The Sonic Hacking of Digital Infrastructures: Zeugma interviews Leonardo Barbierato

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.