Magnetologues
Stacco is a new digital instrument with embedded magnetometers. It attracts and repels magnetic spheres, and detects the variations in the magnetic fields they produce. Stacco comes with graphical scores that function as guides for the exploration of the sonic output of the neural audio synthesis.
In the performance ”Magnetologues”, for two Staccos we explore some of the scores developed by participants in the workshop we held at Tenor Conference 2024. In this performance, one device operates a neural audio engine and the other controls in real-time the sound in space via ambisonics (24 speakers for this performance).
Performed and recorded at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST) - Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
Mouja
Mouja is a performance focusing on odd physical and temporal causalities. At the core of the piece are Thales and Stacco, two instruments based on magnets and developed at IIL.
Mouja is a free wander within the sonic boundaries of this unusual system, and a playful game of AI reconfigurations, where the presence-absence of the dataset‘s sonic spectres is materialised through the unpredictable interactions of the instruments‘ magnetic forces.
Contingent Snapshot
With Wolfgang Dorninger
Linz (AU)
2023
Performance recorded in Linz and broadcasted to radios worlswide, as part of an 8-hours music marathon organised by Francesco Zedde and Eugenia Seriakov.
Wolfgang Dorninger is here using a series of analog machines, while I'm combining my instruments Stacco and Thales to play Neural Synthesis models.
Studies on AI and Space
Dodekaotto Multichannel System,
Tamlab, Bruckner University and Ars Electronica,
Linz (AU)
2023
A practice-based research on AI navigation and space.
Thanks to the friends at Tamlab (Linz), I was able to practice with the Dodekaotto: a 20+1 speaker system in the form of a dodecahedron.
I explored it with my magnetic scores, working on two musical studies with the aim of observing how the internal representation of the AI models might find a correspondence in the outer world.
Johann Sperger through Time and Bass
With BYOV: Darija Andzakovic and Natalia Duarte
Presented at AIMC, Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Music Creativity
Brighton (UK)
2023
Johann Sperger (1750-1812) was a composer and contrabass virtuoso that thoroughly explored the technical and expressive boundaries of the instrument. Sperger worked on his Sonata for Contrabass and Viola (1789) while travelling from Trieste to Venice, as he states in the manuscript.
For this work, we traced his route and recorded the soundscapes we encountered. We used these sounds, as well as our performative gestures, to train and navigate a RAVE model, with the aim of exploring, through a historically-informed approach, the relationship between past and present technologies, virtuosity, compositional methodologies and performative practices.
Notochord Arcs and Scrambled Signals
With Victor Shepardson
Brighton (UK)
2023
Notochord and Scramble are two generative MIDI models of our creation. Notochord has eaten all the MIDI files on the internet, while Scramble digests and regurgitates individual MIDI files and sampled snippets. In this performance we wrangle Notochord and Scramble, struggling to make sense from their infinite capacities for nonsense. Notochord extrudes big slabs of quasi-music which are filtered and refined by Scramble before being re-harmonized by Notochord, ad nauseum. We human operators, with very little control on the system, frantically push buttons and twiddle knobs, as our wayward creations attempt to submerge us with their "eighties" vibes made of of odd, glistening General MIDI sounds.
O_o
NICOLA PRIVATO - O_o (2021)
Processing video...
For AI, Disklavier, and human operator,
Padova (IT)
2022
O_o is both an emoticon that indicates a state of confusion and the name of a small, extinct Hawaiian bird. The recording of the singing from the last of its kind, in the vain attempt of finding a mate, has been processed and multiplied by an AI software.
Similarly to the Creature imagined by Mary Shelley, O_o looks for his own identity in his creator. Who's the creator though, when technology becomes an active, independent agent inside the creative process?
Treatise
LLM8 | Treatise
Processing video...
With Arazzi Laptop Ensemble
Sampl, Pase platform, Venice (IT)
2021
by Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981).
Performed by Arazzi Laptop Ensemble (P. Zavagna, L. Richelli, G. Klauer, N. Privato, N. Raccanelli, G. Dinello, J. Caneva, G. Sparano, J. Scordato). Pase Platform, Venice.
Peregrinazioni Veneziane
LLM8 | Peregrinazioni veneziane
Processing video...
For augmented trombone and Alife,
Sampl, Venice (IT)
2021
Spatialized Trombone and Electronics. Improvisation over a Venetian traditional song. Grains of sound are delayed, inverted and spatialized using 16 boids (cellular automata simulating birds).
A flock of simulated birds is controlled with an accelerometer mounted on the trombone. I'm in no way a trombonist, but I find the sound of this insturment particularly effective with electronics. Also, playing this allows me not to fall into patterns I'm used to with guitar.
Grandi Navi
LLM8 | Grandi navi
Processing video...
Live electronics and trombone
Sampl, Venice (IT)
2021
Improvisation with Alberto Novello, Alessandro Gambato, Mattia Pizzato. Julian Scordato, sound projection. Pase Platform, Venice. trombone processed by Alessandro Gambato.
Touch
TOUCH Connected Music Performance
Processing video...
Online artistic residency promoted by Peoplesbureau (UK) during the Covid pandemic, as a way of developing a collective artistic experience in times of social isolation.
As in W.E.I.R.D., the sound events are triggered by real-time tweets containing three words: "touch, free, fear". The order of appearance of the words is based on the occurrence of the tweets and creates ambiguous and sometimes opposed meaning (fear touch, touch fear, free touch, touch free, free fear, fear free..)