Francesco Giannico

Francesco Giannico: Welcome back to a new episode of the Zeugma Collective podcast. Today we are here to talk with Mattia Valentini, who placed third in our international LANDSCAPE 2025/2026 call. Mattia moves between sound research, musique concrète, and electroacoustic music, weaving dark, industrial atmospheres with evocative and cinematic electronics. His practice spans experimental music, sound design, and composition for the moving image, with work in cinema, fashion, and commercial sectors. He has been a finalist in several competitions, and his compositions accompany auteur films and independent productions selected in international contexts, alongside projects for fashion and design.

For our international LANDSCAPE 2025/2026 call, Mattia Valentini presented his project titled The Acoustics of Control, an excerpt from a 40-minute psychoacoustic performance investigating sound as a tool of political and social control. The project, Mattia tells us, inverts the principles of music therapy to explore how specific frequencies are systematically used to condition, disperse, and repress: from LRAD sonic weapons deployed at protests, to anti-homeless acoustic deterrents, down to music used as a torture technique at Guantánamo. The track moves through these layers in condensed form: an opening breath processed with granular delay, low-frequency drones acting as an oppressive presence, disturbing frequencies around 5000 hertz, and struck metal percussions.

I’d like to ask Mattia right away: given that your work is titled The Acoustics of Control, where does the urgency come from to map and make audible the way sound is used invisibly or latently as a tool of political, social, or psychological conditioning in all the spaces we navigate daily?

Mattia Valentini: The need to bring forth such a performance stems somewhat from the union of two of my great passions: sound and direct political practice. For many years now in Milan, I have actively frequented public squares, collectives, and grassroots struggle movements, while in parallel I have been deepening my study of music therapy and, more generally, the influence that sound frequencies have on bodies, both positively and negatively. In fact, this performance completely flips the very concept of music therapy—meaning that sound can improve psychophysical conditions, but it can also worsen them.

Francesco Giannico: While other works in this edition explore the aseptic hums of machines or materials related to technological tools and their evolution, your work seems to evoke a noise that imposes, that boundaries, that fences in, and therefore somehow fundamentally oppresses. So, how do these elements of acoustic constriction tie into our perception of freedom? What kind of conflict or awareness did you want to trigger in the listener?

Mattia Valentini: The goal of the performance is to universalize some of the repressive aspects that, for obvious reasons, are the exclusive domain of certain social classes—specifically, the lower ones. The political challenge, from my point of view, is to bring to light repressive phenomena that are practically unknown to most people, and to do so within an experimental art landscape often frequented by a social class that enjoys, much like myself, class privilege.

Francesco Giannico: In the track, you use sound solutions that act almost like foreign bodies within the ambient flow. From a compositional standpoint, how did you manage this dualism between the pervasiveness of control noise and the irruption of sound disobedience?

Mattia Valentini: In this project, both faces of struggle are present: the one that oppresses and the one that resists. In the full-length performance, this will be translated into sound by self-built metallic percussion elements, which will act as a counterpoint to the disturbing frequencies, noise, and its coercive frequencies.

Francesco Giannico: A strong connection with the study of systemic and behavioral dynamics emerges throughout your journey. In your view, how do the analysis of power mechanisms and urban surveillance directly influence your acoustic ecology techniques or your choice of sound materials?

Mattia Valentini: It all started months ago when, reading an article online, I learned about LRADs, which stands for Long Range Acoustic Devices. These devices are acoustic cannons that blast frequencies between 2500 and 5000 hertz at extremely high decibels, forcing you to flee or risk physical damage to your eardrums. From there, I started exploring the topic further and discovered that weaponry was only one aspect of a vastly larger phenomenon—namely, sound as a tool of control. That’s pretty much where it all began. The sounds used emulate those experiences—obviously in a more artistic and musical form, and most importantly at completely controlled and safe decibels—working within that frequency range.

Francesco Giannico: I’d love to understand a bit closer what the technical and conceptual journey was that allowed you to convert a coercive frequency or signal into an artistic narrative about the reappropriation of spaces, which I find extremely fascinating and evocative.

Mattia Valentini: As I mentioned, I tried to stay faithful to reality, attempting to emulate with my machines the sounds that States and governments use worldwide for repressive purposes, while giving them an artistic and experimental spin so that they can be both consumable and disturbing at the same time.

Francesco Giannico: The focus of this edition of LANDSCAPE revolves around system hacking. In what aspect do you feel your work, by laying bare the acoustic structures of power and control, resonates most strongly with this attitude of creative sabotage?

Mattia Valentini: I think the theme of the call was perfectly in line with the project I was developing, because the objective of this performance is not, of course, to bring state repression to more people beyond those who unfortunately already suffer it daily, but rather to inform and bring this issue to light. I believe that having awareness of something gives you an extra weapon to sabotage the system that creates it.

Francesco Giannico: We have reached the end of our chat. To wrap things up, if you had to describe your work The Acoustics of Control using just three words, which ones would you choose?

Mattia Valentini: If I had to describe this project in three words, I would say: control, repression, resistance.

Francesco Giannico: We thank Mattia Valentini for being with us, and I’d say it’s time to make way for his track The Acoustics of Control, with which we close our episode.

English Transcription

[Francesco Giannico]: Welcome back to our series of conversations with the artists of the LANDSCAPE project organized by Collettivo Zeugma. I’m Francesco Giannico from Collettivo Zeugma, and today we are honored to feature the artist who took second place in our competition, Yu-Chung Tseng.

Yu-Chung holds a DMA from the University of North Texas and is currently professor of electronic music composition and director of the Multi-channel Sound Lab at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Taiwan.

Writing for both acoustic and electronic media, his work has earned international acclaim, receiving top honors at the Pierre Schaeffer Competition, Musica Nova, ICMC Best Music Awards, and many others. Released on prestigious labels worldwide, his music bridges raw acoustic capture, dense electronic textures, and spatial sound environments.

Yu-Chung, welcome and congratulations on your award!

In your work, the soundscape ceases to be a passive backdrop and transforms into an active practice of freedom. Where does the urgency come from to choose bamboo—an element so deeply rooted in tradition and nature—to disrupt the rigidity of modern systems?

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: The urgency to choose bamboo comes from its role as a profound symbol of Eastern humanism. By using this traditional element, the work reclaims the delicate details and the chaotic realities often ignored by rigid systems, which allows the soundscape to transcend mere depiction and become an active practice of freedom.

[Francesco Giannico]: The piece constantly oscillates between concrete acoustic recordings and highly processed digital textures. How did you translate this balance into the electroacoustic domain while echoing the Eastern philosophy of Yin and Yang, virtuality and reality?

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: The balance is musically translated by designing the piece to oscillate between concrete acoustic recordings and highly processed textures. This deliberate shifting directly mirrors the Eastern philosophical contrast of yin and yang, virtuality and reality.

[Francesco Giannico]: You speak of “listening and caring” applied to micro-sonic voices. At the same time, you direct the Multi-channel Sound Lab at NYCU in Taiwan. How has your extensive experience with spatialization influenced the geometric construction and sonic architecture of such an intimate work like Metascape of Bamboo?

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: Yes, my years directing the Multi-channel Sound Lab shaped my approach to sonic architecture when transitioning from an expansive laboratory to an intimate piece like Metascape of Bamboo. My multi-channel mindset scales inward. Instead of projecting sound across a vast hall, I focus on the micro-acoustics and the internal resonance of the bamboo itself. My background in spatialization allows me to treat distinct spatial layers as if they are moving along discrete trajectories, building a virtual multi-channel environment.

[Francesco Giannico]: Stepping into your studio for a moment: the composition is built upon raw recordings of chaotic collisions and random chirps. What was the manipulation and synthesis process that allowed you to transform these physical percussive impacts into such a fluid and floating narrative?

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: In the studio, I relied heavily on granular synthesis and spatial processing. The raw recordings of those chaotic collisions and random chirps of bamboo have a very physical, percussive feel to them. By fragmenting these impact sounds into tiny audio grains just milliseconds long, I could alter their density, pitch, and spatial location. This technique let me time-stretch brief, sharp hits into smooth, continuous threads of sound.

Simultaneously, I used convolution reverb to capture the acoustic impulse of the bamboo forest itself. This process allowed those raw physical impacts to eventually evolve into a floating narrative line that almost seems to breathe.

[Francesco Giannico]: The focus of this edition of LANDSCAPE revolves around “Hacking the System.” In your project description, you state that rewriting our sonic environment allows us to experience boundless freedom within a constrained world. In what way do you feel your work most strongly embodies this attitude of creative disobedience?

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: The work embodies creative disobedience through the act of rewriting our sonic environment. By doing so, the composition asserts a proactive concept of landscape.

[Francesco Giannico]: And if you had to describe Metascape of Bamboo using only three words, which ones would you choose?

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: If I could only use three words to describe my work, I would choose: Listening, Resistance, Freedom.

Listening is the starting point for connecting with the world. Resistance, a gentle disobedience against a rigid system. Freedom, the boundless liberation achieved after rewriting the soundscape.

[Francesco Giannico]: Thank you so much, Yu-Chung, for sharing your time and deep insights with us, and congratulations once again from all of us at Collettivo Zeugma.

And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. And now, we invite you to immerse yourself in the piece itself. Here is Metascape of Bamboo by Yu-Chung Tseng.

[Yu-Chung Tseng]: Thank you.

English Transcription

Francesco Giannico: As the Zeugma collective, we are finally delighted to present the winner of the Landscape 2026 International Call, which this year is dedicated to a crucial and ever-urgent theme: Hacking the System. When we talk about hacking the system within an artistic and sonic framework, we are not exclusively referring to computers, but to a genuine act of disobedience.

It means performing an operation of cultural reverse engineering—opening the “black box” of the technological, urban, and social devices that govern our lives in order to reveal their hidden gears, divert the flow, and push us toward critical and, hopefully, political reflection. Leonardo Barbierato is the artist who, through his work OX—a dense, stratified, and deeply radical piece—has given us a taste of this practice’s potential.

I am Francesco Giannico, and it is my pleasure to talk with Leonardo Barbierato to explore the folds of this acoustic ecosystem. With a transdisciplinary approach spanning from biology to electroacoustic improvisation, Barbierato takes us on a sonic journey that makes the invisible visible: the pervasive drone of the servers that surround our digital double, contrasted with the foreign, organic, and unsettling sounds of a prepared electric bass. This is what emerged from this dense conversation between sound, code, and meaning. Welcome, Leonardo. Your work brings to light the acoustic flow of the servers that structure our digital world. Where does the urgency to manifest this specific infrastructure, which we usually tend to ignore, stem from?

Leonardo Barbierato: Defining the precise urgency behind this type of work on servers is quite complicated for me because it wasn’t a linear path. Instead, it was tied to a few random experiences that happened to unfold in my life.

Perhaps it is best to start from when I first began recording servers a few years ago. I was at an institute in Rome where I was scheduled to perform in the evening. I arrived early in the morning because I wanted to make sure everything was ready and help set up the performance. Having some free time, I wandered around the building and luckily stumbled upon this room full of servers. I was completely struck by the acoustic impact. I had never been in a room full of servers before, and I don’t know how many people have had that experience, but it is quite striking.

The sound generated by the different machines is stratified—a kind of polyphony that shifts over time, almost like a phasing effect on a compositional level. So, I hit record and let it run for about an hour.

What probably encouraged me to move forward was that, around the same period, I was researching the Anni di Piombo (Years of Lead) in Italy. When you investigate that historical period, the general strategy is to browse digital archives and study the materials. I was watching Sergio Zavoli’s interviews with members of the Red Brigades, specifically Mario Moretti. It seemed incredibly paradoxical that I was watching these interviews—dense with historical weight—on a platform like YouTube, which relies on servers that are probably as large as the cities we live in. These two aspects fascinated me to the point that I continued this research, recording various servers over the course of months and years.

I also wanted to better understand what a server actually is. We all use them, we consume their data, and we act as clients most of the time. Yet, the whole server-client dynamic is rather nebulous; it becomes an over-structured framework that conveys information without granting us access to its inner workings. Accessing that room in Rome for the first time was a kind of epiphany.

Francesco Giannico: I find it very interesting how you managed to translate the relationship between server and client into your artistic approach. Continuing along this path, your reflection on the anthropization of modern space is fascinating, especially through sounds we previously ignored or silenced through our perceptual filters. In OX, this technological noise violently collides with the materiality of recent history. In this regard, I wanted to ask: in the piece, you use an electric bass prepared with objects collected during protests in Turin. How do these physical and political elements connect to the apparently ascetic nature of the servers? What kind of conflict did you want to trigger?

Leonardo Barbierato: Yes, I specifically used tear gas residues to prepare the electric bass. I used them in various ways, inserting them between the strings or gluing them at certain points to obtain different timbres and resonances. These canisters mostly came from recent demonstrations in Turin protesting the closure of the Askatasuna social center. Beyond what happened during the protest itself—where the police launched a large number of tear gas canisters quite violently against protesters—using them on a musical instrument was highly symbolic. This event was deeply significant for many residents of Turin.

It gave me a way to reflect on how real-life events that I had witnessed and experienced first-hand dissolve, fragment, and drift away from the time and place they originated. I remember, for instance, the completely baseless statements made by Salvini and many other politicians. It is an interesting phenomenon: we increasingly access reality through platforms like Instagram or TikTok, meaning we rely on a server-based architecture from which we extract our information. I found it fascinating how the truth of an event I had experienced in person was completely dismantled and manipulated during this digital process.

Francesco Giannico: Yes, it feels as though this clash between the algorithmic nature of servers and the friction of urban memory transformed the instrument itself into a disruptive element—like a wild card inside the sonic flow. Going back to the composition, you define the electric bass as a foreign body and a disruptive agent. From an improvisational standpoint, how did you manage the dualism between the saturation of the servers and the intrusion of the instrument?

Leonardo Barbierato: The entire piece is intentionally designed to confuse the listener. For instance, the sound of the servers rarely appears in its raw form; it is often filtered in various ways until it becomes difficult to recognize. The electric bass, in this sense, tells a different story. I didn’t look for a stark duality between the bass and the server’s saturation.

Especially in the first part, the bass acts as a sort of infestation—an ontological presence that re-establishes itself in the background without being clearly distinguishable, often blending into the clouds of the various servers. In the second part, however, this foreign body emerges more prominently because of how the instrument was prepared. I used residues from two tear gas canisters to lift certain strings, generating harmonics that I played with a bow. In this case, the timbre becomes much harsher, creating a sharp contrast between the mechanical sound of the server and the imprecise, human quality of the electric bass. In the third part, everything becomes even more chameleonic and interchangeable, until every element drowns in this sea of servers and drones, degrading completely. In short, it’s a game of ping-pong between different approaches regarding the relationship between the instrument and the server within the composition.

Francesco Giannico: This management of sonic forces is almost systemic, where sound is treated as a threat to an organism or an ecosystem. After all, your background speaks volumes: you have an incredibly heterogeneous path, a PhD in electroacoustic composition, but also a degree in biology, alongside jazz and sound design studies. How does your scientific background influence your approach to acoustic ecology?

Leonardo Barbierato: I guess many artists draw from their own life experiences. My background as a biologist, combined with the journey that began with the ARS (Art and Science) Master’s at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome (AreMus) and led to my PhD, deeply shaped my personal approach. When it comes to acoustic ecology, this training was fundamental right from the start.”

It allowed me to move away from an approach focused exclusively on sound for sound’s sake. Mind you, I deeply appreciate the work of artists who focus solely on pure sonic matter, but that is not my path. The acoustic ecology I refer to is one where sound is just as important as those who produce it, what generates it, and those who perceive it. It is an ecology where sound exists as part of a broader sensory landscape. Just as ecology in nature must be multisensory, for me, the ecology of sound is inevitably intertwined with a series of relational, political, and social dynamics.

Francesco Giannico: From biology to code: the leap seems shorter than one might think. The structural rigidity of studying systems is clearly reflected in the digital processing chain you designed for this project. During your studio work, the materials recorded from the servers were transformed through granular synthesis and data-driven processes. What was the process that allowed you to transform the sound of machines into a narrative about the fragmentation of truth?

Leonardo Barbierato: The processing of the server signals was articulated in two parts. One part was treated through Pure Data, specifically using polyphonic granulators that I built myself. These altered the original signal, turning it into these rather hazy, blurred atmospheres. The other part of the process was handled through pedals. Being an improviser, I have accumulated a lot of effects pedals over the years, and I used some of them to compose OX (I would also like to thank Benedetta Fabrica for lending me some reverbs).

So, it was a mix of Pure Data patching and routing the signal through hardware. The narrative I tried to maintain aims to make the server sound recognizable only in a few brief moments; otherwise, it must be heavily masked and blended with other sounds, particularly the bass, so that it isn’t immediately decipherable.

Francesco Giannico: The decomposition of sound into granules becomes the perfect metaphor for an atomized truth. This practice fully aligns with the philosophy of this year’s call. Indeed, the focus of this edition revolves around hacking the system. In what ways do you feel your work resonates most with these attitudes of disobedience?

Leonardo Barbierato: I deeply connect with the concept of disobedience and the whole vision behind this call, and I am highly impressed that a collective is bringing this theme forward. I know it is the right thing to do in this historical moment, but I also know it is very complicated to practice consistently.

Speaking specifically about OX, the theme of disobedience runs through every aspect of the work, starting from the recordings themselves, which I often carried out illicitly, without asking for permission, by sneaking into certain spaces. The entire composition harbors the ambition of bringing this latent drone to the center of public discourse. We perceive it as something intangible and immaterial, but it is actually extremely material. It is a physical infrastructure that conditions our lives. The server is not neutral; it governs how information is managed, how it is recreated, and what can be capitalized from it. It is a complex issue that I pondered deeply during my research, and while I don’t claim to have definitive answers, I believe it is crucial to bring it to the forefront. The goal is to build collective awareness. In this sense, OX and this type of research aim to provide a foundation to trigger a political and social short circuit.

Francesco Giannico: How does this hacking manifest practically within OX?

Leonardo Barbierato: The disobedience and hacking in OX have a very practical side. Think about when we use artificial intelligence or watch a video on YouTube: we tend to think of it as something abstract and detached from matter. In reality, we are connected to a series of servers inside data centers, which are concrete hardware devices that occupy physical land, consume water, and drain energy. In Italy, and particularly in the area where I live, these data centers are mushrooming everywhere, driven by the ever-growing demands of AI.

My intention is not to stigmatize AI itself—that isn’t the purpose of the piece. It is about grounding the discourse in reality. There is very little discussion about this, and when there is, it is riddled with misinformation. I recently came across an Instagram reel showcasing the design of a new data center near Milan. There is so much confusion: protest movements are often fragmented, railing generically against artificial intelligence rather than targeting the actual ecological impact of data centers on the territory. I see a profound recursiveness here regarding how information is handled, and it becomes increasingly clear to me that the true “sound” of modern information is the rumbling of servers.

Francesco Giannico: I think we have touched upon many profound concepts, connecting themes we might not have initially linked to the work you presented. That is the true value of your reflection. To close, let us shed the complex superstructures we’ve discussed and rely on the immediacy of sound. I’ll ask you for a quick flash response: if you had to describe OX using only three words, which would you choose?

Leonardo Barbierato: If I had to describe OX in three words, I would use the titles of the three sections that name the parts of the song: Channeling, Data, and Vox.

Francesco Giannico: Words that not only define the structure of the work but represent a true aesthetic and political manifesto. With OX, Leonardo Barbierato did not just photograph our contemporary era; he sabotaged its boundaries, forcing us to look critically at the hidden backdrops of our daily hyper-connection. This work perfectly embodies the spirit of Landscape 2026, and the jury’s selection was unanimous and generous in its praise. It is a piece that leaves a mark and, above all, a profound and necessary disturbance. Thank you again, Leonardo Barbierato, and I invite everyone to immerse themselves in listening to and discovering his acoustic ecosystem.

Come Zeugma siamo orgogliosi e felici di potervi presentare il nostro primo disco, pubblicato dalla prestigiosa etichetta Silentes, in occasione del suo 4 contest internazionale LANDSCAPE2024. L’edizione appena trascorsa infatti ha visto la nascita di una categoria apposita per la soundart. Dopo un’attenta valutazione delle numerose proposte provenienti da tutto il mondo, LANDSCAPE 2024 è finalmente al completo con la sua decina di produzioni sonore confluite in questo lavoro inedito dal titolo omonimo.

Curato dal Zeugma Collective e giunto alla sua quarta edizione, il progetto LANDSCAPE2024 si è affermato come un punto di riferimento per sound artist e video artisti che esplorano il concetto di paesaggio attraverso suono e immagine. La selezione di quest’anno si distingue per la sua ampia varietà di approcci, spaziando dalla registrazione sperimentale del paesaggio sonoro a composizioni elettroacustiche immersive, fino a installazioni che dialogano con l’ambiente circostante.

Ogni opera finalista propone una lettura originale del paesaggio sonoro contemporaneo, offrendo nuove prospettive sul rapporto tra suono, spazio e percezione.

Questi gli artisti e le opere selezionate:

1 Bruno Belardi – Antropocene (“Raymond Murray Schafer” prize)
2 Elena Ghigas – Beneath the surface of the world
3 Masafumi Oda – Hyper-real Landscape
4 Ebo Ensemble – Pneuma
5 UENO Collective – Ourà Landscape
6 Antonio Tonietti – Salirophilia Urcionii
7 Simon Šerc – Polynya
8 Alessandro Buggio – Music for Venice roofs
9 Salvatore IAIA (SIC project) – Fluire
10 Stefano Tashi – Ɱēŧåmørƒøŝī ŋēl v̇ēntø

More info at https://www.collettivozeugma.it

Il nostro comitato di selezione

Caterina Tomeo – Curator, Lecturer, Art Historian
Claudia Attimonelli – Professor of Visual Studies and Digital Culture
Alberto Novello – Musician, Video Artist, Teacher
Barbara De Dominicis – Musician, Singer, Performer
Vincenzo Madaro – Artistic Director Festival Vicoli Corti
Mirco Salvadori – Music Journalist
Paolo Bragaglia – Artistic Director Aqusmatic Festival
Hernando Urrutia – Multidisciplinary Artist, Researcher, Composer and Cultural Manager, PHD in Digital Media Art
Dionisio Capuano – Music Journalist
Elio Martusciello – Composer, Teacher
Elisa Trento – Curator, Project Manager
Guido Max Calanca – Director and Editor
Daniele Falchi – Artist, Curator
Karin Fink – Geographer and Relational Designer
Paco Maddalena – Musician, Filmmaker, Cinematographer
Antonio Musci and Daniela Di Niso – Artistic Directors Avvistamenti Festival
Peppe Trotta – Music Journalist
Giovanni Sabattini – Artistic Director Ribalta Experimental Film Festival

Partners
Vicoli Corti Festival , Laceno D’oro, Ribalta Experimental Film festival, Kinetta Spazio Labus, RUFA, Shape, Cineclub Canudo, Salotto Elettronico, Ambient Radio, CinemAvvenire, CavoFest, Nassau, Santa YEah Jasi!, Acusmatiq, Silentes, Mercato Nuovo

Direzione artistica di LANDSCAPE
Francesco Giannico, Anacleto Vitolo