Check the Interferenze photo set here.

The idea of the nonconformist as no longer the black sheep but the one now wearing a digital player and headphones admirably sums up the theme of the 2010 edition of Interference: “Rurality 2.0”. This year the electronic arts festival was held July 23rd to 25th in Bisaccia, Upper Irpinia, a significant place for its (undoubted) rural features as well as it being home to a large wind turbine site. These (modern) mills, imposing witnesses of innovation, sometimes epiphanic sometimes blind, became an important feature of the event. Bianco-Valente’s installation, “Untitled”, was created ad hoc from data extrapolated from the wind turbines, whereas they facilitated introspection in Sawako Kato’s group ‘sound walk’. Here Kato led participants around the stones and lanes of the old town, becoming an unintentional harbinger of unfamiliar sounds, both from a physical point of view, because the wind generates different sounds each time and conceptually because people rarely stop to “listen around” in everyday life.
The ducal castle of Bisaccia, in the town center, overlooking the valley, hosted several installations (Interferente – Roll Multimedia Design, The Bird Watcher aka Hakkaisan – Andrè Goncalves, Talea – Alessandro Capozzo, Souther Ocean Studies – Corby, Baily & Mackenzie, Nijika: TokioIrpiniaEarth – Sawako), while the afternoon brought a selection of videos. In the same location, a series of conferences analyzed examples and experiences of local territorial development through new media and new technologies. Among those making up the panels were Regine Debatty, with his international experience; Ian Chambers, who analyzed the rapid infiltration of art into Molise in recent times; and finally Yukiko Shikata, artistic director of Interference Seeds Tokyo, who gave a Japanese interpretation of the festival. The other (traditional) star was the food, considered “economically” (with detailed tracking of the supply chain), and “culturally”, as a magnet for sustainable local development and tourism, and as an important part of the “Slow Life” philosophy. For the section Click’n’food ‘, for example, in the performance “Foodjob: Frequencies to dissolve under the tongue” (Enrico Ascoli + Pompeo Limongiello) sounds extrapolated (and mixed live) from the sizzle of a dish, introduce the audience to the next and (perhaps) more delicious tasting.
 The program was complemented by multifaceted live evening shows. Starting with Bitzmob (from Bari ) Electronic Appetizer, there were performances with experimental sounds (from the fairy sound generated by friction of paper cones and stone by Teresa Dillon, to the more subtle and refined sound of objects by Novi_sad) and delirious dj-sets (from, among others, Byetone, Ikonika, Shackleton and Fennesz). The enthusiasm generated by the event gave an invigorating spirit to a local area that, on a larger scale, was able to combine its best features with a truly international spirit.

Chiara Ciociola