Marco Mancuso

Ricci/forte. A Mash-up Of Uneasiness And Perversion

Marco Mancuso
The epigraph introducing the article is taken from the cover notes of the above book, a volume containing the first publication of the Macadamia Nut Brittle text, related to the homonymous show that made its debut at the Festival Garofano Verde in Rome in 2009, inspired by Dennis Cooper, written by Ricci/Forte and directed by Stefano Ricci, which also contains an interview to the artists and a critical introduction by the author, retracing the main characteristics of the work by the Roman duo... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 69, November 2011

Peter Tscherkassky.audiovisuals From A Darkroom

Marco Mancuso
Let's start from an assumption: I am not a film critic and more in general I do not work exclusively on experimental cinema. This analysis of the avant guard director Peter Tscherkassky, born in Wien in 1958 and winner at the 67th Venice Film Festival in the 'Nuovi Orizzont" section with the film Coming Attractions, will probably lack those lexical elements and elements of analysis used by the most orthodox film criticism, and will inesorably be exposed to a radical reading of the following text. In spite of that, my intention is to highlight the austrian director's work, in terms of the importance that I think it has not only as far as cinema is concerned, but also and especially towards the production and the audiovisual research taken as an aesthetic-expressive possibility of the sound-image relationship.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 63, April 2011

Zimoun & Leerraum [ ]. Sound Organisms In Evolution

Marco Mancuso
The Swiss artist Zimoun claims he is an autodidact. During the following interview he will make clear he didn't study art and he doesn't have a solid background at his disposal, and least of all he never thought about confronting himself with other artistic or vanguard movements which came before him. As this article is trying to focus on, he is one the most interesting and visionary artist of our time. In the sound art international panorama, he is one of a kind for his research on the expressive potentialities of analogical (mechanical) sound in relation to the space, as well as for his aesthetical analysis on a possible visual translation of the sound mechanism implied by his works.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 61, February 2011Sound

Antonio Barrese. Mutation, Imagine, Dimension

Marco Mancuso
Amongst the several protagonists of that unique period, the MID Group, founded in 1964 in Milan by Antonio Barrese, Alfonso Grassi, Gianfranco Laminarca and Alberto Marangoni, whose activity came to an end in 1992, represented one of the most important groups of that wonderful period. It was the first in Italy to expand its field of research beyond the narrow disciplinary borders of art. It worked between technological research and educational intent and conceived visual communication as a language including the most various expression forms: film, graphics, environment, object, architecture, photography.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 58, October 2010

Smart Urban Stage – The Media In The Future City. Meeting Alberto Abruzzese

Marco Mancuso
Since the past 26th of June until July the 31st, inside a 200 square meters inflatable futuristic structure at Rome's Music Parc Auditorium ( Auditorium Parco della Musica di Roma, ndt.) the smart future minds exhibition will be presented. Articulating the theme the future of the city through twelve different projects, the exhibition is guaranteed to constitute a moment of critical reflection and artistic divulging within the wider scenario of the smart urban stage, cutting-edge road show that is going to hit Zurich, Paris, Madrid and London and has already been in Berlin.... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDigimag - Issue 56, July / August 2010

Telcosystems: Machines And Audiovisual Horizons

Marco Mancuso
David Kiers, Gideon Kiers and Lucas Van Der Velden, this is Telcosystems, a Dutch research group very well known and very respected internationally, for its aesthetic and important projects, from live performances or enviromental installations. For years they have been advancing on many levels: on an academic level (they studied at the Royal Conservatory of the Royal Academy of The Hague), on an editorial level ( Lucas Van Der Velden is one of the directors of the audio visual festival and Sonic Acts multimedia), on an artistic level, emotionally and prospetively in the sound-imagine relationship, related to the physical space and in relation to the audience.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 53, April 2010

Andy Deck And The Net Art: The Licence To Be An Artist

Marco Mancuso
Andy C. Deck, net artist and pioneer of conceptual art on the net, has been active for more than a decade and is not a character that needs a lot of introduction. A New Yorker, Andy Deck got his degree in English Literature at the University of Michigan, studied in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and in 1993 he obtained his MFA in Computer Art at the School of Visual Art in New York, where he is now a professor, as well as teaching Media Design & Theory at the Sarah Lawrence College in New York and at New York University.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 52, March 2010

The Recycled Sound Of Teatrino Elettrico Pigreco

Marco Mancuso
Signal is an international avant-garde electronic and experimental music festival, which will take place from the 6th til the 14th of November in its third edition in Cagliari; the idea was produced by TiConZero, an cultural association that for years has been dealing with research in the music, theatrical and artistic fields. The artists involved represent the emerging levers in research on the border between sound and visual dimensions. The combination of music and video art in an inspired choice made by the frequent connections between various artistic languages, especially for those that regard avant-garde and research productions, which Signal dedicates its interest to.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 49, November 2009Sound

Sosolimited: Deconstruction Time Again

Marco Mancuso
Eric Gunther, Justin Manor and John Rothenberg are three thirty-something ironic and ingenious, since 2003 the project Sosolimited youth group at the intersection of art and design specializing in the deployment of interactive installations, audiovisual performances, live remixes and immersive environments, all strictly based self-designing software and technologies and on a technical level / achieved very, very high. With a solid background in physics, computer science, architecture and music and a master's degree at MIT in Boston in the drawer, jumped to hit the crononaca (and the glory of international art) with a momentum that only a country like the United States' America could make practical and effective.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 49, November 2009

Our Right To Internet: Interview With Alessandro Gilioli

Marco Mancuso
I would say that it was almost inevitable. To live and work in a country, as democratic as it seems, where the interdependent rapport between politics and mass media is much tighter than in any other country in the world (excluding those openly totalitarian regimes that we mentioned for example in last month's Persepolis 2.0 article, of course) and does not allow for libertarian utopias of any sort if they discuss any subject that is a fundamental part of democracy, like the freedom of the Press, the right to an opinion, the freedom of thought.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 47, September 2009

Persepolis 2.0: Creative Support To Iran

Marco Mancuso
I decided therefore to use Digicult as spokeman and create a short-circuit between some artistic and creative news and an important political event, i.e. the crisis in Iran. I wanted to make Digicult a small instrument of support, anyway without changing its roots and its cultural and editorial aim. Moreover I discovered the project Persepolis 2.0: it is a re-editing project by the graphic novel Persepolis created by the Iranian Marjane Satrapi which has had a lot of international success and offers a geographic and editorial comparison between the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (which is part of the original history) and what is happening nowadays in the Country. For this reason I decided first of all to support the project as requested, i.e. copying the Html code of the graphic tables on Digicult's homepage (all readers are kindly requested to do the same) and secondly to widespread it through Facebook. Last but not least I tried to get an interview for this edition of Digimag. It is an interview made in 24 hours, just before the publication of the newspaper, but it honours us and we hope it can be another small anchor to help the struggling Iranian people... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009

Pirates At The Parliament: The Big Dream?!

Marco Mancuso
In just 24 months we have witnessed an amazing increase in consensus toward our ideals across the globe. Renowned worldwide for being one of the most defiant and cheeky online centres for Peer to Peer and exchange of audio and video files, fresh from their success in the European Elections which took one of their representatives flying from the meshes of the Net straight into a political seat in Brussels, the board of Pirate Party International, the political branch of The Pirate Bay project, is euphoric.... READ MORE...
ActivismArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009

The Art And The Epidemiological Criticism Of Gina Czarnecki

Marco Mancuso
Gina Czarnecki is undoubtedly an conscious and sensitive artist, for the sensitive issues she courageously deals with, for her subjects, for her analysis and research methods she chose to elaborate, and for the aesthetic impact as well as the fascination of her work. This feeling is in her environmental and audiovisual work, and this feelings are even stronger when you have the chance to meet and talk to her... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 46, July / August 2009Science

The Sound Ecosystems Of Agostino Di Scipio

Marco Mancuso
Those who know me and my interests can imagine my reaction when I was asked to write the catalog of the exhibition Digital Direct di Modena, curated by Caleffi Gilberto. One of the artists I was most interested in was Agostino di Scipio, and this is evident in any analysis of the texts chosen for the catalogue: where the interview, as a reflection on the content exposed to direct contact with the author, becomes a moment of openness and honesty between artist and critic.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 45, June 2009Sound

The Sonic Orgasm Of Claudio Rocchetti

Marco Mancuso
For some time now Claudio Rocchetti has been one of the most active and interesting electronic musicians in national and European scenes: be it because of his research on sound, as an emotional and compositional element, but also materially on analogical and electronic instruments, or because of his technical, improvisational and expressive capabilities be it in the studio or live, and the tight net of collaborations and participants active between Bologna and Berlin.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 44, May 2009