Sound Dialogues: Self-Organization and Transmedia Practices

The essay Attraversamenti develops through a meticulous analysis of the collaborative dimension found in specific art experiences that have unfolded since the opening decades of the twentieth century, ranging from Futurist and Dadaist performances to the present day. Giovanni Ciucci, in his dual role as artist and art theorist, has previously investigated these themes across various publications. On this occasion, his inquiry focuses on the dynamics that establish themselves within experimental art workshops, including those of his own conception entitled Play. This relationship is examined both as a theoretical category and as a methodological practice, configuring itself on one hand as a reflection on the workshop experience carried out, and on the other as an ongoing quest toward achieving effective collaborative practice.

Furthermore, the analysis addresses the diverse operational typologies adopted by those authors interested in creating collaborative art experiences open to public contribution. Although certain art events nominally offer the viewer the opportunity to become part of a participatory experience—aimed primarily at soliciting their perceptual response—Ciucci prefers to rethink this co-belonging on alternative grounds. The author thus intends to reconnect with speculative thought, according to which receptivity and activity are originally inseparable in all human action. Drawing upon the philosophical lesson of Luigi Pareyson, according to whom the very act of interpreting already constitutes a profound form of participation, the essay clarifies that audience engagement needs not be confined to a purely physical activation, but can also be realized at an intellectual and intersubjective level.
In this sense, the workshop horizon is redesigned by overcoming traditional linguistic and presentation constraints: the exhibition space and the theater hybridize into a transmedia synergy that brings together static and dynamic images, texts, numbers, and recorded environmental sounds. Within this complex architecture, the live performance—entrusted to electric guitars—sees the musicians act as true performative agents. The creator of the workshop does not impose a rigid score or heterodirected tracks: the participants, fully aware of the meaning of the visual-audio performance, are called upon a methodical “sound dialogue” test aimed at verifying the very possibility of self-organization.

The original nature of the workshop lies precisely in this radical experimental openness: a genuine interactive experiment in which the evolution of the situation remains unpredictable. Although the core group of performers is deliberately restricted to preserve the balance of cooperation, the challenge lies in respecting the presence of the other without dominating. Within this extended process, preliminary rehearsals lose their function as a mere technical stage to be fully integrated into the realization of the work. During the action, the musicians decode and interpret the streams on the main screen, drawing inspiration from the variations of the video animations in a continuous mirroring between visual sign and sonic response. The workshop conceived by Ciucci thus offers itself as an exercise in deep listening and mutual respect, the overall outcome of which ultimately flows into a plurality of devices—from the printed page to web architectures—configuring the book itself as the lasting trace and theoretical recontextualization of an originally ephemeral event.