L’Aquila KH-135A — Carlo Gioia

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

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

Workshop – “Le nuove frontiere della ricerca artistica-musicale”

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

Circolo del Design, Torino – “Vanessa Vozzo - Missing Out”

L’Aquila KH-135A

L'Aquila KH-135A is an experimental investigation into the intersection of movement, sound, and spatial representation, structured as a generative audiovisual performance that explores the expressive potential of digital psychogeography. The project, developed as part of the initiative Le nuove frontiere della ricerca artistica musicale at the Conservatorio dell'Aquila Alfredo Casella, is based on an interdisciplinary workshop I conducted with students from the Conservatorio Casella and the Accademia di Belle Arti dell'Aquila. The goal was to develop an interactive ecosystem capable of translating territorial data and emotional perceptions into computational audiovisual narratives.

The project is situated within a theoretical framework drawing from computational media studies, emotional geography, and the phenomenology of urban space. L'Aquila, with its distinctive architectural features and its dense stratification of post-seismic memories, has been interpreted as a multisensory device capable of activating dynamic and non-linear modes of orientation and meaning-making. The city itself, with its historical layers and material traces of the earthquake, becomes an active element in the performance, triggering interactions between past, present, and potential future scenarios.

During their psychogeographic exploration, ten participants navigated the city, recording their movements with GPS devices while immersing themselves in its atmospheres and rhythms. Beyond simply mapping their routes, they documented personal impressions, emotions, and sensory experiences, translating their perceptions into hand-drawn emotional maps. These maps were later transformed into graphic scores, guiding a real-time musical improvisation where individual experiences merged into a collective sonic landscape. In this way, movement, memory, and sound came together to create a dynamic and evolving representation of the urban space.
The performance involved a plurality of sonic and visual agents. The mechanical sound of the plotter, reminiscent of the construction machinery that pervades the everyday soundscape of L'Aquila, accompanied the progressive translation of psychogeographic trajectories onto paper, materializing the mapping process as a physical stratification of signs. The plotter, typically conceived as a precise technical reproduction tool, in this context became an autonomous interpreter of data, imprinting a visual and sonic rhythm onto the performance. Over the rhythmic pattern generated by the plotter—captured using a contact transducer and amplified in the auditorium—musicians articulated a sonic narrative that responded to the emerging spatial configurations, establishing an emergent dialogue between algorithmic structures and performative interpretation.

The interactive ecosystem employed a generative visualization system that alternated between different levels of abstraction: images collected in situ were processed alongside geomatic and cartographic data, while feature matching algorithms enabled correlations between individual emotional maps, generating a dynamic palimpsest of territorial representations. This approach facilitated the development of new forms of audiovisual storytelling, where spatial data and human interpretation intertwined in a continuous process of aesthetic and semantic reconfiguration. The fluidity of the generative representation underscored the non-linear nature of the territory, which fragmented and recomposed itself through individual perceptions and memories.
L'Aquila KH-135A thus emerges as an exploration in the field of performative cartography, redefining territorial representation not as a static and objectifying description, but as an experiential process arising from the interaction between computational systems and bodily practices. The traditional opposition between map and territory is dissolved in favor of a processual and relational conception of space, in which movement, sound, and sign act as agents of cartographic rewriting. Through the synergy of territorial data, interactive technologies, and performative strategies, the project questions the possibility of new ecologies of spatial representation, where territory is not simply recorded but continuously re-signified through the perceptual and interpretative actions of its inhabitants.
From this perspective, performative cartography is not just a means of representation but a device for critical spatial exploration. The work reflects on how mapping, traditionally conceived as an act of recording, can become an active process of negotiation between data, representational models, and subjectivity. This approach opens up new ways of experiencing and interacting with territory, which is no longer read as a fixed entity but as a continuously evolving organism. L'Aquila KH-135A redefines new experiential geographies of the city through emotional modalities of cartographic representation.