2023 Rome | EN | FOTONICA
FOTONICA
Audio Visual Digital Art Festival
VII edition – Immersive Edition
From 1st to 10th December Rome lights up with the VII edition of Fotonica, the festival that returns to the Capital at the Roman Aquarium, the Academy of Hungary and Cieloterra to offer Romans spectacular videomapping, interactive installations with a strong visual and sensorial impact , audio video and live a/v performances as well as workshops for adults and children, artistic residencies, talks and conferences.
Fotonica celebrates the photon, the smallest and brightest luminous fragment in the universe, a very small particle with an enormous and multifaceted creative power capable of giving rise to every form of light. A unique event in the panorama of Audio Visual Digital Arts, which investigates all those art forms in which the element of light is central, presenting for years the best experiences in the international field and contributing to the creation of a network that brings together the most important players in the sector.
A festival for the city of Rome that is preparing to welcome some of the most influential artists linked to audio video and digital arts: from the leading names in world electronics such as the visionary Mexican artist Murcof , or the Hungarian Gabor Lazar , to the pioneers of vjing in Italy Otolab , from the Canadian Sabrina Rattè , one of the most promising and brilliant digital artists on an international level, to the Hungarians Victor Vasarely and Peter Botos, up to talented local musicians established on the international scene such as the double bass champion Caterina Palazzi , or the Italian-Dutch composer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist Grand River .
We start at 5pm on December 1st from the Hungarian Academy in via Giulia for the opening of the festival with the light installations co-curated by the Light Art Museum (LAM) of Budapest by two very important exponents of contemporary art , the Hungarians Victor Vasarely – a key figure in the abstract geometric art that later became the international movement known as Kineticism – and Peter Botos, who arrived in Rome after having exhibited their works at the Venice Biennale and in the most important museums in the world. On the border between art and science, the light sculpture Virtual lighting by Victor Vasarely is one of his typical “continuously transforming” compositions, an optical experiment based on the contrast between black and white created by the lights and shadows that pass through his sculptures of plexiglass, to give the illusion of movement.
With Hommage á Eliasson Peter Botos creates a baroque geometric sculpture in optical glass revisiting the geometric tradition of the early 1900s according to the canons of minimal and avant-garde art. The public will also be able to visit the ongoing exhibition of one of the pioneers of digital and algorithmic art, the ninety-nine-year-old Hungarian Vera Molnár.
The itinerary is completed by the A/V installations by Andrea Sztojánovits focusing on the nest as a symbol of the complexity of life, which allows visitors to create a 3D audiovisual composition encoded in Augmented Reality technology using their mobile phones, and the modular audiovisual installation by Elektro Moon Vision Cosmosonic, which using scientific data provided by NASA, with the collaboration of the Iranian sound artist Ali Phi, allows us to imagine the sounds in the surroundings of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun and, on a visual level, also Through Augmented Reality technology, it allows you to see the “dark side of the moon” or objects in Earth’s orbit invisible from Earth.
We then move to Cieloterra with the A/V performance by the Austrian visual artist Rainer Kohlberger who uses digital projection technology in a radical way. Through pulses and waves of pure light, layers of noise, drones and stroboscopic lights the artist intentionally overloads the human perceptive apparatus causing visual impressions that appear exclusively in the “eye of the observer”. It will also be possible to see and hear a selection of A/V performances from the Live Cinema Made in Italy call .
From 8 to 10 December we will enter the heart of the Festival’s programming at the Roman Aquarium whose façade will be redesigned by videomapping by Kanaka and Daniel Besnyo co-curated by Inota Festival and where every evening it will be possible to attend three different A/V performances highly immersive, curated by Live Cinema Festival which this year reaches its tenth edition, preceded by meetings with the same artists protagonists of the evenings at 8pm.
The spaces of the Roman Aquarium will be animated by the interactive installations of V3rbo, an artist who has introduced new visual rules by celebrating writing and investigating its media derivatives ( his “video incursions” have even been chosen by Firefox for its international promotion campaign ), by the Canadian Sabrina Rattè who with Inflorescences explores the emergence of life forms in a dystopian future devoid of humans where plants, fungi and unknown creatures have undergone mutations to exist in symbiosis with electronic waste; In the gardens, the artist Edohard who, with AbitAZIONE , an immersive installation of generative art which he recently brought to the Fuorisalone 2023 in the Mutual Aid Space of San Siro, talks about the experience of those who live in the popular neighborhoods of the city. An engaging audio-visual immersion created by the processing of data, images, voices and sounds collected within the walls of the occupied space which makes the spectator participate in the life that animates him on a daily basis. It will also be possible to visit Fantomas – VR Arab Science Fiction , an art exhibition in virtual reality and us where the public can use VR viewers to experience the immersive projects created by the 6 artists participating in the 5-week workshop which was held in Cairo, fruit of the collaboration between Flyer, the Egyptian contemporary art center Medrar and the VAF Visual Art Forum of Ramallah, a leading Palestinian institution in the field of culture and visual arts.
Also worth mentioning is the Talk by PAC, the network of organizations active in contemporary performing arts. A necessary in-depth study on the issues of environmental sustainability of cultural events aimed at the publication of research on best practices for cultural events to incorporate the most significant thrusts relating to contemporary artistic production from a green perspective.
Unmissable are the audio video performances on December 8th : The Alias Sessions by Murcof and Sergi Palau, focuses on the Mexican producer’s latest album, a collection of works composed for the choreographic works of the Alias dance company. Sergi Palau created its visual content primarily using footage of Alias’ live performances as raw material for further processing and deconstruction, thus creating an entirely new narrative and dramaturgy that results in a surreal and dreamlike visual experience. The evening will be preceded by one of the twenty best Italian bass players, the Roman Caterina Palazzi, with more than 700 concerts all over the world, best Italian composer for Jazzit magazine and among the best new talents in the “Top Jazz” of Jazz Music. Caterina arrives at Fotonica after being chosen in July 2023 by Kim Gordon, historic bassist of Sonic Youth to open the dates of his Italian tour. Together with the visual designer Kanaka she presents Aneurysm , a performance conceived as a surreal journey of the blood in the ducts of the brain, where music and images transport the spectator into an emotional blood flow made of accelerations and braking, flowing and irregular rhythms, life and death . And again the performance Some Collected Works by Abul Mogard, alter-ego created by Guido Zen , an Italian musician, composer and producer based in Rome considered among the greatest creators of ambient music on the international scene. Initially conceived as a live reinterpretation of the album “In Immobile Air”, it has evolved to the point of covering the musician’s repertoire of the last ten years. Abul amalgamates elements of his albums recreated using a modular synthesizer and a computer while the Italian-Brazilian visual artist Marja de Sanctis interprets these sounds by manipulating live images of open access paintings, photographs and personal videos that bring back to her imagination and her experience between tropical lands and Europe.
On December 9th a new evening full of big international names: Boundary Object by Gábor Lázár is a collection of eight unreleased tracks recorded in real time using a self-designed compositional interface. Lázár’s second album for the cult electronic music label Planet Mu , the title comes from the idea of a boundary object and calculation of how collaborations can happen between groups of people with different types of backgrounds. Gábor’s prismatic music, functioning on different levels of interpretation, allows passages that begin as trance-like and familiar to intertwine and transform into different forms, overturning the listener’s expectations.
With Tuning the Wind the Italian-Dutch Grand River, pseudonym of the talented composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli , strongly rising in the international field with participations in the most important electronic music clubs and festivals, reworks and integrates frequencies and timbres of different types of wind, making it a prepared instrument. Nature and music become one, between the natural element and the instrument built by man, between a sound wave and a gust of wind.
Otolab, a collective that brings together musicians, DJs, VJs, video artists, video makers, web designers, graphic designers and architects finally presents Ot-e , which on the musical level pursues an evolution of Detroit electro sounds and rhythms in an incandescent and stratified way, while on the visually accompanies the audio with stroboscopic pulsations, abstract generative images and films, inducing the viewer to experience a pareidolitic illusion.
The last day of the festival, December 10, opens with Andrea Sztojánovits ‘ workshop on progressive audiovisual performative art, to continue with the A/V performance Inferno 1911 , by the Metainferno collective , based on the reinterpretation of the silent film “L ‘inferno’ of 1911, made with a camera given as a gift by the Lumière brothers: a real audio-visual concert where the double bass dialogues with the electronic sounds of the modular synthesizers to merge with the images generated in real time by the AI, which represent the Dante’s journey to the afterlife.
The evening ends with White Balance by Schnitt , the project by Amelie Duchow , a German experimental musician, and the Italian media artist Marco Monfardini focused on the interaction between audio/video and the photographic process of white balance. Crossing the minimal art of Robert Ryman’s “white images”, the duo examines the potential effects of reception and perception of the “non” color par excellence.
Sustainable mobility is perfectly guaranteed by the public service in all places and times, including evenings, of the initiative.
The Roman Aquarium is easily reachable (keeping Termini Station in mind) via the most popular public transport:
– Metro lines A and B (“Termini” stop)
– Buses: several lines end right in the square in front of Termini Station
– Platforms 23 and 24 are used for the Leonardo Express, direct line to Fiumicino airport
Naba : Metro B Garbatella at 200m
Fusolab 2.0 : Metro C Alessandrino at 300m
Flyer : Tram 19 Tram 3, 1 km from Termini Station, Metro Policlinico 500m
Cieloterra : Bus: 409, 545, A60, n409 at 20m
Special thanks for the support goes to the Hungarian Academy in Rome, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Délégation du Québec à Rome. The project, promoted by Roma Capitale – Department of Culture, is the winner of the biennial Public Notice “Culture in Movimento 2023 – 2024” curated by the Cultural Activities Department, created in collaboration with SIAE and with the support of the Ministry of Culture – FUS Progetti Speciali in 2023 and for 2024 of the European Community – Creative Europe. FOTONICA is produced by Flyer srl , which in 2004 created LPM Live Performers Meeting, the largest event in the sector. Now in its twenty-fifth edition, of which 11 in Rome and the others, also thanks to the support of the European Community, in Xalapa, Minsk, Mexico City, Cape Town, Münster, Eindhoven and Amsterdam. Since 2004 LPM has hosted over 4600 artists, 2625 performances, workshops and showcases, with 72 participating countries and more than 1,500,000 visitors. FOTONICA is part of the AVnode network, an international network with over 60 members who promote over 200 projects including festivals, meetings and workshops.
