Carlo Gioia  
     UTM-33T  23:14:53 ☼ 06:03:12  ☾ 18:06:55  
FieldnotesProjects


I investigate the intersection of art, science, technology, and marginal territories, examining computational cultures, landscape ecologies, and collective agency. I approach computation as a fragmented, relational, and context-aware practice, deeply embedded within social and local fabrics. Rooted in technological degrowth and disobedience culture, 
my research engages strategies such as salvage, patchwork, and redundancy, rejecting linearity in favor of iterative and collectively negotiated alternatives of experimental knowledge. Through the development of multi-channel installations, I explore experimental models of (s)low-tech and benign computing that prioritize sustainability, accessibility, and the right to opacity in digital interactions. This approach embraces lightweight, adaptive, speculative, and relational forms of computation, reclaiming the capacity to build, break, and reassemble systems beyond commodification and centralization.

My educational background includes a master's degree in Cinema and Media Engineering from Politecnico di Torino. Currently, I am a PhD researcher at Kunstuniversität Linz. 
My interdisciplinary research is conducted in collaboration with the Interuniversity Department of Science, Project and Policies of the Territory and the Department of Control and Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, examining how technologies reconfigure placemaking practices, community infrastructures, and spatial computing.

In 2025, I co-founded the Radura collective, a research and open experimentation platform operating at the intersection of artistic practices, political ecologies, and emerging technologies in rural contexts.






































Teaching & Lectures

Politecnico di Torino
2025
Interactive Media Course, Cinema and Media Engineering
2023
Open lecture – “New Media Art for territories storytelling”

University of Turin
2021
Workshop – Dancing for Immersive Cinema, Officine Sintetiche w/ DAMS
2020
Workshop – Dancing for Immersive Cinema, Officine Sintetiche w/ DAMS

Conservatorio A. Casella
2024

Matera 2019 Open Future
2025
Open lecture – “Arte e tecnologia: nuove grammatiche nell’interazione uomo-¿-ambiente”
2024
Open lecture – “(S)low Technologies: Tecnopratiche di Prossimità nei Territori Post-Digitali”

Publications & Appearances

2023
ISEA 2024 – “Art, Technology and marginal communities”
2023
MIT Leonardo ISAST – “New Media Art for re-coding territories. Design and curatorial practices of an application case in a rural area in Lucania”
✸ Leonardo Graduate Abstract Selection

Exhibitions

2025
Spazio Zephiro, Castelfranco Veneto – “Limen. Soglie fluide tra umano, macchina e natura”
2025
Spazio Putega, Latronico – “Il giorno in cui tornammo ai campi”
2023
Interfacce Popolari
Folk Interfaces (Handing Down Is Open Source)

Folk Interfaces – Handing Down Is Open Source is an open and experimental workshop that explores the interweaving of past heritage and contemporary urgencies through hybrid technological and artisanal methodologies. The project originated from the discovery of handcrafted objects in an old barn in Basilicata—forgotten artifacts that carry a dual meaning: tangible materials and symbolic testimonies of a productive culture deeply rooted in rural heritage. From these objects emerges a critical path that questions the logic of contemporary technological design, placing at its core a reflection on sustainability and the relationship between technology and cultural context.
The project is grounded in a critical analysis of practices such as repair, disassembly, exaptation, and reinvention—hallmarks of the adaptive processes found in rural culture, where human sensitivity confronts the urgent need to reinterpret and regenerate matter, imbuing it with new symbolic and functional meaning. Embracing this philosophy of creative reuse, the project transforms obsolete materials—remnants of the pre-industrial world, peasant culture, Apennine agro-pastoralism, and the everyday toolkit of working-class and petty bourgeois life—into new resources for a kind of design that resists obsolescence and linear consumption.

This form of technological disobedience is not only a practical intervention but a deliberate act of cultural and political resistance: a gesture of reclamation that turns material production into a collective act of opposition, critically challenging the standardizing dynamics of contemporary production logics. By analyzing traditional tools through the lens of interaction design, the project reveals how these objects embody qualities of usability and accessibility that foreshadow the paradigms of modern interactive technologies. Efficiency, effectiveness, safety, usefulness, and ease of use emerge as distinctive traits, while the transmission of know-how—based on direct and imitative learning—recalls the pedagogical dynamics of natural user interfaces (NUI).
In this sense, the artifacts of peasant culture can be reinterpreted as proto-interfaces capable of establishing a fluid and intuitive dialogue with the human body through sensory and cognitive stimuli. The relationship between user and tool, rooted in immediate and direct interaction, constitutes a design legacy that intertwines material tradition and cultural memory. These objects, in their intrinsic sophistication, offer valuable insights into human ingenuity in shaping materiality to meet concrete needs—generating artifacts that simultaneously belong to the domain of practical function and cultural memory.They emerge as interfaces that mediate complex relationships between people, their environments, and their communities—crystallizing memory and a dynamic knowledge that is handed down and reshaped across generations.





Photo Credits: 
Giacomo Baccega
Luca Antonello
Luca De Giorgi
Marta Maglio