechanisms of reading, then again paper or wooden models up to
the final manual assembly19.
In 2011, a Fab Lab opened in Turin: CNC machines are made avai-
lable also to non-technical designers and experimenters. The manufacture
of “Poetry Machine” is digitized and becomes replicable20. Vector text of
Poetry machine – change is miniaturized and laser cut by a robotic arm on
a wooden board, the interactive parts are then mechanized by the skilled
hands of puppeteer Cristiana Daneo. The end result is a series of interactive
brooches made of wood, brass and steel wire, worn as jewelry.
Book
18
J. D. Bolter, R. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, MIT, Cambridge (Mass.),
1999.
19
G. Anceschi, Basic design, fondamenta del design, in L’ambiente dell’apprendimento. Web
design e processi cognitivi, McGraw-Hill, Milano, 2006.
20
J. Walter-Herrmann, C. Büching, FabLab: Of Machines, Makers and Inventors, Bielefeld,
Transcript, 2013.
21
<http://idpf.org/news/epub-3-specification-public-draft-released>
134 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
22
<http://www.pubcoder.com>
23
C. Heibach, Sprachkunst als Vernetzungsphänomen: Eine Re-Formation der Literaturwis-
senschaft?, 2005 <http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/DigiLit/heibach/sprachkunst_vernetzung.
html>
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 135
English Version
ry, Net.art, participant writing and performance art will form the nodes of
critical reflections.
Play Music for my Narrative by Philippe Bootz and Nicolas Bauffe fits
into the narrative branch of generative art which in this case joins a reading
process dependent on action ‘other’ that also involves the body of the reader.
In addition to the work made by Masucci and shown at the exhibition,
a reference example is undoubtedly The Breathing Wall by Kate Pullinger,
Stefan Schemat and babel. With a strong inclination to the spectaculariza-
tion, text generation is therefore dependent not only on the mechanisms
of textual metamorphosis suggested by Bootz, but also on the performative
methods with which the reader is able to make it emerge. Here the pro-
duction of music, the narrative text and the act on the system are strongly
interlinked. In addition, the reader should not only perceive something that
he/she rationalises in a second phase (anesthetic and aesthetic function of
art), but he/she has to create the very conditions of perception.
The generative act is also central in the work of net.art signed by Olivier
Auber, who in Digital Blood proposes again the idea of collective intelligen-
ce. Once again, the focus is on the process of creation which in this case
is evident in the very name of the system: Poietic Generator. The sharing
of an experience in a network of users starts off on the Internet to extend
outside of it, in physical locations such as exhibitions, art spaces, and so on.
The sharing of creative practice joins simultaneous sharing of the fruition
of the experience in physical locations very distant from each other. This
work helps to make us reflect not only on the potential of the network,
but on the relationship between everything that is on this side and beyond
the screen of the digital device, as well as on cultural identity (global vs.
national) of those who, like of Janus, live a double condition. A comparison
with Lexia to Perplexia by Talan Memmott will be inevitable. If the work by
Bootz praxis prevails, here is the poiesis, that is the production of an object
that remains autonomous and extraneous to whom produced it. However,
the work is at its best when many people work together and share the
experience (crowd phenomena)
The crowd plays an important role also in Love Needs Silence by Lello
Masucci. In this work, we identify several points of interest: 1. The space
of writing is to be considered the environment within which the sounds
and noises produced by the audience determine the emergence of narrative
text; 2. Similarly to the famous Listening Post, readers play an initial passive
role, or rather unknowingly producing noises that at one hand disturb the
emergence of the text, but on the other hand they make possible the ac-
tualization of the message, according to which the feeling of love requires
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 139
silence; 3. This work reminds Silencio by Eugen Gomriger; in fact, only after
the ‘concrete’ visualisation of the word on the screen, the mechanism of
signification activates itself together with the conscious act of the viewer/
reader/user on the installation. Form, content and act interpenetrate each
other and acoustic (circular) space of the installation turns into directional
eye-centered space, typical of the page of the book.
Fred Forest and Jason Nelson put at the center of their reflection ethics
and aesthetics of the communication, that is the defamiliarization of the
media and the message. The alienating function of poetry as well as the
theory of the rearview mirror introduced by McLuhan will throw light on
comments on the works that are very close to two other must-haves of elec-
tronic literature: the aforementioned Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben
Rubin and The Impermanence Agent by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. These works
will allow us to reflect on the role of social media in the literary production
in electronics and networking.
In the work of Dene Grigar, it is advocated the idea of literary experience
as a sensory experience; however, it is of great interest the extension of the
installation in the “app-book” to be understood as a different reading surface
and as an – essential – archive to make the work live beyond the event of
the Festival. The problem of archiving is important for electronic literature
that sees change technology and therefore the possibility of conservation
of the texts.
Finally, the exhibition proposed by Caterina Davino, consisting in ima-
ges processed in computer graphics from digital photographs, remnants
of topographical space of writing hypertext: as well as the lexia, which is
the smallest unit of meaning, requires a connection (link) to fully appear,
only mending together the moments represented in the single images it is
possible to reconstruct the complexity of a life cycle – fluid by its essence
– where everything begins and ends all the time. The viewer is given the
delicate task of connecting and building an interpretation of multiple areas
of visual narratives.
24
PierPaolo Pasolini, in: Pasolini e…la forma della città, 1973 regia Paolo Brunatto, Rai –
trasmesso il 7 febbraio 1974. Pubblicazione Fondo Pasolini in Interviste Filmate.
144 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
sicurezza, GPS, dunque l’analisi che Foucault fece per le categorie sociali
represse oggi può essere applicata a ogni cittadino
La città odierna cos’è? Una trappola mortale nella sua reale natura, come
in Matrix, che sugge umanità, alterità e dignità all’unico scopo di un’ordinata
omologazione? L’alienazione crescente tra gli individui, impone una vita
sognata, come narra Italo Calvino
A Cloe, grande città, le persone che passano per le vie non si conoscono.
Al vedersi immaginano mille cose l’uno dell’altro... Ma nessuno saluta
nessuno, gli sguardi s’incrociano per un secondo e poi sfuggono…. Così
tra chi per caso si trova insieme a ripararsi dalla pioggia sotto il portico,
o si accalca sotto un tendone del bazar, o sosta ad ascoltare la banda in
piazza, si consumano incontri, seduzioni, amplessi, orge, senza che ci si
sfiori con un dito…26.
25
M. Foucault, Sorvegliare e punire. Nascita della prigione, Einaudi, Torino, 2014.
26
I. Calvino, Le Città Invisibili, Mondadori, Milano, 1996.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 145
del palazzo, non più dedalo immobile kafkiano, bensì materia fluida in un
dialogo perduto tra uomo e architettura: il sogno invade la città.
English Version
Many of her videos have been submitted by cultural Institutes and em-
bassies in Germany, France, Holland, and to the following Festivals: Enzimi,
Rome; Venere in pellicola, Catania; Banff Film Festival, Canada; Scrittura
e Immagine, Pescara; L’immagine leggera, Palermo; Riccione TTV; Turin
Film Festival; Antalya Golden Orange, Turkey; Contaminazioni, Genoa;
Tokyo Video Festival; Univideo, Pescara; Valsusa Film Festival; Underflor-
ence, Florence; Immaginale, Berlin and Rome; Invideo, Milan; Poevisioni
elettroniche, Bergamo; Book Fair, Milan; Shingle22, Anzio.
She has collaborated with RAI, SACIS SPA (subsidiary RAI), Multimago
International Audiovisual Production Company, Theater Juvarra in Turin,
Department of Cultural Politics of Frascati, University of Rome Tor Ver-
gata, Cultural Association Orsa of Turin, Department of Cultural Politics in
Naples, PAN – Palace of Arts of Naples, AIACE-Invideo Milan.
In 1992 she founded the group of self-production “La Jena”, which work
in the audiovisual experimentation.
Interested in all commingling and contamination between the arts and
the video that led her to collaborate with various artists, including: Ales-
sandro Amaducci, Massimo and Gabriele Coen, Fabrizio Federici, Caterina
Casini, Marco Bragaglia, Marco Di Niscia, Claudio Cavallari, Luca Caponi,
Arcangelo di Micco, Raffaele Attanasio, Dean Bennici, confronting with
artistic and production entities.
She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the following ven-
ues: Modern Art Gallery GAM, Turin; Santa Maria della Scala, Siena; Villa
Pisani, Stra (Venice); Degli Zingary Gallery, Rome; Triennale Palace, Milan;
Aldobrandini Stables for the Arts, Frascati (RM); PAN – Palace of Arts of
Naples, Naples; Lanificio 159, Rome; Centrale dell’arte, Cosenza; Centrale
Montemartini, Rome; Civic Archaeological Museum, Anzio.
On Agata Chiusano
Restaino Concetta, Verso un’estetica femmista della nostalgia, in Bulletin of
the Superintendence for BAP of Salerno and Avellino, 2010 Paparo editions;
Amaducci Alessandro, Tessiture dell’immagine, in Banda Anomala, un
profilo della video arte monocanale in Italia, 2003, Lindau;
Omar Calabrese, Paso Doble, 2003 exhibition Catalog Prometheus;
Antonucci Giovanni, Notte alla reggia, presentation of the video, Invideo,
Palazzo della Triennale, Impluvium Hall;
Davino Caterina, Agata Chiusano, in tecno-poesia e realtà virtuali, 2002,
editoriale sometti;
Papadaki Vasaliki, Agata Chiusano, la video arte al femminile, dissertation
at DAMS Turin, 2001-2002.
Written by Agatha Chiusano
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 147
The city: jumble of buildings, streets, squares and villages, which supports
and unravels the fabric of human life, it is the place of representation and
belonging. Multiform space and yet still, studied, hated and fought. Ow-
nership’s entity, possession and synonym of division. It surrounds man as a
big uterus, sometimes crushing him and limiting his freedom, but reassuring
him from his innate kenofobia, track of birth trauma and of abandonment
shared syndrome. The human being develops and characterizes his life and
his actions on two x-axis: time and space; management or self-management
of the individual’s relationship with them determines power or freedom.
The city in its psychogeographic evolution, with the city planning it
has formed the society and not vice versa, gradually reducing the individual,
until his death in flux. However, some new forms of expression are chan-
ging maid relationship of man to the “palace”, giving a concrete reading of
the object building and opening the infinite trajectories of the invisible and
possible cities that every human being can produce thanks to its creativity
and imagination. The city with its buildings and management of space has
always addressed and inborn human life. Places where to talk, work, love,
healing, dying, educate, pray, eat, buy, places of transit and waiting, places
to despair and joy, places of confinement and exclusion; in short, a beehive
with a box for each action, function, right, status and social class.
If a time the city was divided into areas where it was layered featured
the activity of all above the architectural features of the One, who was the
Prince or the Bishop, the Pope or the King in a choral arrangement with a
determination of the direction conductor. Today, the city has torn the unit
to be subdivided into many micro functional centers, the replacement of the
concept of profit to the one of beauty which came to pass in the Eighteenth
Century radically transformed the perception of the space of the citizen.
148 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
as Pasolini said “... the problem of the shape of the city and the problem of
the salvation of the nature that surrounds the city, are a unique problem”27.
Denying the everyday of the first element of existence, nature, means to
design and implement the reduction of the citizen, even the one who has
always lived in the same place, to the state of déraciné: of Mother’s orphan.
Cities have become large living organisms that oversee, monitor and
punish, through new technologies such as cameras, security cameras, GPS,
so the analysis that Foucault made for repressed social groups today can
be applied to every citizen:
You should not say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect.
But that it exists, that it is a reality, that it is produced continuously,
around, to the surface, within the body, through the operation of a power
that is exercised on those who are punished – in a more general way on
those that are monitored, trained, corrected... on those that are tied to a
production and control apparatus throughout their existence28.
What is the present city? A death trap in its true nature, as in Matrix,
which sucks humanity, dignity and otherness for the sole purpose of orderly
approval? The growing alienation among individuals imposes a dream life,
as told by Italo Calvino
In Chloe, great city, people who move through the streets are all strangers.
They imagine a thousand things of each other when they see each other...
But no one greets anyone, eyes lock for a second and then escape.... So
among those who happen to find themselves together, taking shelter
from the rain under the porch, or crowded under a tent in the bazaar, or
stopping to listen to the band in the square, they are consumed dating,
seduction, embraces, orgies, without touching with a finger...29.
but the progress of the city-machine also requires the sacrifice of uniqueness
as Georg Simmel wrote: “On one hand, life is made extremely easy, because
you have stimuli, interests, ways at every side. On the other hand, however,
life is increasingly made by impersonal content and representations, which
tend to eliminate the more intimately singular stains and idiosyncrasies”.
The art, however, is the representation of the anomaly and the walls,
that since the paint rock have narrated story and vocations of man, with
27
PierPaolo Pasolini, in Pasolini e…la forma della città, 1973 directed by Paolo Brunatto, Rai
– broadcasted in February, 17, 1974. Fondo Pasolini Publisher in Interviste Filmate.
28
M. Foucault, Sorvegliare e punire. Nascita della prigione, Einaudi, Torino, 2014.
29
I. Calvino, Le Città Invisibili, Mondadori, Milano, 1996.
150 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
time have collected and expressed the desire to exist in the suburbs with
graffiti and ideologies with the murals, but there were still physically im-
passable areas.
With the technologies of videomapping this axiom has been shattered.
The majority of the performances start or have within them a sequence in
which the building-surface itself is shattering, the citizen-viewer experien-
ces a catharsis. The building trembles, thanks to interactive technology, by
which the citizen-viewer edit the images and the perception of the building,
not more static Kafkaesque labyrinth, but fluid matter in a lost dialogue
between man and architecture: dream invades the city.
Paolo Cirio (1979, Italia; vive e lavora a Londra) lavora come artista multime-
diale in vari campi: net-art, arte pubblica, videoarte, software-art e narrativa
sperimentale. Cirio ha fatto parte del collettivo italiano di net-art (epidemiC)
e ha collaborato con altre figure centrali della net-art come Bruce Sterling,
Stewart Home e RTMark.
Ha vinto prestigiosi premi per l’arte multimediale, le sue opere sovversive
sono state sostenute da borse di ricerca e residenze e ha esposto in musei
internazionali e in istituzioni di tutto il mondo. Tiene lezioni e conduce
seminari sulle tattiche di intervento sui media. Ha esposto in una personale
presso Aksioma | Project Space Ljubljana nel 2011 (REALITYFLOWHA-
CKED) e alla Kasa Gallery, Istanbul nel 2013.
Tra le mostre recenti citiamo anche: (2010) IDEAS 10: Art and Digital
Narrative, Emily Carr University, Vancouver; Rien de politique, Komplot
gallery, Brussels; EuropeanDays, Co-production forum, Torino; Summer-
camp Electrified, TimeLab, Gent; Hacking Public Space, Flashback section,
S.M.A.K. e Vooruit, Gent; (2011) UAMO festival, Ultra Social, Monaco;
Share festival, Torino; Ars Electronica Festival, Origin, Linz; Networked,
Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Lima; Response: Ability, Transmediale.11,
Berlino; (2012) ArtFutura 2012, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro;
TEA – Collective Wisdom al Museo Nazionale di Belle Arti di Taichung,
Taiwan; 7th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seul; (2013) The Big
Picture, Museum of Contemporary Art di Denver, Colorado; Symposium
Technologies Social Innovation, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga;
Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention, Architectural Association, Lon-
don; Not Exactly, RedLine gallery, Denver; Run Computer, Run, Rua Red
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 151
Gallery, Dublin; Public Private, Kellen Gallery of The New School, New
York.
Recombinant Fiction
Introduzione
30
“La digitalizzazione e l’uso personale delle tecnologie dei media hanno destabilizzato la
dicotomia tradizionale tra comunicazione di massa e comunicazione interpersonale, e quindi
tra media di massa e media personali”. M. Lüders, Conceptualizing personal media, New Media
& Society, Vol. 10, No. 5, 683-702, 2008.
152 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Manifesto
31
“La InfoSfera denota l’intero ambiente informativo costituito da tutte le entità informative
(compresi quindi gli agenti informativi), le loro proprietà, le interazioni, i processi e le relazioni
reciproche”. L. Floridi, Ethics in the Infosphere, The Philosophers’ Magazine, 6: 18-19, 2001.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 153
Stage
32
In relazione alla teoria di rizoma come “Principi di connessione ed eterogeneità: qualsiasi
punto di un rizoma può essere collegato a qualcos’altro, e deve”. G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, A
thousand plateaux: capitalism and schizophrenia, Continuum International Publishing Group,
London and New York, 2004.
33
“‘Convergenza’ deve essere intesa come un processo avente una serie diverse manifesta-
zioni”. H. Jenkins, Convergence? I diverge, Technology Review, 2001.
34
“La semiotizzazione di un elemento della performance si verifica quando appare chia-
ramente come il segno di qualcosa. All’interno del quadro della scena o dell’evento teatrale,
tutto ciò che viene presentato al pubblico diventa un segno che ‘desidera’ di comunicare un
significato”. P. Pavis, C. Shantz, Dictionary of the theatre: terms, concepts, and analysis, University
of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1998.
154 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
nella Infosfera, segni presenti nel rizoma narrativo divengono funzionali alla
costruzione della narrazione.
La finzione è svelata da link che si rimandano a vicenda, creando una
trama semiotica interconnessa dal quale il pubblico può essere attivamente
circondato. Questo dispiegamento non dovrebbe contenere sfide o elementi
ludici, ma dovrebbe molto semplicemente consentire al pubblico una facile
interazione e leggibilità.
Inoltre, questo processo di semiotizzazione, nel suo collegare, citare,
clonare i segni della realtà è concepito per integrare entità reali nella finzio-
ne, trasformando i modelli del mondo reale in quelli narrativi, e viceversa, i
modelli immaginari della storia possono essere percepiti come reali.
Personaggi
altri attraverso i media digitali collegati nella vita di tutti i giorni. Spesso la
proiezione del sé sulla Infosfera è caratterizzata dal tentativo di ricorrere ad
altri. Questa sorta di interiorizzazione della spettacolarizzazione della rappre-
sentazione di sé facilita la reinvenzione dell’atto performativo nella finzione.
Attraverso la partecipazione, il pubblico si trasforma nei personaggi della
finzione. Poiché essi sviluppano i loro personaggi e creano nuovi aspetti
narrativi, la trama prende forma e si apre a nuovi concetti drammatici.
Nel suo nuovo ruolo partecipativo, il pubblico compie consapevolmente un
atto responsabile nell’essere duplice della finzione, che è sia dentro la realtà
sociale reale sia nella storia di finzione. Nel modellare la storia, il pubblico
diventa consapevole della sua doppia identità fittizia.
Dramma
Nel corso della storia umana, si è sempre fatto ricorso alle storie per com-
prendere e interpretare la realtà; religioni, ideologie, credenze e identifica-
zioni definite nelle grandi narrazioni cultura. Tuttavia è nella nostra società
mediata che le storie sostituiscono la realtà nella creazione di mondi artificiali
frammentati e nel catturare la mente e l’immaginazione delle persone al loro
interno. La realtà continua ad essere ridefinita non solo dalla sua immagine
narrata così come fabbricata dalle industrie dell’intrattenimento e dei media,
ma di recente anche dal singolo individuo che pensa e produce la propria
immagine per adattarla ai mondi artificiali.
Solo drammatizzando la realtà artificiale della Infosfera il pubblico può
comprendere e quindi cambiare la propria realtà fisica sulla quale ha recen-
temente perso il controllo. Recombinant Fiction si concentra proprio sulla
messa in scena di un dramma all’interno dell’Iper-realtà e della Spettaco-
larizzazione della società per coinvolgere i partecipanti in un processo in
qualità di agenti politici.
Lo sforzo verso un dramma moderno, efficiente, con risultati efficaci,
richiede strategia sui palchi e sui media, così come l’impiego di un linguaggio
e di un’estetica che parlino alle menti di un pubblico individualizzato. Gli
scopi educativi, informativi e trasformativi delle azioni drammatiche dovreb-
bero essere sviluppati per motivare e trasformare il pubblico generalmente
indifferente alle questioni sociali e per mobilitare le vittime dell’oppressio-
ne. Ciò può essere realizzato infiltrandosi nella lingua e negli ambienti del
pubblico con storie e personaggi che stimolino l’attenzione e l’interesse del
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 157
Non si uscirà mai vittoriosi contro il sistema a un livello reale [...] poiché
il sistema si basa sulla violenza simbolica. (J. Baudrillard)35.
Il teatro è una prova generale per la rivoluzione, non importa che l’azione
sia di fantasia; ciò che conta è che sia azione! (A. Boal)36.
English Version
Paolo Cirio was born in Turin, Italy in 1979 and currently lives in NYC.
Paolo Cirio is an innovative conceptual artist working with various media
and domains. He works with the idea of shaping flows of social, political
and economic global structures, and in doing so he explores systems of
control, knowledge and information.
Cirio’s work deals with various contemporary issues in fields such as pri-
vacy, transparency finance, copyright, democracy, militarism, environmenta-
lism, cyber-security and experimental fiction. His works reveal conceptions,
conflicts and potentials of contemporary realities.
Cirio’s artworks have been presented and exhibited in major art institu-
tions, including Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2014; TENT, Rotter-
dam, 2014; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2013; ZKM, Karlsruhe,
2013; CCCB, Barcelona, 2013; CCC Strozzina, Florence, 2013; Museum of
Contemporary Art of Denver, 2013; MAK, Vienna, 2013; Architectural As-
35
J. Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, Sage, London, 1993.
36
A. Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, Pluto Press, London, 2008.
158 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
sociation, London, 2013; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, 2012; Na-
tional Fine Arts Museum, Taichung, 2012; Wywyższeni National Museum,
Warsaw, 2012, SMAK, Ghent, 2010; National Museum of Contemporary
Art, Athens, 2009; Courtauld Institute, London, 2009; PAN, Naples, 2008;
MoCA, Tapei, 2007; Sydney Biennial, 2007; and NTT ICC, Tokyo, 2006.
He has had solo shows Casa Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey, 2013; and at
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2011 and 2013. Cirio has also
curated panels series at the Kitchen, NYC, 2012 and Eyebeam, NYC, 2013.
Recombinant Fiction
Introduction
37
“The digitalization and personal use of media technologies have destabilized the tra-
ditional dichotomization between mass communication and interpersonal communication,
and therefore between mass media and personal media”. M. Lüders, Conceptualizing personal
media, New Media & Society, Vol. 10, No. 5, 683-702, 2008.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 159
Manifesto
1) The fiction is told through traditional news media, online social media
and public space interventions. The pieces of the fiction converge and evolve
in one rhizomatic stage, synchronized and organized by networked digital
media.
2) The fiction has conflicts and resolutions among characters with enga-
ging personalities. There are not challenges or gaming aims for the audience,
it must be pure fiction and its nature should be obscured but not hidden.
3) The fiction penetrates reality by including real entities in the narrative.
The created fictional reality is made from contemporary real-world patterns,
which are semiologically relinked and mutable in the narrative elements.
38
“The infosphere denotes the whole informational environment constituted by all in-
formational entities (thus including informational agents as well), their properties, interac-
tions, processes and mutual relations”. L. Floridi, Ethics in the Infosphere, The Philosophers’
Magazine, 6: 18-19, 2001.
160 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Stage
39
Related to the theory of Rhizome as “Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any
point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be”. G. Deleuze, F. Guat-
tari, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, Continuum International Publishing
Group, London and New York, 2004.
40
“‘Convergence’ must be understood as a process that has several different manifestation”.
H. Jenkins, Convergence? I diverge, Technology Review, 2001.
41
“The semiotization of an element of performance occurs when it appears clearly as
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 161
Characters
the sign of something. Within the framework’ of the stage or the theatrical event, all that
is presented to the audience becomes a sign that “wishes” to communicate a signified”. P.
Pavis, C. Shantz, Dictionary of the theatre: terms, concepts, and analysis, University of Toronto
Press, Toronto, 1998.
162 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
media of the Infosphere) and by having direct conversations with the main
characters or even creating new characters and adding new elements to the
dynamic storyline.
The audiences know how to have control over their own characters,
since they build their identities and related relationships with others through
networked digital media in the everyday life. Often the projection of the self
onto the Infosphere is characterized by the attempt to appeal to others. This
sort of internalization of the spectacularization of representation of the self
facilitates the personal reinvention for the performative acting in the fiction.
Through their participation, audiences turn into characters of the fic-
tion. As they develop their personas and create new narrative aspects, the
storyline takes shape and opens to new dramatic concepts. In their new
participatory role, the audience consciously performs a responsible act in
the fiction’s dual being, which is both inside the actual social reality and in
the fictional story. As the audience shapes the story, they become aware of
its fictitious double identity.
Drama
Over the course of human history, stories have always been used to under-
stand and interpret reality, from religions to ideologies, beliefs and identifica-
tions in large narratives defined civilizations. However it is in our mediated
society that stories replace realities in creating fragmented artificial worlds
and capturing people’s minds and imaginations within them. Reality con-
tinues to be redefined not only by its narrated image as fabricated by the
entertainment and media industries, but recently also by the single individual
who thinks and produces his/her own image to fit the artificial worlds.
Only by dramatizing the artificial reality of the Infosphere audiences can
understand and then change their physical reality, over which they have
recently lost control. Recombinant Fiction is about staging a drama inside the
Hyperreality and Spectacularization of society to engage participants in a
process as political agents.
The endeavor toward an efficient modern drama with effective outcomes
requires strategy on stages and mediums as well as the employment of a
language and aesthetic that speaks to the mindset of an individualized au-
dience. Educational, informative and transformative purposes of the drama-
tic actions should be developed for motivating and transforming audiences
usually indifferent to social issues and for mobilizing victims of oppression.
This can be accomplished by infiltrating the audience’s language and envi-
ronments with stories and characters that tempt the attention and interest of
164 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
the target. Through identification with the characters’ dilemmas and public
claims, Recombinant Fiction becomes a useful tool to reach new and large
audiences whilst creating concern for social issues.
Tactical Recombinant Fiction is a powerful art form to exchange in human
consciousness, demystify absurd beliefs, undermining unethical powers and
informing on social problems.
There will be never winning over the system on the real layer [...] because
the system relies on symbolic-violence. (J. Baudrillard)42.
42
J. Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, Sage, London, 1993.
43
A. Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, Pluto Press, London, 2008.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 165
English Version
English Version
Per secoli, la musica è stata scritta su carta, utilizzando una notazione che
tradizionalmente rinvia al pentagramma, all’interno di coordinate armonico-
melodiche tonali, ed è stata composta per essere cantata o per essere suonata
con strumenti acustici (pianoforte, violino, violoncello, ecc.). Il mirabile ca-
stello eretto utilizzando questi materiali di costruzione inizia a scricchiolare
al volgere del secolo, tra Otto e Novecento, quando all’orizzonte inizia a
emergere un territorio inesplorato, che già fa intravedere profili aspri e cime
aguzze, e che sarebbe stato teutonicamente colonizzato di lì a poco. Si tratta,
naturalmente, del continente dodecafonico e seriale. Nei primi decenni del
Novecento, cavalcando l’onda lunga (e, per alcuni, anomala) del serialismo,
soprattutto compositori mitteleuropei come Schönberg, Webern o Berg an-
nullano la “tirannia” della tonalità, de-naturalizzando il sistema melodico,
armonico e tonale tradizionale.
Non si può dire però che la dodecafonia e il serialismo abbiano avuto
una capacità camaleontica analoga a quella riconosciuta alla “tonalità”, se
è vero che la difficoltà di acquisizione e “digestione intellettuale” di molte
opere composte in quel contesto ancora tardino a dissolversi. Molto più
versatile e feconda si dimostrerà, invece, una tradizione che muove i primi
passi nell’alveo della ricerca iper-seriale post-weberniana, una figura della
musica contemporanea che, in forme diversissime, riuscirà a riscuotere un
successo planetario: la musica elettroacustica.
Due necessarie precisazioni. La prima: elettroacustica ed elettronica non
sono sinonimi. La musica elettroacustica è una sorta di galassia in espansione,
un contesto estremamente ampio, all’interno del quale troviamo una serie
di sottoinsiemi. Il termine elettroacustica viene utilizzato a metà degli anni
Cinquanta e inizialmente – siamo all’alba della musica tecnologica – è ser-
vito a distinguere due esperienze: quella riconducibile alla musique concrète
di Pierre Schaeffer e quella riferibile alla elektronische Musik di Karlheinz
Stockhausen. In quel momento storico, era necessario definire qualcosa allo
stato nascente e che, ciononostante, sembrava essersi già configurato in due
versioni distinte.
In verità, e siamo alla seconda precisazione, la divaricazione netta da cui
sarebbe scaturita la contrapposizione (divenuta poi luogo comune) tra musi-
ca concreta e musica elettronica è, di fatto, pretestuosa. Stockhausen, padre
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 173
struire una storia che, in queste forme e in questi termini, in Italia ancora non
era stata proposta, ma è anche quello di ricondurre il fenomeno della musica
elettroacustica all’interno di un contesto teorico, sociologico, filosofico ed
estetologico, dal momento che la maggior parte della letteratura sull’argo-
mento affronta tale tematica da un punto di vista quasi esclusivamente (e
separatamente) storico, tecnico e/o filosofico, nonostante essa invece, al di
là dell’essere semplicemente un periodo della storia della musica, raccolga al
suo interno modalità espressive non comprensibili solo alla luce della rico-
struzione storica, per quanto dettagliata possa essere. Ma parlare di estetica
della musica elettroacustica non significa proporre una teoria monolitica e
onnicomprensiva di questo genere musicale, poiché sono chiamate in gioco
questioni estremamente problematiche, che rifiutano l’idea di un’estetica uni-
taria. Essa non può esserci. Si può solo assumere uno sguardo molto mobile
ed elastico, che possa produrre interpretazioni anch’esse mobili ed elastiche.
La musica elettroacustica non può quindi essere considerata separata-
mente rispetto agli sviluppi concettuali e filosofici del Novecento, con i quali
è indubbiamente intrecciata, e andrebbe spiegata anche in correlazione con
temi particolarmente rilevanti per la teoria, come il rapporto uomo-tecnica,
l’approccio degli artisti al reale, la producibilità e la riproducibilità elettronica,
il ruolo e la funzione dell’arte nella società contemporanea, il rapporto tra
estetica, musica e teoria dell’informazione.
Trattare e discutere questi temi – dei quali, per motivi di spazio, qui si
gettano solo piccoli fasci di luce con il solo obiettivo di sollecitare curiosità
– significa muoversi verso la delineazione di una possibile fenomenologia
(quanto mai aperta) della musica elettroacustica, problematizzando i prin-
cipali aspetti che l’hanno contraddistinta e che la contraddistinguono, nella
consapevolezza che, come ha scritto Umberto Eco, sviluppare un problema
non vuol dire risolverlo: può significare soltanto chiarirne i termini in modo
da rendere possibile una discussione più profonda.
English Version
For centuries, music has been written on paper, using a notation that traditio-
nally refers to the stave, within a tonal, harmonious and melodic framework,
and has been composed in order to be sung and played with acoustic in-
struments (piano, violin, violoncello etc). The wonderful castle erected using
this material started to creak at the beginning of the century, between 19th
and 20th century. When on the horizon an unexplored territory started to
emerge, that offered some glimmers of irregular profiles and sharp peaks, and
that would be teutonically colonized short after. It is, of course, the dode-
caphonic and serial continent. During the first decades of the 20th century,
riding the long wave (and according to some also anomalous wave) of the
serialism, mainly Mittel-European composers as like Schönberg, Webern or
Berg ended the “tyranny” of tonality, de-naturalizing the traditional melodic,
harmonious and tonal system.
However, it cannot be said that the dodecaphony and serialism had
that chameleonic capacity similar to that recognized to “tonality”, as it is
true that the difficulties of acquiring and “intellectually digest” many of
the works composed in that context are still late to be unraveled. More
versatile and productive will be, on the contrary, a tradition that moves its
first steps within the hyper-serial and post-weberian research, a figure of
contemporary music that, in various forms, will be successful worldwide:
the electroacoustic music.
Two clarifications are necessary here. The first: electroacoustic and
electronic are not synonyms. Electroacoustic music is a sort of galaxy still
expanding, in an extremely wide context, inside which we find a series of
subsets. The term electroacoustic is used in the mid 50s and initially – we
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 177
Nam June Paik, prima ancora di battezzare la sua arte nella New York degli
anni Sessanta, scopre il velo sul nuovo continente espressivo nominandolo,
in Europa, televisione elettronica: per distinguerla, appunto, dalla televisione
ufficiale, che di “elettronico” in senso poetico, politico ed espressivo aveva
(ed ha) poco o niente. Paik inaugura così un percorso di ricerca radicale su
estetiche, pratiche, dispositivi, linguaggi, programmi, performatività, mec-
canismi psicopercettivi dell’immagine elettronica e della sua audiovisione
a distanza e in simultanea, che lo porterà al primo “paesaggio della tv del
futuro” (Global Groove, 1973) nonché, negli anni Ottanta, alle prime regie-
spettacolo videoartistiche in diretta satellitare transnazionale della storia, da
Good Morning, Mister Orwell in avanti: Satellite e Tv: arte per venticinque milioni
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 181
di persone. Tra i suoi allievi i maestri di oggi – Bill Viola, Laurie Anderson,
Peter Gabriel – e gli ideatori di Mtv: Music TeleVision44.
“Video non significa vedo ma volo”, sostiene Paik. Ed egli effettivamen-
te vola, approfittando delle tecnologie più avanzate della contemporaneità,
come sulle ali di una farfalla che danza sull’aria di Madame Butterfly (un
altro incontro tra Oriente e Occidente; e insieme un omaggio alla donna,
simbolo come molti altri luoghi paikiani, di unità, di armonia tra diversi, di
libertà dagli schemi, di vita).
Inventore della “satellite art”, Nam June Paik è stato il primo artista ad
appropriarsi – mettendolo a disposizione di un’altra cinquantina di artisti in
vari continenti – di un satellite per la diffusione diretta di immagini televisi-
ve. E nella performance-live Good Morning Mr. Orwell tenutasi il 1° gennaio
1984 ha dimostrato – polemicamente, ma con il suo ottimismo di fondo –
che un uso democratico e creativo delle tecnologie avanzate coniugato con
l’energia degli artisti di tutto il mondo, può rovesciare il mito negativo (e il
timore reale) del totalitario “Grande Fratello” televisivo evocato da Orwell.
Ma queste, come anche i successivi “giri del mondo” televisivi – realizzati
da Paik esaltando tramite il satellite le azioni, la messa in onda e la regia in
diretta delle immagini – sono anzitutto dei grandi spettacoli di colori, suoni
e di possibilità espressive della televisione del futuro. Tutte le culture del
mondo, grazie alle possibilità democratiche delle nuove tecnologie forzate
in questo senso dallo sguardo particolare di questo maestro contemporaneo,
si intrecciano in una città ideale di fine millennio nella quale, lungi dall’o-
mologarsi, si esaltano reciprocamente e soprattutto comunicano tra di loro.
Un ottimismo della volontà che in Paik – come in molti altri artisti e
filosofi contemporanei – coesiste non pacificata con il pessimismo dell’intel-
ligenza, con la consapevolezza dei rischi reali che corre un pianeta unificato
in “Villaggio Globale” dal “Grande Fratello” tecnologico audiovisivo.
Ma è proprio per opporsi a questo rischio – le cui motivazioni sono
all’interno di noi stessi, non solo all’esterno – che Paik da anni accentua
nelle sue opere, autentico Leitmotiv di video e videosculture, il tema della
gioia, la fiducia nella vita anche (e lo fa spesso) quando ci parla della morte.
Perché, artista che “dipinge” e “scolpisce” nella luce e nell’energia – tali sono
infatti principalmente i suoi “materiali”: e video ed elettronica sono luce
ed energia per eccellenza – non ha dimenticato il significato profondo e le
possibilità trasformatrici insite nell’energia interiore che è in ciascuno di noi.
E che egli, con la sua arte, vorrebbe contribuire a rimettere in movimento:
44
In Passaggi teorici dal cinema alla videoarte (2002); cfr. Kinema. Il cinema sulle tracce del
cinema, Exorma, Roma, 2012.
182 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
45
Trent’anni di arti elettroniche. Le videografie di Nam June Paik. In: Rétrospective Nam June
Paik. Vidéographie 1963-1993, a cura di Marco Maria Gazzano, VideoArt Festival di Locarno,
Locarno (CH), edizioni Flaviana, 1993.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 183
46
Good Morning Mr Ejzenštejn. In: Cinema Nuovo, a. 34, n. 2 (294), Bari, aprile 1985, p. 45.
184 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
47
Good Morning Mr. Orwell (Orwell Revisited). In Rétrospective Nam June Paik. Vidéo-
graphie 1963-1993, a cura di Marco Maria Gazzano, VideoArt Festival di Locarno, Locarno
(CH), edizioni Flaviana, 1993, p. 28.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 185
English Version
48
In “Videoarte”: etimologia e genesi di un concetto controverso. Cfr. Kinema. Il cinema
sulle tracce del cinema, Roma, Exorma, 2012.
186 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
Even before baptizing his art in New York in the Sixties, Nam June Paik
discovers the veil on the new expressive continent naming it, in Europe,
electronic television: to distinguish, in fact, from the official television, that of
“electronic” in a poetic, political and expressive sense had (and has) little or
nothing. Paik thus initiates a radical research path about aesthetics, practices,
devices, languages, programs, performativity, psycho-perceptual mechanisms
of electronic image and its remotely and simultaneously audiovision, which
led him to the first “landscape of the TV of the future” (Global Groove,
1973) and, in the Eighties, to the first transnational satellite live videoartistic
direction-show in the history, from Good Morning, Mr. Orwell forward: Satel-
lite and TV: art for twenty-five million people. Among his students the Masters
of today – Bill Viola, Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel – and the creators of
MTV: Music TeleVision49.
“Video does not mean I see but I fly” says Paik. And he actually flies,
taking advantage of the most advanced technologies of contemporary life,
like on the wings of a butterfly dancing on the air of Madame Butterfly (ano-
ther encounter between East and West, and also a tribute to the woman, a
symbol like many other Paikian places, of unity, harmony between different
things, freedom from schema, life).
Inventor of “satellite art”, Nam June Paik was the first artist to appro-
priate – putting it at the disposal of another around fifty artists in different
continents – a satellite for direct broadcasting of television pictures. And
in live performance Good Morning Mr. Orwell held in January 1st, 1984 he
showed – controversially, but with his underlying optimism – that a demo-
cratic and creative use of advanced technology combined with the energy
of artists from around the world, can reverse the negative myth (and the
real fear) of the totalitarian TV “Big Brother” evoked by Orwell.
But these, as well as the next “TV round the world” – made by Paik
enhancing actions via the satellite, broadcasting and the direction of live
images – first are great performances of colors, sounds and expressive
possibilities of the television of the future. All cultures in the world, thanks
to the democratic possibilities of new technologies forced in this sense
by the look of this particular contemporary Master, are interwoven in an
ideal city of the end of millennium in which, far from conforming, they
49
In Passaggi teorici dal cinema alla videoarte (2002). Cfr. Kinema. Il cinema sulle tracce del
cinema, Exorma, Roma, 2012.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 187
reciprocally exalt themeselves and above all they communicate with each
other.
An optimism of the will which in Paik – as in many other contemporary
philosophers and artists – coexists not pacified with the pessimism of the
intelligence and with the knowledge of the real risks runned by an unified
planet shaped in a “Global Village” from the technological audiovisual “Big
Brother”.
But it is precisely to counter this risk – the reasons for which are within
ourselves, not only on the outside – that Paik in years emphasizes in his
works, authentic Leitmotiv of video and videosculptures, the theme of joy,
confidence in life also (and he often does it) when he speaks of death. Be-
cause, an artist who “paints” and “sculpts” in light and energy – these are in
fact mainly its ‘Materials’: both video and electronics are light and energy par
excellence – he has not forgotten the deeper meaning and the transformative
possibilities inherent inner energy that is within each of us. And that he,
with his art, would help to put in motion again so that the television ‘flow’
can be transformed into a planetary ‘flow’ of creative energy50.
From 6.00 pm to 7.00 pm of January 1st, 1984, four television networks
located in three different continents had put in direct communication via
satellite twenty-five million viewers with the largest group of contemporary
artists never picked up by a broadcast of the New Year. Organizer, creator
and director of this first planetary video installation – real “event” in the
history of artistic communication – is Nam June Paik, engineer, poet, phi-
losopher, musician, painter who had Korean origin but New Yorker culture
in, inventor of a part of portable camera (thanks to his discovery Sony
launched into the market the port-pack in 1965), father and first theorist of
the artistic use of video and, today, in polemic with the Orwellian power of
the equipment of television-cinema-visual industry, “ether guerrilla”, prophet
of the “right to live” by the artists.
Against images, sounds and colors of the TV from all over the world
which, in every moment, do wrong to the expressive possibilities of elec-
tronics; against the colourless “connections” in the newscast and the me-
smerizing spectacularisation of broadcast on Saturday evening. Because in
the simultaneity of electronic and visual fantasies that allow the cathode ray
tube and the computer there is a principle of freedom that must be caught
before the multinational equipment of information technology, the society
50
From Trent’anni di arti elettroniche. Le videografie di Nam June Paik. In: Rétrospective
Nam June Paik. Vidéographie 1963-1993, by Marco Maria Gazzano, VideoArt Festival of
Locarno, Locarno (CH), edizioni Flaviana, 1993.
188 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
of the spectacle and the political censorship take completely ownership and
annihilate it.
Because in every broadcast TV, with or without satellite provided that live,
in each video installation and every “video sculpture” is constructed, in varying
degrees, a radical redefinition of space, sound and images, of the perception
of objects and of themselves in relation to the surrounding landscape. And
because, in governing this redeployment of perception, there is the challenge
between the utopia of freedom of artists and the power of advertising.
For this madness – a tribute to Orwell’s lucid pessimism, defiant against
the apparatuses of East and West than it was, even then in both directions,
the dystopian novel – in fact moved only artists. Charlotte Moorman, Joseph
Beuys, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Herman Braun, Shirley and Wendy
Clarke, Allen Ginzberg, Peter Orlovski, Ken Hakuta, Wacky Wallwachers
kit, Alloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz, Laurie Anderson, Mictchell Kriegam, Le-
slie Fuller, Pholop Glass, Dean Winkler, George Plimpton, Astor Piazzolla,
John Sanborn, Yves Montand, Salvador Dali, Robert Rauschenberg, extreme
fashion designers, bands involved (Thompson Twins, Olingo Boingo, led by
future Oscar winner Danny Elfman, Emile Ardolino [student of Paik, later
famous as a director of Musical and successful films such as Dirty Dancing
(1987) and Sister Act (1992). Editor’s note], the museums of contemporary art
in Paris and New York, French, Korean, and New Yorker cultural services,
twenty art galleries and four medium-power television (France 3, Paris; Wnet
13, New York, 111 WDR, Cologne; Kbs 1, Seoul) have financially supported
the project Good morning Mr. Orwell and rented the satellite. Challenging
and mocking, directed by Paik, the television industry on its privileged field:
Colors and Music Great Entertainment, hyper-encoded, conventionalized ad
hoc for an imaginary alienated from the U.S.A. to the Far East. Only Italy,
of course, did not move. Rai has not participated in the initiative and never
broadcasted the tape; no local authority has included this transmission in its
ephemeral “summer”. In January, thanks to a cable connection, live viewing
of the work was made possible in Ferrara thanks to the militant initiative
by Lola Bonora, creator and director of the Video Art Center at Palazzo
dei Diamanti. And just a few, in Rome, on March, could see the four tapes
(Paris, New York, Seoul, Cologne) assembled in an eighteen-monitor video
installation curated by Paik himself because the initiative was taken by a
group of artists: the Zattera di Babele directed by Carlo Quartucci, Carla
Tatò and Rudi Fuchs [...]51.
51
From Good Morning Mr Ejzenštejn. In: Cinema Nuovo, a. 34, n. 2 (294), Bari, April
1985, p. 45.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 189
than fifty “vedettes” of art and entertainment world. Considering the globe
as a single and free city, and the time as a variable that is no longer relevant,
new technologies of audio-vision as a multiple communication tool, “satellite
art” was born – among other things: another of possible revolutions of this
century. Mimicking lightly, and with irony and self-irony typical of really
great artists, what usually is the most banal TV shows: the Great Variety
of New Year’s Eve52.
“Video Art” is not a video about art, despite of rare conditions: the
memory of an unrepeatable past; very original documentation of events and
people lost; ongoing chronicle but immediately re-interpreted expressively
as, for example, in Good Morning Mr. Orwell 53.
52
Good Morning Mr. Orwell (Orwell Revisited). In: Rétrospective Nam June Paik. Vidéo-
graphie 1963-1993, by Marco Maria Gazzano, VideoArt Festival di Locarno, Locarno (CH),
edizioni Flaviana, 1993, p. 28.
53
In Videoarte: etimologia e genesi di un concetto controverso. Cfr. Kinema. Il cinema sulle tracce
del cinema, Exorma, Roma, 2012.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 191
nostra relazione con i saperi tenderà sempre più spesso a somigliare a una
sorta di sceneggiatura di cui siamo allo stesso tempo personaggi e interpreti,
spettatori e registi.
English Version
What really gives a sense to the evolution of online learning processes in last
years? Despite of the debate about theoretical and organizational frameworks
or about the growth of new technologies, probably the main impact on how
we learn and teach online concerns two parallel (and apparently independent
each other) phenomena.
Firstly, the so called social media are being changing the traditional
vision of learning as a personal or even intimate process, accepting a dif-
fuse perception of the significance of knowledge socialization and content
sharing. On the other side, we are seeing a big change in information and
communication technology: no more heavy and static devices, referring to a
hierarchical interpretation of the working space, but small and light objects,
more personal, more mobile or even wearable (as the Google glasses), giving
us the opportunity to interact online anytime and anywhere or to recall
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 193
Che il cinema sia stato fin dai suoi albori considerato come una scrittura di
immagini in movimento con la luce è oramai noto. È sin dalla sua nascita,
infatti, che questo ancora poco conosciuto mezzo ha iniziato ad imporsi
come un nuovo tipo di scrittura che trovasse nella luce il suo inchiostro.
Spiegava, infatti, Karel Teige nel 1929, che “la cinematografia è una scrittura
scoperta di recente, con cui possono scrivere il giornalista, lo scienziato e il
poeta moderno. Naturalmente il linguaggio del poeta, espresso con la stessa
scrittura del linguaggio dello scienziato e del giornalista, avrà un’altra sintas-
si e un’altra legittimità secondo le differenti realizzazioni dell’espressione”,
continuando nella spiegazione l’autore spiega la necessità di “sfruttare tutte
le possibilità tecniche della macchina da presa”, spingendosi fino a concepire
“la televisione e la trasmissione senza fili delle immagini”54. Le affermazioni
in seno alla concezione del cinema come scrittura, infatti, attraverseranno
tutto il Novecento comprendendo teorici, artisti e cineasti come Tolstoj,
Bazin, Zavattini, Bresson, Astruc, fra i molti.
Questi paragoni con la scrittura non sono da prendere come delle sem-
plici analogie ma come degli spostamenti metaforici che testimoniano dei
veri e propri mutamenti di tendenza. Mutamenti che si ripercuotono sulla
stessa etimologia della parola “cinematografia”. Cosa accadrebbe infatti se
si togliesse il concetto di scrittura alla parola “cinematografia” come spesso
avviene quando utilizziamo la sola parola “cinema”:
Dagli albori del cinema a oggi le cose sono cambiate. Molti altri ter-
mini sono stati introdotti dallo sviluppo della cinematografia e molte altre
tecniche con la quale fare e scrivere il movimento. Il rapporto tra progresso
tecnologico e possibilità creative è nel cinema particolarmente stretto. Se
54
K. Teige, Sull’estetica del film (1929). In: K. Teige, Arte e ideologia, 1922-1933, Torino,
Einaudi, 1982, pp. 136-165.
55
M.M. Gazzano, Giochi di parole nelle storie del cinema: dalle etimologie alle epistemologie. In:
Elio Girlanda (a cura di), Il precinema oltre il cinema. Per una nuova storia dei media audiovisivi,
Audino, Roma, 2011.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 195
56
R. Barjavel, Il cinema totale. Saggi sulle forme future del cinema, Editori Riuniti, Roma,
2001, p. 35.
57
M. Vitta, Il rifiuto degli déi. Teorie delle belle arti industriali, Einaudi, Torino, 2012, p. 83.
196 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
58
D. Birnbau, Cronologia. Tempo e identità nei film e nei video degli artisti contemporanei,
Postmedia, Milano, 2007, p. 43.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 197
English Version
Write the light? Between art, film and media, parallel histories
of the audio-visual
Since its born, cinema has always been considered as a moving image wri-
tring with the light. Since its born, indeed, cinema has been seen as a new
kind of writing and the light as its ink. On this basis, Karol Teige in the
1929 stated that “cinematography is a kind of writing recently discovery
with which journalist, scientist and poet can write. Surely the language of
the poet will have a different syntax and legitimacy depending on the differ-
ent shape of expression”. Teige go on saying that it is important to “exploit
all the technics possibilities of the camera” till to conceive “television and
59
La relazione per l’abilitazione alla docenza universitaria di Walter Benjamin è stata
pubblicata nell’introduzione di Giulio Schiavoni a Il dramma barocco tedesco, Einaudi, Torino,
1999, p. XVII.
198 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
the wireless transmission of the images”60. Therefore, the issues about the
concept of cinema as a writing will go along the ’900 thanks artists and
scholar as Tolstoj, Bazin, Zavattini, Bresson, Astruc.
Such comparison with writing are not to be taken as a simple analogy
but as a metaphorical changes which bear a very new concept. Changes that
affect the etymology of the word “cinematography”. What would happen
if we remove the concept of “writing” from the word “cinematography” as
it often happen when we use the only word “cinema”: “it is evident that
it is a game of proportions and accents, not just promotional strategies or
ancient philosophical heritage, certainly accepting or removing the concept
of ‘writing’, the element of writing will be accepted or omitted”61.
However, things have changed since the beginning of cinema. Many
other terms the development of cinematography have introduced as well as
many other techniques with which to write the movement. The relation-
ship between technological progress and creative possibilities are particu-
larly close in cinema field. If we take a more traditional form of writing as
literature, for example, the events are not staging through one – or more
– technologies. The fact is, therefore, as stated in 1944 the science fiction
writer René Barjavel, that “cinema is the only art whose fate is closely de-
pendent on the technique”, for these reasons, “since its inception, cinema
is in constant evolution”. If with literature “the structure of the art work
is still based on basic tools and natural materials, now it is based on more
and more complex devices”. And these devices have opened new horizons
in the creation of moving images and the light is still the principal with
which to write these images.
Therefore, different techniques require various composition, so what
kind of techniques and what kind of composition have determined the last
few decades? From the present we can start to understand the past. In the
Sixties, for instance, the advent of the electronic laid down new creative
possibilities which videart and electronic cinema has suddenly exploited.
Another example would be the advent of computer and the former shape
produced by artists and engineer with it, images that today could result
simple and naïve but that should be taken as the milestone of today many
experience as digital cinema, computer graphics, video games, digital arts.
60
K. Teige, Sull’estetica del film (1929). In: K. Teige, Arte e ideologia, 1922-1933, Einaudi,
Torino, 1982, pp. 136-165.
61
M.M. Gazzano, Giochi di parole nelle storie del cinema: dalle etimologie alle epistemologie. In:
Elio Girlanda (a cura di), Il precinema oltrre il cinema. Per una nuova storia dei media audiovisivi,
Audino, Roma, 2011.
CONFERENZE E SEMINARI 199
Writing of motion pictures in between of film, art and media that have
expanded our understanding of cinema and art, which have not been often
considered by official histories. These are experiences that maintain the
principal element that made possible the birth of cinema: light as a writing
of motion pictures on a technology surface. Light that on closer inspection
becomes the very actor, the subject, of writing: what we really see in the
motion pictures are shapes of bundles of light, shapes that are nothing else
then light.
Taken by the fascination of the projection as principal act of cinema,
of the dark movie theatre and of the film as principle product, it have been
often omitted or considered secondary, the creative possibilities open by
new technologies.
How can we consider the light emitted, and not projected, by the Tv
monitor, or even today the screens of mobile phone or tablet? So, the light
from projected onto a surface/screen, as in the movie theatre, becomes
emitted from one display to the viewer, that is us and our bodies.
The relationship between cinema, art and media today arise strongly
and independent, even beyond classical histories of cinema and art. From
the advent of the electronic technologies – formerly radio, and then televi-
sion, video and computer – to the latest information technologies, artists
and film-makers have been confronting with them in order to develop new
creative possibilities, opening new artistic and cognitive ways. Cinema, art
and media: it is precisely in this triad that a different path can be estab-
lished.
This is a path which also concerns a different role of the artist, always
more involved in the visual and technological metamorphosis. Film makers
as Chantal Akerman, Harun Farocki, Godfrey Reggio, Ron Fricke, or artists
as Douglas Gordon or Eija-Liisa Ahtila, or the use that David Lynch has
been doing of the web in this last years, show every more the interaction
between art world and cinema world. As stated Daniel Birnbaum, “artists
such as Athila, Aitken and Douglas did not invent another cinema [...] On
the contrary, they make visible what has been there for a long time: the
impurity and the heterogeneity of the cinema”.
Between projected light and the emitted light, writing the light has to-
day become essential. From movie theatre, to the screens in our homes and
today in our pockets, to the wall mapping on the façade, to the production
of videoinstallations, the increasingly of the relationships between moving
images requires a look that would be able to look at the past through the
eyes of the present. Walter Benjamin argued in its three-pages typewritten
on baroque drama that “the task of the scholar starts right here, in accepting
200 ANTOLOGIA OLE.01
the fact as genuine only if it has an unmistakable affinity with the essence
of the first and the after”62.
62
W. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Verso, London, 2003, p. 62.
Fenomeno intersettoriale, la letteratura elettronica comprende un vasto
genere di opere accomunate dall’utilizzo delle tecnologie e dei media digi-
tali per la realizzazione, fruizione, diffusione e archiviazione di espressioni
letterarie e artistiche che incarnano l’estetica digitale.
L’Antologia, corredata da illustrazioni e biografie, comprende i saggi dell’i-
deatore del Festival Lello Masucci e della curatrice Roberta Iadevaia, gli
interventi degli esperti partecipanti all’evento – tra cui Mario Costa, Paolo
Cirio, Paola Carbone e Giacomo Fronzi – nonché le descrizioni e le schede
tecniche delle opere realizzate durante il Festival incluse quelle dei Master
Olivier Auber, Philippe Bootz, Caterina Davinio, Fred Forest, Dene Grigar,
Lello Masucci e Jason Nelson.