Finding Pippo

Finding PIPPO: a generative opera is a music/research/performance piece that shows documents which aim to break up the boundaries of space, audience, and generative approaches as methods of participation and performance. Through co-authoring an article about the Circola Arci network in Italy and the intersections of art/activism that happens in these socialist private clubs, I came to the writing of Alfredo Cospito. During his time in prison, Cospito has written letters, essays and texts that are self-distributed in print and online. In order to gain some understanding of his writing, I used online translators and ChatGPT to translate some of these texts. Concurrently, I started experimenting with generative music approaches, which also led to collaborations with musical AI freeware. I started to think about the poetry/prose lost in the process, but also the cognisance gained through this intervention with AI. How did I as a non-Italian speaking person understand/communicate/empathize with actions of anti-fascism within this context? More importantly, how could this work lend itself into a methodology for performance as a transformative practice? This exhibition is a series of objects, interventions and performances in development as part of a longer project.