Mattia Casalegno

Mattia Casalegno is an Italian interdisciplinary artist, live-media performer and installation artist working in a broad range of media. His multidisciplinary work is influenced by both post-conceptualism and digital art, and has been defined relational, immersive, and participatory. His practice explores the effects new media have on our societies, investigating the relationships between technology, the objects we create, our subjectivities, and the modes in which these relations unfold into each other.

Contents

• Il gesto sospeso an interactive multimedia installation by martux m mattia casalegno
• X scape martux m mattia casalegno
• References

Casalegno was born in Naples, Italy and studied Communication studies at La Sapienza University in Rome and Design Media Arts at UCLA.

He performed and exhibited in international arts festivals and institutions including MUTEK (CA), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (TW), New Technological Art Awards (BE), Budafabriek Kunstcentrum (BE), La Oficina de l'Arte (AR), Optronica (UK), Le Cube - Contemporary Art Museum (FR), OFFF (SP), AVIT (GE), Wright Gallery, AxS Festival and LACMA in US, and Netmage, Sant'Arcangelo dei Teatri, Romaeuropa Festival, MACRO Museum and Auditorium in Rome, Italy.

In 2001 he co-founded with Giovanni D'Aloia the project Kinotek, a seminal VJing and live-media group based in Rome, among the first Italian collectives to use digital tools during their performances. In 2002 he collaborated with the duo Metaxu ( Økapi and Maurizio Martusciello). In 2005 he collaborated with the electronic music composer Maurizio Martusciello in the audiovisual project X-Scape, presented in numerous international and Italian events.

His work often revolves around Deleuzian ideas. He reportedly manifested his interest in "painting the forces" and the use of audiovisual languages as "affections in their pure state". In an interview in 2010, discussing one of his projects, he alluded to the concept of ritornell in Deleuze and the capacity of structured sounds, notably rhythm, to define a space. He often deploys technologies, ideas and aesthetics borrowed from science. He used EEG and Neurofeedback technologies in several installations and performances. His kinetic sculpture RBSC.01(2011–2014) is an improbable sacramental bread-making machine inspired by the RuBisCO enzyme, the most abundant protein on Earth.

In other projects Casalegno tackles topics of ecology, system theory and biology, as in Strutture Dissipative (2009), and the interactive audiovisual installation Il Gesto Sospeso, ideated in collaboration with the fashion designer Roberto Capucci and artist Maurizio Martusciello, and premiered at the Hadrian Temple for the Rome Fashion week in 2010.

In 2012 he designed a visualization of data from the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute as part of a site-specific performance by environmental artist Lita Albuquerque for the Knowledge Festival at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California.

Mattia Casalegno is also cited in a collection of poems by artist and writer Johanna Hedva published in 2011.

Casalegno was an Eyebeam resident in 2015 and adjunct faculty at Pratt's Digital Arts department, CUNY's CityTech and RISD's Computation, Culture and Technology concentration in Fall 2017.