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INTERFERENZE, UNCONTAMINATED ELECTRONATURE
Txt: Annalisa Turroni
In the beginning of August took place the festival of electronic art and new media Interfereze, just in those first three leonine days which have the hint of holidays, just in that period of the summery diary which offers quite little, just in those places which offer very little to an audience attentive to the new media, just in the most unthinkable setting which the digital atmosphere could appreciate.
In a height forest, immersed in the Caudina valley, between Benevento and Avellino , a wood became the scenery of a festival that at its fourth and glorious edition, managed to combine art and territory, nature and technology. In three days it managed to shake the Partenio’s mountains and offered advanced performances, which all together is hard to see in other contexts. The sections that composed the rich programme of the festival were four: Sounds, New media, Workshop and Naturalis Electronica. Not only the musical performances of the artists but also the loop of the video-screening, the workshops and the still attended and valued lectures took turns from the afternoon to late at night, on the different stages. I’m going to name someone and some suggestions among the many relentless which poured in during those days.
A low and dark cloud threatened the festival for the whole three days, but it has really its fill only shortly before the performance of Biosphere , who recovered the performance thankfully the following day. The artists, careless of the bad forecasts, performed with video-acoustic explosion. With regard to the vacant sun, we have to remind the workshop made by Ralf Schreiber , who led the attendance of the seminar to create electronic insects (which utilize exactly the solar energy) which gave out sounds and took heart.
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As far as the sound section is concerned, the artists were of great quantity. Above all we have to mention Deadbeat , who closed Friday night with firework: amused and amusing, the Canadian seemed he would have remained at the console forever, since he was in the throes of stirring up the crowds. After him, at a really unconsidered time, there was the performance of I ragazzi Della prateria (who performed in the FLUX PEOPLE section thanks to the media partnership of Flux-Mtv), a friulian pair who brought on the stage a wave of acrobatic vjng with their software and stratagems.
AGF and Vladislav Delay, a couple in the life but not on the stage, gave maybe the most intense moments of the festival: the e-poetress and the creative Finnish producer conducted the audience in a sensorial, penetrating and vigorous trip. The Norwegian Deaf center were not inferior to them: at their first jointly walk-on, they managed to uphold the honour of the Scandinavian countries, which in this setting reminded indeed that the north wind can bring many innovations to which we should only adapt the ear. And the eye.
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The video section, then, edited by Valentina Tanni, gave great moments of video-art. The performance of the British pair Semiconductor, World in Flux , was a marvellous accompaniment for the festival’s days and the natural architectures faded to the digital and the soft formal experiment.
A very interesting and curious experiment was then inaugurated within the digital provinces section: it was VERDICHTUNG VON: VALLE CAUDINA/CONDENSAMENTO: VALLE CAUDINA, a performance edited by the Austrian brothers Troyer and by the Viennese cook Furtenbach who, during the festival, “condensed” non-stop, not only in a metaphorical way, the sounds and the local gastronomic delights. The sounds produced during the process of gastro-acoustic treatment were transformed by the three of them and became object of acoustic sampling.
s far as the software/interactive section is concerned, edited by Juha Huuskonen, media artist and Finnish designer, it’s impossible to not refer to the interactive animation of Le Ciel est bleu, to the video-environment of Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski (with the Acquatic project) and to the algorithms of Casey Reas, which created mutant digital pictures.
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Then the IMPROVe and An Earful of Italy projects explored the sound scenery of San Martino Valley Caudina. This last work of Jean-Philippe Renoult, Kate Sieper and the wonderful Dinah Bird involved the local dwellers during the festival’s week, collecting the sounds and the stories relating to the way in which people experiments their own sonic environment. IMPROVe distributed instruments to the audience to create a spontaneous musical performance, build on the sounds which was collected in the San Martino Valle Caudina’s area.
So, it’s a fourth, well developed and valued edition: the artists were all high level and the successful attempt to put the digital art into the unpolluted nature was a winning choice. We can but wait for the new edition.
