Riccardo Giovinetto is a sound designer and multimedia artist, also half of Ozmotic (Touch rec), producing AV perfomances and installations on his own.
FEMINA is a double screen audio-visual performance by multimedia artist Riccardo Giovinetto, in which echoes of polyphonic choirs are layered on the composition of original electronic music, all the while samples of Renaissance paintings are deconstructed by transforming them into an evolving stream of images responsive to sound. The project explores the idea of grace and, more importantly, the eye that defines it during the Renaissance, that of the painters, who accorded it par excellence to the feminine figure.
FEMINA relies on the study of communication between an aesthetic of the Digital as a transparent medium and an aesthetic of the Digital as an unveiled process. During the performance the golden section, dear to Renaissance masters, comes into dialogue with alternative proportions and math
principles, which are manageable thanks to the computational power of Jitter’s algorithms.
Similarly, vocal polyphonies are treated through deliberately exaggerated quantisation and resynthesis processing that alters their nature; the resulting samples, while retaining memory of those distant harmonies, are able to relate with the sculptured sounds of electronic music.
The main movement of this audio-visual performance is centered on the latter paintings. The sound part was borrowed from the rich Italian tradition of polyphonic madrigals. The choice settled on these masterpieces of the Renaissance as emblematic representatives for the transit of the classical ancient model to posterity; the idea of using the archetypal figure of grace for the development of digital figuration techniques came from the belief that legacy of classical antiquity continues to be a fruitful expressive tool, one that can be repurposed by culture and practices from different time and place.
The artwork is articulated through movements that evolve over the course of the performance, from analytical and disciplined dynamics to end in sections where plenty of room is left for randomisation.
