Preview Orchestra Meccanica Marinetti

ORCHESTRA MECCANICA MARINETTI
multimedia show by Angelo Comino aka Motor
Thursday, 20th November, 2008 6.30 PM
Chamber of Commerce of Torino – Palazzo Birago di Borgaro
Via Carlo Alberto 16, Torino

On Thursday, 20th November, 2008, the stage will be set at the baroque Palazzo Birago for an artistic performance combining art and technology. The Orchestra Meccanica Marinetti (Marinetti Mechanical Orchestra) by the artist Angelo Comino – Motor in art – has been specially chosen by the Chamber of Commerce of Torino and Piemonte Share to launch the initiative Action Sharing. The orchestra consists of robot drummers that play steel drums “live”, under the direction of a performer. Having literally built the city of Turin, the movement and work of factories will be on show, translated into the interactive digital languages of the contemporary world. Paying tribute to the futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the orchestra builds an ideal bridge between Turin’s industrial past and the city’s current transformation into a city of knowledge. Two robot drummers. Two steel drums. One human performer. Mechatronics and music. The repetitiveness of industrial production becomes a gesture of music. A project in which the past of the Italian avant-garde returns in all its contemporaneity to seal a new relationship between humans and machines. Orchestra Meccanica Marinetti is a project conceived by Angelo Comino aka Motor, who gives life to enlightening inspirations that were unrealizable in Marinetti’s day.

The cultural association The Sharing, under the artistic direction of Simona Lodi and Chiara Garibaldi, was established in 2003 to create and promote digital art and culture. Under the umbrella of the name Piemonte Share, the association promotes initiatives dedicated to digital culture and the drive for innovation tied to electronic and new media. Piemonte Share, which over the years has been supported by the ongoing sponsorship of the Chamber of Commerce of Torino, is a strategic occasion for the creation of moments of exchange, experience, and encounter between the public, artists, experts, researchers and enthusiasts. ACTION SHARING – multimedia productions is one of the topical initiatives featured on Piemonte Share’s programme of events. Action Sharing is a metaproject, an initiative “shared” with the local Torino territory, which builds a bridge between art and business by creating a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary platform where artists and engineers, along with scientists, economists, social workers and teachers can come together on the common ground of technology, driven respectively by creativity and innovation.

The Chamber of Commerce of Torino has chosen to back the proposal put forward by Piemonte Share to promote a new vision of culture, where art is not confined within the walls of art galleries and museums. In this vision, art is opened to the business world to become an engine for economic growth and local development, drawing from the design, technological innovation and creative resources that can be found in our companies of excellence, and which make them more competitive every day.
The project has become a reality thanks to the Interdisciplinary Mechatronics Laboratory of the Politecnico di Torino, Associazione Robotica Piemonte, Prima Electronics, Actua, Erxa, Virtual Reality & Multi Media Park, and Visualeyes.

http://www.toshare.it/OMM/index_eng.html