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| Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati |
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| Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati |
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| Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati |
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| Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati |
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| Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati |
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| Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati |
The Italian composer Pietro Grossi (1917 - 2002) was one of the first programmers to contribute pioneering work in computer generated music. In 1964 he was among the first to introduce the experiments of John Cage to Italy. A year later he became the professor of electronic music at Konservatorum Luigi Cherubini in Florence. He also used his composing programs to develop early computer graphics. With the use of "QBasic" he developed the program "HomeArt".Sergio Maltagliati studied under Pietro Grossi in the 1980s and developed new methods of musical compositions, in which the score underwent a significant visualisation. Maltagliati has reworked the Grossi's original programs by adapting the programming code to create a generative program that simultaneously produces sound and abstract colours and shapes.
The work Circus 8 (1986/2008) consists of eight pieces and is based on Grossi's HomeArt programs, which automatically generated sound. Maltagliati has expanded Grossi's principle with software programs and added visual graphic variations. The visual data generated by the computer approximates the graphic score for a sound composition (cf. John Cage). Whilst the work Circus 8 adds a media historical dimension to Art Laboratory Berlin's Synaesthesia series, it also brings an important new component into the discussion: the computer as artificial brain with its own form of digital synaesthesia.
On exhibition through 12 May
(http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-30.htm)
