Interview | Riccardo Giovinetto

Riccardo Giovinetto, multimedia artist, composer, physicist and university professor, talks about his work FEMINA, a visual-sound performance inspired by Umberto Eco’s History of Beauty that had its World Premiere at the Ars Electronica Festival in 2023 and is now returning as part of VIDEOCITTÀ in the evocative spaces of the Gazometro in Rome. Samples of Renaissance paintings are decomposed into a stream of sound-responsive images. The performance is part of the packed programme at VIDEOCITTÀ, which is now in its seventh edition, returning to Rome from 5 to 7 July 2024.

Elena Giulia Rossi: Can you tell us how F E M I N A came about and how Umberto Eco’s essay, History of Beauty, inspired you?

Riccardo Giovinetto: F E M I N A was created from various ideas and suggestions that I’ve collected and thought about over the last few years. I wanted to work on material that was part of a ‘collective feeling’, that moved within the perimeter outlined by the concept of ‘beauty’, mainly in terms of harmony and balance of the parts, that allowed me to work freely with digital. Umberto Eco’s text helped me to concentrate on the idea and to identify the historical period which I wanted to focus the project on. Thanks to ‘The History of Beauty’ I realised that I could concentrate on the Italian Renaissance and specifically on the representation of the female figure, which in that historical period was synonymous with beauty and grace, and at the same time I could also address another of the suggestions I mentioned earlier, the relationship between the contemporary and tradition in Italy.

What parameters and principles did you start from to work with the software in the decomposition of images and dialogue with sound?

In FEMINA I tried to work differently from how I operate normally. I decided to explore mainly the visual component, putting the creative process related to the sound material in the background initially. After much experimentation to understand how to sample the images and translate them into shapes that were interesting to me, I chose the paintings to work on, the main frames and then finally defined and identified the triangular topology as the graphic structure of representation. I then worked on the dynamics of movement, which turned out to be quite complex, having started with a few static images, and then got on with the sound component. To maintain project coherence, I researched composers from the Italian Renaissance period and identified many chorales by Palestrina that I used as source material, as I did for the paintings, to activate sampling and re-synthesis techniques. The interaction between audio and video is a very complex process to explain, but I think the most interesting part is in the consistency of the materials and the choice of interaction types.

What role does the golden section play and how does it relate to image and sound?

I have used the golden section several times for the choice of which portions of paintings to sample and which shapes to put into interaction, but I have done no other reasoning or computation.

Is it possible to see something only by listening? What do images bring and what do they take away from this perceptual exercise?

Synesthesia is the psychic condition characterised by the possibility of perceiving sensations attributed to different sensory systems in which you can therefore visualise, both creatively and non-creatively, shapes and colours by listening to sounds or music. Obviously from the point of view of its broader meaning, synaesthesia is the main reference within which the creative sphere of audio-video interaction moves, and I personally don’t think in terms of the relationship between the two parts, but treat the interaction as a united language… each of the two elements cannot exist, or at least reach its expressive peak, without the other.

What role has played artificial intelligence in your work?

For FEMINA, I didn’t use artificial intelligence directly, but imagined a path where the AI was part of the process, an external eye. It is an entity that trains itself and that, through the decomposition and recomposition of the primary elements that make up the paintings (points, lines, and colours, …), attempts to learn and then recreate in its own way the Italian Renaissance idea of beauty. FEMINA is in fact the simulation of a process of learning, internalisation and expression of the concept of grace by a machine.

You have a lot of experience as an educator. What would you suggest to young people today when dealing with artificial intelligence and technology in general?

I think the first point is to focus on the fact that technology is not an end, but a means that must be flexible and orientable in relation to your own ends. I mean to say that starting from the idea of adopting a priori one technology rather than another regardless of the creative project is in my view a distortion. It’s a distortion that many of the young people I enter into a relationship with remain entangled in. Of course there is a need for experimentation and exploration in contemporary technological fields, and it is equally true that technologies open up new creative horizons, but the theme remains. The ‘what to say’ cannot be secondary, it has to be addressed sooner or later. And it’s best to do this at the beginning of the journey because setting out without any reference is very risky.

How has your work been received by the Ars Electronica audience and what do you expect at VIDEOCITTÀ?

FEMINA debuted at the Ars Electronica Festival 10 months ago, and was a key departure point for the project. At Postcity, on the opening night of the festival, there is a lot of distance between the artists and the audience, and there are a lot of presentations and events happening on the stage… It’s difficult to say how it was actually received, the feeling I had was very positive, but I won’t hide the fact that I preferred the setting and audience at other festivals (such as L.E.V. in Gijon, for example) where there is more direct contact with people. As far as VIDEOCITTÀ is concerned, I sincerely hope that it will be an opportunity for an enjoyable evening and to have constructive exchanges with the audience; after the performances in Turin and Genoa, this is actually the first major Italian festival to host me, and I’m really grateful and happy about this.