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Monthy magazine:
Digicult Produzioni
Redazione / Editing:
Marco Mancuso
Cover:
Renzo Vitale
Contents:
Mark Coniglio, Giuseppe Cordaro, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo, Teresa De Feo, Luigi Ghezzi, Loredana Menghi, Claudia Moriniello, Annamaria Monteverdi, Alessandra Migani, Bertram Niessen, Monica Ponzini, Luigi Pagliarini, Domenico Quaranta, Massimo Schiavoni, Silvia Scaravaggi
Translations:
Claudia Contino, Stefania Longo, Ornella Pesenti, Cristina Sartori, Barbara Viola |
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NETWORKING
//Giuseppe Cordaro
NET ART
//Marco Mancuso |
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ZYMOGEN.NET, ITALIAN NETLABELS GROW UP
Txt: Giuseppe Cordaro / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Networking
 Is it the internet the future of music? This could be the beginning question to start a reflection about the netlabels universe, a word that is filling the web pages during last years, and not the musical ambit ones. But what is a netlabel? A netlabel (also online label, web label or MP3 label) is a record label that distributes its music primarily through digital audio formats (mainly MP3 or Ogg Vorbis) over the Internet. These music-files are often called netaudio. While similar to traditional record labels in many respects, netlabels typically emphasize free distribution online, often under licenses that encourage works to be shared (e.g., Creative Commons licenses), and artists usually retain copyright. Most employ guerrilla marketing to promote their work; few netlabels earn money for participants. (From: Wikipedia). These are the principals characteristics of a phenomenon that, started as niche situation, is growing more and more interest...
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THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF THE WEB
Txt: Marco Mancuso / Eng: Claudia Contino
Area: Net Art
 Now, I've been waiting for years for a net art project that tried to take the distances from the complexities of the contemporaneous digital world. A surely short-circuiting process, it “travels” along alive nets: Nacre is a being “eating” data gathered in the net by its spiders. This work is perhaps more true and representative of a state composed by several art operations suffering the strength of an exhausted expression mean very exploited in the last years. And at the moment this latter doesn't seem to offer further technical developments, if we don't consider the latest Second Life's experiences. So, the general trend of multimedia works, not only in the web, but also in every field and subject, is using expression codes and languages (design, video, music) known for the visualization and understanding of data flux, information, networking dynamics and sharing. On the other hand the latest production by Luca Tanzini and Marco Antonini...
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HACKING
//Monica Ponzini
HACKTIVISM
//Teresa De Feo
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G.R.L.: WRITERS AS HACKERS AS ARTISTS
Txt: Monica Ponzini / Eng: Claudia Contino
Area: Hacking
 Real and virtual spaces, cities and new media. These are the domains of confrontation of the new semantic clashes, made of massified and pre-digested messages on one hand, and free circulation, manipulation and expression of ideas on the other. The main characters are big companies, buying ads spaces to spark the consumerism at the basis of their economies, versus individuals, sometimes gathered in little independent groups, using new technologies for realising and using expressions means and the net to communicate and join in. In NY, one of the most active groups in this light is the GRL - Graffiti Research Lab, a think tank created by Evan Roth and James Powderly. They match open source and practical technologies of metropolitan activism (on this subject we widely spoke about in the 23 rd issue of DigiMag, in April 2007. Some of their instrument of unconventional communication have been realised by...
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GORDAN SAVICIC: TECHNOSURVEILLANCE MARTYR
Txt: Teresa De Feo / Eng: Caterina Sartori
Area: Hacktivism
 Tra bodyart ed “elettropunk situazionista”, feticismo e riflessione tecnocratica, l'artista viennese Gordan Savicic parla del “dolore della vita di ogni giorno”. Così si chiama il suo nuovo lavoro The pain of everyday life - Constraint City, presentato a Rotterdam durante il V2 Testlab. Un'opera, direi, dai richiami controversi, dove sembrano dialogare in maniera ridondante alcuni temi cari all'artista: dall'enfasi cristologica di Michel de Certaeu, al piacere sadico di De Sade e Leopold von Sacher-Masoch fino, non a caso, a Baudelaire e ai suoi flâneur, con i loro vagabondaggi in città labirintiche ed infernali. Sterlac e la bodyart cibernetica, i tracciati immateriali delle metropoli post moderne, chiudono cronologicamente il viaggio di questa “poetica del martirio”. Il nuovo flâneur di Gordan Savicic passeggia per le strade di città sorvegliate con indosso un bustino munito di servo motori costrittori...
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----------------------------------GAME ART
//Monica Ponzini
SOFTWARE ART
//Domenico Quaranta
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BLIP FESTIVAL: CHIPTUNE MUSIC & LOW BIT VISUALS
Txt: Monica Ponzini / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Game Art
 Game Boy's devotees and Commodore 64's fans: Blip Festival is back! For four days New York had been the centre of the electronic world of the 80s aesthetic and of its current reinterpretations. This year the New York association The Tank together with the 8bitpeoples collective have brought the festival to the Eyebeam Atelier - a cultural centre dedicated to digital arts - to celebrate chiptune music and low-bit visual art proving that, rather than being an underground movement or the remains of the past, they have gathered more and more followers. As a matter of fact, about forty international artists mixed 8 bit bases spanning from electro-techno-house to rock, or created visuals based on old fashion games. For some of them that was the celebration of their childhood they spent playing with the Game Boy , for others the discover from scratch of vintage-electronic devices. The reward for organizers' passion...
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THE GATE: OPEN CONSIDERATIONS - PART 2
Txt: Domenico Quaranta / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Mmorpg
 The Gate (or Hole in Space, Reloaded) is an installation created for the opening exhibition of iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology in Brussels (4th – 10th October 2007). Ideated by Yves Bernhard , iMAL's director, the installation was meant to deal with a just seemingly simple question: how to create a connection between real space and virtual worlds, so as to let people use them (and interact with their inhabitants) in real space without the mediation of a graphic interface. The problem has already been raised some times but the solution – the projection of a video streaming from the virtual world onto the real space – has never worked. The Gate did not solve the problem and the solution that has been found after a very hard searching can be considered everything but definitive. Nevertheless, a step has been taken forward and some people, from both sides, have tried to cross the threshold...
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VIDEO ART
//Alessandra Migani
EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA
//Loredana Menghi
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MIKE MILLS: HUMANS BEFORE ALL!
Txt: Alessandra Migani
Area: Video Art / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
 The 51st edition of the London Film Festival offered also this year a rich program with incredible guests and preview.I think I chose unconsciously the most touching movies of the festival, as I was moved by the majority of them. Or maybe, the sense of uncertainty and instability we are through these years and the anxieties fought everyday pierce the images on the big screen so deeply that they connect to the sensitivity of the spectators.It is not a case that one of the diamonds of this year edition, the documentary shot by the american director Mike Mills "Does your soul have cold?", investigates the depression in Japan through the history of five guys recovered for the cited illness. Mills realized numerous music videos for artists such as Yoko Ono, Moby, Air, Blonde Redhead, short films and his first real movie, Thumbsucker, is from 2005...
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SEX IS A PAIN IN THE ASS
Txt: Loredana Menghi / Eng: Caterina Sartori
Area: Experimental Cinema
 Sex is a pain in the ass: this was the title of the event on body art that was held at porn cinema Avorio in Rome from November 30 th to December 1 st , featuring the works of artists of the likes of Matthew Barney , Joseph Beuys and Chris Burden. The title suits the mood of the Roman public perfectly, as it was denied access to a cultural event that was previously promised funding from the institutions. We are referring to the censorship operation that has been inflicted upon the event, which was at first promised sponsorship by the Council of Rome and by the VI Municipality, and then boycotted shortly before its debut. Something very similar occurred at the same time at the strongly awaited appointment with Aphex Twin's music. The Irish artist was refused the venue (the ex Fiera di Roma, that had at first been promised for the artist's only Italian tour date), whereas the case of Sex is a pain in the ass is far more subtle...
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EXPERIMENTAL//Claudia Moriniello
ELECTRONICA//Bertram Niessen |
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LIVE!IXEM: THE FIVE DAYS OF PALERMO
Txt: Claudia Morinello / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Experimental
 Il Live!iXem, a music contest and festival of audiovisuals, mixed media and experimental electronic arts which is organized by Antitesi, is continuously changing. This year's fourth edition has ben still characterized by the most advanced research in creativity. This is the only contest in Italy, as far as typology and method are concerned, which is dedicated to all those Italian artists who uses new technologies applied to the arts, particularly focusing on the relation between sound and image. Every year the festival has moved from one place to another and changed its structure: what has not changed is the honesty with which the contest has been carried out and the carefulness with which the programme has been drawn up. After the first two editions (2004 and 2005) in Venice and the third edition between Rome and Palermo (2006), after many difficulties and incoveniences, this year the festival...
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MARUTTI: ITALIAN EXPERIMENTAL UNDERGROUND
Txt: Bertram Niessen / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Electronica
 Digimag readers are probably bored by my long prologues on the reasons why I chose to interview someone. I'm unfortunately convinced, and I'm getting more and more into those convictions, that explaining the reasons behind articles is definitely one of the most important part of the article itself. Well, Some weeks ago I was at Torkiera in Milan (for those who missed it, Torkiera is one of the few spaces of the metropolis that is seriously promoting musical experimentation, among all its proposals). I was resonating with Marco Mancuso about potential interviews. Suddenly, I saw the table of Afe Records and I asked myself: "Is it possible that we haven't interviewed Andrea Marutti yet, one of the most interesting key character of the experimental underground of the last ten years?". Yep, it is possible. So here I apology and remediate...
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LIVE MEDIA
//Claudia D'Alonzo
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X-SCAPE: ESCAPE FROM LENGUAGE
Txt: Claudia D'Alonzo / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Live Media
 Martux_m aka Maurizio Martusciello, composer, musician and performer since more than 10 years, builds with his sound work and research an important interpenetration between traditional concrete and electro acoustic music and the synthesis of the digital electronic.His path is open to contamination, to research of overlap between genres, through which he sees new codes of sound languages creation. A stimulated and good research thanks to the constant confrontation and collaboration with musicians, visual artists and video artists. X-Scape, one of his most recent works, was born from the meeting with the video artist Mattia Casalegno. Born in 2005 as audiovisual project, presented in numerous international and Italian events, for example Montreal Mutek Festival and IXEM Venice Festival, X-Scape has been recently elaborated by the authors as a/v trip in seven tracks, presented in numerous international and Italian events, for example Montreal Mutek Festival and IXEM Venice Festival, X-Scape has been recently elaborated by the authors as a/v trip in seven tracks, presented in June in limited edition DVD, produced and distributed by Persistencebit. All the chapters are built as a crescendo, a progressive sedimentation of sound and visual atoms. So, when the first tracks move in a minimal landscape of little acoustic data, distilled by the emptiness together with feeble texture of vectors, the rhythmic game between acoustic stimulation and silence is complicated through the hybridization with dusty sounds dirtied by hidden glitches that move between video textures in subtile equilibrium between organic and inorganic...
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A.I.
//Luigi Pagliarini
ART&SCIENCE
//Silvia Scaravaggi
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POLYMORPHIC INTELLIGENCE - PART 2
Txt: Luigi Pagliarini / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Artificial Intelligence
 As far as we know, the human being is the most “intelligent” organism. Their brain includes a number of fuctions so complex and sophisticated that, when the neurologist and psychologist Howard Gardner in his Frames of Mind tries to recap its structure, he comes up with seven sub-structures: Linguistic Intelligence, Logic-Mathematical Intelligence, Musical Intelligence, Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence, Spatial Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence and Intrapersonal Intelligence. Surely thanks to a very refined biological evolution of its calculating skills, the human race has been able to reach an equal high level of social and technological evolution too. What we are about to reach now, is what can be called automaton era . Nevertheless, among us humans, some enlightened artists (such as W. Shelley , G. Orwell , P.K. Dick) have caught a glimpse of where we were heading for and thus tried to imagine what it would...
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MUTAMORPHOSIS, CHALLENGING ART AND SCIENCE
Txt: Silvia Scaravaggi / Eng: Ornella Pesenti
Area: Art&Science
 From 8th to 11th November Prague has been protagonist of the third edition of the international festival Enter3, dedicated to the relationship between art, science and new technologies, with a series of expositions, performances, panels, workshops and the Mutamorphosis symposium, meeting and exchange point between students, artists, scientists from all over the world. The title itself, enter, means and suggests the point of view through which the different themes are coped with. Enter can be the keyboard button, used to start an application, to head on with a work, to begin a new process, as well as the trigger of a potentially destructive command.This double path is find in expositive proposals of artists and inside speakers themes, so numerous that we will not be able to explain each input (among all Roy Ascott, Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski, Albert-Laslò Barbabàsi)...
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DESIGN
//Marco Mancuso
INTERACTION DESIGN
//Teresa De Feo
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LIMITEAZERO, INFINITE LIMITS
Txt: Marco Mancuso / Eng: Claudia Contino
Area: Design
 Digicult got the opportunity to interview Limiteazero at their beginnings in March 2005. That is to say long ago. At that time, Tiziana Gemin wrote a pretty complete article about Paolo Rigamonti and Silvio Mondino, the two Milanese designers and architects composing Limiteazero. That was a starting point for those who didn't know Limiteazero's productions and activity. The objective of this following lines is to take up the thread of what we were saying. Let's consider the rocketing developments in communication and multimedia art (two more and more interweaved fields, despite my purist taste). We can't also forget the increasing path and the international renown got by Limiteazero. I witnessed all their progress as I am a friend of them. So, I thought it was highly time to have a talk with Paolo and Silvio, trying to focus the subjects of our conversation on a couple of keywords characterising their wide range of projects...
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TAFKAV AND A FLOWER CALLED VANDA
Txt: Teresa De Feo / Eng: Stefania Longo
Area: Interaction Design
 Communication between different entities, in an age of deep anthropologic changes, is the topic on which the complex research of TAFKAV , “The Artist Formerly Kwon As Vanda” , develops. That is a fully Italian installation which brilliantly deals with uncertain and controversial questions that still have to be discussed, thus succeeding in giving a glimpse on digital arts' next future and more. The installation is a cage containing a flower with purplish nuances and a solemn appearance, whose galvanometric variations are measured by a psycho-galvanometre which sends the data it gathers to a computer able to turn them into musical sounds. Presented at the Body-Process Art Festival AMBER' 07 in Instabul, TAFKAV is an experimental laboratory set up to analyze the methodological possibilities for art, science, technology and nature (technoethic) to interlink and a demonstration that those...
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TECHNO THEATRE
//Mark Coniglio
PERFORMING ART
//Annamaria Monteverdi
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING INTERACTIVE
Txt: Mark Coniglio
Area: Techno Theatre
 My collaborator Dawn Stoppiello and I created our dance theatre company Troika Ranch in 1994, our purpose being to create dynamic, challenging artworks that fused traditional elements of dance, music and theatre with interactive digital media. We believed that by directly linking the actions of a performer to the sound and imagery that accompanied them, we would be led to new modes of creation and performance and, eventually, to a new form of live art work. While we cannot yet claim to have reached this latter, rather lofty, goal we have firmly established our views about interactive performance and its importance to the performer and audience. Presenting these views is the subject of this chapter, but before I go on, I think it is worth answering a simple question: why would one want to create such artworks in the first place?...
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FESTIVAL CULTANIA, CULTURE FROM SOUTHERN ITALY
Txt: Annamaria Monteverdi / Eng: Barbara Viola
Area: Performing Art
 Sold out for Cultania Festival, organized by the councillorship for Culture, within the project “The Multimedia Centre of the Archaeological Park ” (Por Sicilia 2000 - 2006 – “ Catania , metropolitan city”). To say it with figures, ten thousand people for two-week theatre events, from the 13 th October to the 4 th November 2007, 450 spectators only to Roberto Zappalà and Giovanni Sollima performance, 1800 to the event Soundwalking on Etna lava sand with Alvin Curran , one of the pioneers of environment music who founded Musica Elettronica Viva together with Stefano Zorzanello, a musician from Veneto who lives now in Catania. The whole staff, headed by the dynamic Salvatore Zinna , the film and theatre director who conceived this festival, has all the rights to be satisfied with it. Cultania Festival is especially dedicated to contemporary performances and to the theatre combined with technologies in a city...
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NEW MEDIA MARKET
//Lucrezia Cippitelli
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ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE SHOWBUSINESS ERA
Txt: Lucrezia Cippitelli / Eng: Claudia Contino
Area: New Media Market
 What if the artists suddenly stops working with the traditional means of contemporaneous art ( and with the Avant-garde's expression strategies), what if he makes a review to the existing reality through the construction of a metaphorical talk representing it, so unveiling the undergoing mechanisms? What is he makes a direct intervention on reality creating situations able to change and improve it? And if he gets engaged on a political point of view? In few words, what happens if the artist decided to discuss the social context no more depicting it and aligning to the “Good ”, but playing the role of the “Wicked”? A recent book published by the independent and avant-garde editor Episode Publishers in Rotterdam offers an analysis of the activism in the contemporaneous world. For this description he makes use of the idea of Over-identification as hermeneutical term, that is to say the total agreement and unequivocal participation of the artist to the social dynamics he wants to criticize and deconstruct. This is a mechanism called Dètournement by historic Avant-garde and Surrealism in particular. It implied the use of activities, communication strategies and languages belonging to the production world (trade, advertising)and government (red taps and media) to reveal them from the inside, emptying them of all meaning and giving them back to the public or watchers with a new sense. These strategies are filtered out and developed in billion of different channels through the work of the Neo-Avant-garde (and above by the Situationist International), then through those experiences mid-way between art and political activism. Stewart Home defines them as Utopian Movements in his essay Assault on culture, what I consider fundamental to understand the most part of art researches, experimental upon present, translated in Italian by the epochal AAA Edizioni, almost unavailable today)...
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