Digital Residencies – 2022 Edition
The third edition of Residenze Digitali, the project promoted by the Artistic Residency Centre of Tuscany (Armunia – CapoTrave/Kilowatt) in partnership with AMAT, the Artistic Residency Centre of Emilia-Romagna (L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora di Mondaino / La Corte Ospitale), the Teatro della Tosse Luzzati Foundation in Genoa, ZONA K in Milan, Piemonte dal Vivo / Lavanderia a Vapore, and RomaEuropa Foundation selected 6 projects to be assisted for seven months by the partner structures and the three tutors Anna Maria Monteverdi, Federica Patti and Laura Gemini.
At the end of the process, in mid-November 2022, the projects had the chance to be showcased to the general public within La Settimana delle Residenze Digitali, the Digital Residency Week.
Selected Projects
Christina G. Hadley
La montagna del sapone
A project by Christina G. Hadley consisting of a CGI animated film based on a concept music album, a website, a discord server and an exploratory video game. The film, divided into thirteen chapters and shot through a video game graphics engine, is a dream-like metaphorical journey made by Cindy, representing the average human being, into the abysses of the web. The title refers to the nickname given to the Primavalle suburb, and its history with the famous saying “non vengo mica dalla montagna del sapone” / “it’s not as if I come from the soap mountain”: under the unrealised promise of an idyllic place, the poorest inhabitants of Rome’s historic centre were displaced. In the project, the term montagna del sapone is reinterpreted as a metaphor and oxymoron for technological acceleration. What is solid – a mighty, opaque structure as is a clearly outlined mountain – becomes a blurred fabric. A fundamental part of the project is the network that is born, on a Discord server used as archive and sharing space, through contributions from other artists and/or users to different chapters and worlds.
Christina G. Hadley lives in Emilia-Romagna where, after graduating in film and video from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, she explores the world of ethical hacking by immersing herself in programming and 3D computer graphics. She is currently writing her thesis for the two-year Net Art course at the Accademia di Brera. She has exhibited at the Milan Triennale and at Digital Week, participated in several festivals, and won Anca and CutOut Fest, among others.
Kamilia Kard
Toxic Garden – Dance Dance Dance
An online participatory performance that takes place within Toxic Garden, a Roblox map designed by Kamilia Kard. In this metaverse, the avatars of the participants – who upon accessing the environment lose their individuality to be clothed in customised skins – dance together, automatically synchronising to the movements of the avatar of the artist. Reflecting on toxic behaviour by human beings and inspired by the protective behaviours of poisonous plants, Kamilia and four professional dancers imagined a choreography capable of speaking, warning and somehow reacting to manipulative actions. Aside from the performance, these movements are captured and processed by an artificial intelligence and remain available on the artist’s map to be used by visitors as individual units of expression, a package of original emotes allowing each audience member to create their own personal choreography of steps and emotions.
Kamilia Kard‘s research explores how hyperconnectivity and new forms of online communication have modified and influenced our perception of the human body, gestures, feelings and emotions. Since 2011, her work has been exhibited in galleries, festivals and institutions nationally and internationally. She holds a doctorate in Digital Humanities from the University of Genoa and teaches Multimedia Communication in Milan and Carrara.
ultravioletto
Hello World!
It is a project that investigates the dualism of life and death through a videogame that offers users an interactive multiplayer exploration: the user moves through a virtual sound space, and is stimulated cognitively by encountering messages on life and death which have been extracted through a scraping software that collects data from social networks. Hello world! is an aimless video game, yet it provokes the observation and awareness of a space where life and death are on the same plane, leaving it up to the user to draw their own critical thinking from it.
ultravioletto is an interaction design studio in Rome formed by Bruno Capezzuoli, Tito Cetroni, Massimo Zomparelli, Francesco Bruno Viteri, Giulio Pernice and Laura Arcangeli. It works in the multidisciplinary area between architecture and design, storytelling and installation, contaminating it with new emerging technologies. Ultravioletto is especially sensitive towards experimenting with expressive research that enhances communication projects as much as the works of art it creates. They operate between art and new media, interactive installations and performances.
BOTH Industries
Still Walking, on air
A multimedia live performance that captures fictional snapshots of the contemporary digital world with an ironic, surreal touch, where social dynamics are driven by control algorithms to a state of motionless frenzy. The performance comes to life within a video streaming platform popular for its ability to create communities around live broadcasts, thanks to its advanced interactive system between streamers (i.e. online content creators) and their audience. The project stems from a reading and re-elaboration of the aesthetic languages, compositional rules and performance formats that underscore many audiovisual products online, thus inviting viewers into an exploration of perturbing scenarios marked by repetitive visual patterns, gestures and music.
BOTH industries is a transdisciplinary artistic association based in Berne, consisting of visual artist Matteo Taramelli, performers Valentin Oppermann and Stella Höttler, and sound artist Jacopo Biffi. For the development of ‘Still Walking, on air’, the team expanded to include computer designer Martin Obrist in the production. Through a transdisciplinary artistic practice, the group develops new methodologies and creative formats that weave together audiovisual experimentation, live performance, new media, and space design.
gruppo nanou
THEM [immagine-movimento]
This project aims to choreograph both a movement and a camera movement, bringing the camera inside the choreography so that the gaze and dynamics of the shot become the performance object. Reflecting on the use of online video, ever-curious about investigating the choreographic language as they carry on the connection with cinematic and visual language that has always distinguished their work, nanou investigates how video can be used to experiment with shooting modes by using action cams, and to transform the shot into choreography. The image becomes an action to determine immersiveness in the choreography.
gruppo nanou was founded in Ravenna in July 2004 as a meeting place for the different languages and sensitivities of artists Marco Valerio Amico, Rhuena Bracci and Roberto Rettura. Their productions have been featured in important venues including Ravenna Festival, Fabbrica Europa, Unidram (Germany), La MaMa ETC (USA). From 2019, the sound design has been entrusted to musician Bruno Dorella, founder of several musical groups including OvO, Ronin and Bachi da Pietra.
Teatrino Giullare
Drone tragico. Volo sull’Orestea da Eschilo a Pasolini.
A theatrical web series project that takes its main theme from Aeschylus’s Oresteia, using the exceptional translation made by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The Oresteia is a work about points of view, starting from the one of the gods observing from above, to that of the chorus observing from a distance, and that of the characters immersed in the tragedy. The project’s leading idea is to extend the text’s theme of different points of view by filming the actions and situations with a drone 360-degree camera, thus allowing the spectator the possibility of effectively looking around, and to choose their own point of view, to choose what to watch. The 360-degree video is uploaded on YouTube in instalments and can be viewed with a VR headset, via computer by using a mouse to explore the surroundings, or via smartphone.
Teatrino Giullare is a contemporary theatre company from Emilia founded and led by actors and directors Giulia Dall’Ongaro and Enrico Deotti. Since 1996, it has been carrying out theatre productions, seminars and workshops all over Italy, as well as international tours in 35 different countries. It has won several awards, including the Premio Nazionale della Critica (2006), the Premio Speciale Ubu 2006, and the Excellent Play Award of the Beijing Central Academy of Drama (2019).