MAON, Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende (CS)
October 28, 2017, 6:00 PM
Evening
IN MEMORY OF SILVANO ONDA
A PIONEER OF COMPUTER ART
video screening
“Galileo's Heaven"
“Prayer No. 10 (dedicated to Silvano Onda) with Tibetan ritual instruments”
At the MAON, Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende (Cosenza), an evening IN MEMORY OF SILVANO ONDA, A PIONEER OF COMPUTER ART, born in Calabria and died in Venice in 2010, will be held on October 28 at 6 pm. The initiative is promoted by the “A. Capizzano /MAON” Center, the Municipality of Rende and the “Centro Aleph” of Lamezia Terme.
During the evening, the videos “Il Cielo di Galileo” will be shown, created in 1986 in computer graphics by Silvano Onda with music by Nicola Cisternino, and “Preghiera n 10 (dedicated to Silvano Onda) with Tibetan ritual instruments”, a concert by Nicola Cisternino recorded on the occasion of the exhibition last August dedicated to Silvano Onda at Palazzo Chimirri in Serra S. Bruno and prepared and performed in world premiere by 11 young people from Serra S. Bruno directed by the author.
Speakers: Antonio Coscarella, president of the A. Capizzano Center, Nicola Cisternino, composer and professor of Contemporary Art and Music at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, Tonino Sicoli, director of the MAON. The artist's wife Fiorella Carchidi Onda will be present at the evening.
The event is part of the program of initiatives for the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art, which is currently hosting an important exhibition curated by Bruno Corà and Tonino Sicoli, on its twentieth-century collection, which presents the most significant artists of Calabria from the last century and the beginning of the twenty-first, starting from Umberto Boccioni and the historical avant-gardes, up to Rotella and the exponents of contemporary art, including the younger generations.
Silvano Onda, art historian and forerunner of electronic art, author of valuable essays on Renaissance and contemporary art, was born in Serra San Bruno in 1948 and after graduating at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, he moved to Venice at the age of twenty-five, where he taught Drawing and Art History at the Liceo Scientifico “G.B. Benedetti” until 2009.
His first interests were in painting and after some experiences in the field of New Figuration, starting in 1984 he had been involved in Computer art, becoming one of the pioneers of the sector. He had been, in fact, one of the first to theorize the use of new electronic technologies in the artistic field, understanding their aesthetic scope and great expressive-communicative potential. In 1982 he founded “Uroboros” in Venice, the first Computer art center in Italy. In the 1980s he had actively participated in the major video art events in which the products of an experimentation that would soon transform the taste of an era were presented: Elettronic-Art in Camerino (1984 and 1986), Immagine Elettronica in Bologna (1985), U-Tape at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara (1985 and 1986), Taormina Arte (1986), the Festival Cinema e Tv in Salsomaggiore (1987), Natura Elettronica in Cropani (1988). Having graduated from the University of Venice in Conservation of Cultural Heritage, he had dedicated his interests above all to studies on architecture in Venice but also in Calabria, particularly in his native Serra San Bruno. His essays include: “L’Eremo di Santa Maria della Torre” (1992) on the first hermits of Serra San Bruno and “La chiesa dell’Assunta di Spinetto” (1999). On Venetian history, he wrote instead, “The church of San Francesco della Vigna and the Convent of the Friars Minor” (2008), directing the research in the direction kabbalistic and numerological ion, explaining that the harmonic proportions of this church are the expression of that Neoplatonic harmony supported by Marsilio Ficino and applied to religious architecture by Francesco Zorzi.
Nicola Cisternino, composer and artist graduated from the Parma Conservatory and from the DAMS of Bologna, was a student of Sylvano Bussotti for composition. Author of original musical writings (Graffiti Sonori) aimed at the ear but also at the eye, his music has been performed in various parts of the world. In 1993 his composition Awithlaknannai opened the Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music (SIMC) in a night concert at the Teotihuacan archaeological site in Mexico City, while in 1997 and 1998 he was invited by the Ateliers UPIC - the electroacoustic studio created by Iannis Xenakis in Paris - to create his own compositions, which were then performed at La Cité des Sciences de La Villette in Paris as part of the Festival Arts et Sciences and published in 2001 (along with works by Xenakis, Risset, Estrada, Roads and others) in the double CD of the CCMIX Paris/Xenakis/Upic/Continuum by the Mode label in New York.
In addition to several CDs and numerous publications in various international magazines, he edited, together with Pierre Albert Castanet, the volume "Giacinto Scelsi Viaggio al center of sound" conceiving and directing various Scelsian initiatives at the request of Franco Battiato for the Fano Festival (1997), for the Department of Music and Entertainment CIMES of the University of Bologna (2001) and for the Societas Raffaello Sanzio and Nuova Consonanza (2002).
In 2004 he was an artist en residence at the invitation of the French Ministry of Culture at the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud (Unesco Heritage) and in 2006 he was selected with two of his works by the critic Bruno Corà for the XII International Biennial of Sacred Art of the Stauròs Foundation - Stauròs Museum of Contemporary Sacred Art of San Gabriele-Isola del Gran Sasso (Te).
In October 2009 he inaugurated with the installation Homo and the composition Tempo Armonico inspired by Leonardo da Vinci the exhibition of the Vitruvian Man at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Since 2001 he has been a professor of Contemporary Arts and Music at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice.
