Arrival and ice-breaking
Filippo Rosati, Margherita Pevere
Nicola Di Croce
With Nicola Di Croce, Margherita Pevere and Filippo Rosati
In the context of AVANT Festival,
in Masseria Tagliatelle (LE)
Nicola Di Croce is a researcher and sound artist. A PhD in Regional Planning and Public Policies, he teaches at the Iuav University of Venice, where he is a founding member of the Sound Studies Hub (SSH!). His research focuses on the relationship between urban studies and sound studies. In his academic, installation and performance projects, he is interested in exploring sonic, qualitative, participatory and creative approaches aimed at investigating urban and cultural transformations, the ways through which to attune and resonate with non-humans, and the tactics to improve the livability and inclusiveness of public space.
The masterclass and workshop initiate a reflection on listening to the non-human, starting with the direct experience of the participants. It introduces basic notions of acoustic ecology and offers an overview of the trajectories that are currently crossing the artistic and research landscape of sound studies. In particular, it addresses the idea of ‘attunement’ as the possibility of entering ‘into resonance with’ the non-human, through an investigation of the sound sources of the context hosting the masterclass and its more or less anthropised surrounding areas by initiating a mapping of their different sonorities.
During the workshop, guided listening and recording sessions of these sound sources will be carried out, and participants will be invited to follow simple vocal exercises to ‘harmonise’ the sound sources first mapped and recorded, through the creation of choirs. Exploring the possibilities of the choir in harmonising with non-human sound sources, the workshop will lead participants to record the results achieved and perform them during the final event.
Founder and Creative Director of Umanesimo Artificiale.
Since founding Umanesimo Artificiale in 2017, he has been working across art, science, and technology, bridging disciplines and exploring the connections between art, design, robotics, biology, and hacking. His approach is deeply experimental, merging artistic and scientific research to foster new forms of creative inquiry and innovation.
This workshop provides tools and methodologies to design new projects through an antidisciplinary and speculative approach. The goal is to integrate emerging artistic and technological languages into innovative, project-based outcomes by the end of the workshop.
In the first part, we’ll explore the concept of antidisciplinarity and the methodology of speculative design. We’ll analyze inspiring case studies—spanning new media art, performance, and technology—and reflect on how contemporary cultural practices reinterpret their role by hybridizing various forms of expression.
This will be followed by a laboratory phase: participants, guided step-by-step, will imagine and develop an art project that unites new media, performing arts, and technological innovation.
We’ll conclude with a collective presentation of the projects, building a collection of visions useful for future creative applications.
Margherita Pevere is an artist known internationally for her work with living matter, ecology and biotechnology. Her practice embraces object making, installation, performance and writing, which she combines through her transdisciplinary background.
Her works are regularly exhibited in both prestigious institutions and independent spaces, and her recent Lament, on fire and ecology, received the COAL Prize Transformative territories mention (2024). She has collaborated with international research centres and obtained a Doctorate from Aalto University (FI). Together with Marco Donnarumma, she runs the performance group Fronte Vacuo.
What is the role of cultural creation in times of ecological tension? How to address today’s complexity in a critical yet generative manner, between local realities and global challenges? The theoretical-practical workshop will address such questions by looking at how cultural creation can be rooted in digital, biotechnological and ecological practices. Artworks and cultural programmes can amplify the impact of aesthetic experience and infect their surroundings: territory, biosphere, data analysis can thus become materials of artistic expression and critique of contemporary complexity, but also agents of change.
After a theoretical introduction, Pevere will share some of her working methods, including ways of radical ecological observation and field work. The hands-on session will draw on the reflections that emerged during the workshop for a collective creation.
