GIANLUCA IADEMA
Italian pianist, composer and interdisciplinary artist currently working in Austria. His first audiovisual album 'Aphàiresis' has been released on the German record label 'Mille Plateaux'.
The aim is to investigate the relationship between materiality and immateriality, between presence and metaphysics. It is from the fruitful relationship that, through a filtration and regeneration process, a different and new world is created in which the single elements lose a part of themselves on their way to reorganize themselves in a higher order.
My work includes pure instrumental compositions or those with live electronics, as well as multimedia installations, audiovisual works, acoustic pieces and performances.
your greatest inspirations or influences?
After completing my piano studies at the conservatory, I moved to Graz, Austria, to study instrumental and electronic composition in greater depth from an academic point of view (from here my interest broadened into an interdisciplinary artistic field), starting a course of studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Kunst-Universität Graz). At that time I felt the need to channel my great passion for fixed, structural, conceptual sound architecture into a form that could encapsulate its essence, coloured by glitch and techno reminiscences. The latter, especially the research one (IDM is not a very elegant term), has accompanied me since I was 11-12 years old. However, it should be stressed that my process is the opposite, that is to say that everything that is 'popular' has never directly represented my artistic interest. I have always tried to grasp its social and artistic meaning, and then make it my own and transpose it into a key of thought in a different order, as if I felt the need to de-contextualise and then re-contextualise gestures, signs, sounds...
I was therefore thinking of a new work that could unite these two sides of my artistic life. I happened to meet, through mutual friendships, a guy from Frankfurt, in contact with the founder of Mille Plateaux, Achim Szepanski. From there, a friendship and mutual esteem was born, both artistically and otherwise, which then led me to publish my first release.
I was born into music, my father made me listen to Bach every day since I was three years old, and for me it has always been a vocation, a necessity, to discover, to create, to face the new and obscure world of sound.
Here are some artists and pieces that have strongly influenced me:
Mortus Plango Vivos Voco - J.Harvey - Plastikman
Boards of Canada
R.Ikeda,
Alva noto
Luciano Berio
Morton Feldmann - Beat FurrerR.Kurokawa
Tell us a bit about your creative process?
My research is based on the exploration of digital and analogue imperfection, connected to the broader concept of matter. This has led me to become interested in an artistic typology that takes into consideration all its expressions: from sound to architecture, from video to sculpture, passing through performance, searching for ways in which they can dialogue in the same system. At the same time, sound is one of the elements I deal with most and in which I am most interested. If I had to use more technical terminology, sound manipulation almost always takes place through the Supercollider software, from which I start to create sound processes that can often be associated with convolution, morphing, permutative synthesis, granular synthesis, as well as scanline synthesis and the use of complex systems based on deterministic mathematical formulas. One scheme that I use extensively to organise all the elements in my projects is Cook's Similarity and Difference Test, with which it is possible to determine whether there are differences, similarities, congruencies or incongruities between the visual and sound apparatus (I also use it as a track for single sounds).
In summary, the first part of my work is purely research and deep understanding of the sound or visual element. From there, I start by defining a structure, a form and a dramaturgical structure, and then I begin the drafting of the composition.
How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the world changing moving forward?
Difficult question. Nothing has changed in my artistic approach cause of the pandemic, I’m constantly improving it and studying, as I did always! On the contrary, I have had much more time to develop new ideas and approach new artistic contaminations (e.g. with artificial intelligence). The pandemic has unfortunately accelerated a change that was already underway, disintegrating the concept of "artistic experience", which had been explored until now. However, I do not think that streaming and the new online performance modes, at least for now, can replace the old pattern into which they fit. The role of a composer, I think, is to analyse the "medium" and make it an integral and structural part of a composition. To be clearer, I am sure that there will be an exponential increase in artistic works in which streaming will become not only a means of communication, but also the fulcrum, the heart of a performance or a piece of music (actually, it had already been experimented, even extensively, but through the pandemic it will surely become more evident).
Despite the uncertainty, this moment in history will dramatically increase the gap between the dominated and the dominant. It is one of the most acute moments of dependency, where it is difficult to fight, to protest, but also to climb the enchanted mountain to externalize oneself from the world and find solutions. I feel lucky, for what I do and how I can do it, but my thoughts turn to art, to those who don't have the strength to fight, because I am sure they will (re)emerge.
Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?
If you are referring to the known music-scene, I would say Richie Hawtin and R.Ikeda
Anything else you'd like to share with our audience, future projects, etc.
I'm working on a new album about "temporal disintegration", the first of a series of 3. It's a project totally realized through the semi-modular drum machine "Pulsar 23" by "SOMA". At the same time, I have just finished a new album (entitled ID[entity], yet to be released) with the Swiss singer and composer Franziska Baumann. From the point of view of installations, I am working on a project (Un_i[n]verso), an audiovisual sculpture, to be exhibited at the "Recontemporary" space in Turin. I am also planning to rework "Aritmie", a piece for piano, electronics and video commissioned by the Wien Modern festival in collaboration with Alte Schmiede (Vienna). I have planned a series of concerts from September, let's hope this pandemic will allow them!
