registrazioni

REGISTRAZIONI (Italian for “recordings”) is a section of this website where I share short audio fragments captured during my ongoing sound explorations and practices. These recordings are often intended for playback through a few portable tape recorders—typically a Sony TCM-459V or TCS-580V—used during my live performances.

I use these Walkmans to introduce fixed sounds that interact with and layer over ambient noises, blending with or amplifying the natural background, while I am producing acoustic sounds by using the percussive qualities of found objects encountered on-site. Though the presence of the Walkmans is acoustically significant and strongly shapes the overall soundscape, the specific content of the pre-recorded tapes often remains faint or barely perceptible to the audience during live actions. Sensing this as a kind of lack—and wanting to give these tapes some sort of dignity—I’ve recently begun digitizing them. This is an attempt to preserve and highlight these raw, peripheral sounds that, though often overlooked, are central and recurring elements in my artistic practice.

Note: Most recordings were captured directly using the Sony TCM-459V or Sony TCS-580V portable tape recorders and/or a Nakamichi CR-2E tape deck, with both looped and non-looped tapes. Some, however, were recorded using a Zoom F3 digital recorder paired with a stereo set of Neumann KM184s or DPA 4060s, or a Sony PCM-M10. These were sometimes roughly edited and later transferred to cassette.

walkman-FIELD-CUTs

Three short excerpts taken from a cassette I used for a sound action held in a rural area of Serbia, as part of the Polja Festival x SHAPE platform in June 2025. The recordings are rough and chaotic, consisting of a rehearsal I recorded directly to the walkman to prepare the performance along the riverside in Cesena, Italy.

LOOP - Thai gong

A loop taken from a pink cassette I used in a performance with dancer/choreographer Yasmine Hugonnet as part of Triennale Milano Festival in March 2025. The tape is quite old (it had a sticker dated 2017), and I presume that the main sound source was a small Thai gong that I can no longer find.

wooden chimes

This fragment was made by using four heavy rosewood sticks, hung on a metal chain and gently touched to allow them to oscillate and beat one another, creating strange rhythmic patterns. I made the tape using some cuts from original recordings made together with Attila Faravelli on a Sony WM-D6C and used in the live soundtrack of the theater piece “Pinocchio” by Teatro Valdoca [2021].

cymbal

Two short improvisations on a 22-inch china cymbal and a skin instrument, combined with a 9-second loop, aimed at creating rumblings, scratchings, and gloomy drones. Presumably recorded with a Sony WM-D6C, with speed variations on the tape. Used only once in a live setting: each recording was played back on portable Walkmans scattered throughout the space while I improvised with the same acoustic instruments.

Circolo

Two sound fragments obtained from the circular motion of a small fan sweeping across a surface. I used these fragments—each played on a different Walkman—to support an improvisation in which I generated sound by moving my hands in circular motions on a similar surface. I matched the speed of my gestures to the tempo of the tapes, with a slower rhythm in my right hand and a faster, more percussive motion in my left. These tapes were part of a sound action I made in the Domus de Janas su Ledere, in Paulilatino (OR) during an artistic residency for Sardegna Teatro in the frame of the European project Island Connect.

one hand clapping

I made these cassettes while doing an artistic research residency in Austria, at AIR Krems, in Krems an der Donau, in February 2024. I found an AKAI CS-702D tape deck with some malfunctions, and the recordings get this wide stereo image, with a steady noise on the left channel and all the percussive sounds on the right. Listening to them reminded me of the following zen kōan:

Two hands clap and there is a sound.
What is the sound of one hand?

As a daily practice, I started to play back the recordings from a small sound system, placing myself close to the loudspeaker on the left and improvising the sound of the missing hand. I was quite interested in the results, but I have never tried that again after finishing the residency.

VIS

In Vis (Croatia), one morning I woke up at dawn because of the loud noise of the wind and the sea waves invading my room. Annoyed, I tossed and turned in bed for a couple of hours, thinking about my research project on listening and sound that I was conducting on the Island. I became firmly convinced that, through my project, I should do something to not listen to the sea—to eliminate that constant sloshing of waves that had woken me up. When I went out for breakfast, a local fisherman told me that the Jugo had started blowing—an Adriatic wind also known as the Scirocco—and that when this wind is blowing, it’s very important not to make any decisions. Reacting on these two inputs I recorded this tape with a sony TCS-580V, using a few metal tubes that I found half a meter to the sea and some loops played by my smartphone through a bluetooth speaker. The recordings are distorted, but I still appreciate the atmosphere of that particular windy occasion, when I literally had my feet in the sea. I played these tape during the presentation of my residency project that I held in the frame of the European project Island Connect, in April 2024.

test SI

“While moving my old studio in Cesena, I found a cassette with a sticker on it that said ‘test SI’. The recording is 10 minutes long, probably made with a Sony TCS-580V Walkman. I have no memory of the context in which I made it or its intended use, let alone the origin of its content.”

oscillazione di un albero

These excerpts were recorded together with Attila Faravelli, using the oscillations of a dead tree lying on the ground, near Rifugio Abetaia Ranuzzi Segni, in the Bolognese Apennines. We spent some time with it, simply enjoying the deep sounds that emerged from its crackling wooden frictions. The recordings were made in August 2024, while working on Ciglia, a project commissioned by MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

isia [tape noise]

Two shorts excerpt taken with a Sony TCM-459V to be played as a background noise during a collective performance realised at MicHub Pescara, together with Fabio Perletta and his class of students at ISIA Design Pescara.