From 1 to 28 February RUFA teacher Caterina Tomeo will host the sound project “Virtual Genre” (2020) by French artist Agathe Siffert, which will be an integral part of the Sound Corner installation at the Auditorium Parco della Musica.
The French artist Agathe Siffert explores the theme of gender (physical and virtual), through a research focused on the world of video games, on gender stereotypes, on sexual identities, on female avatars, on the alter ego of the same sex or on different twins . Siffert is a feminist artist and an enthusiastic video game fan – the number of women who play is now equal to that of men worldwide. Starting from her own personal experience as a gamer, the artist investigates female representations in virtual dimensions: princesses to be saved, sexy and erotic avatars, stereotypes adhering to male fantasies rather than to the imagery of female warriors and fighters. The sound project Virtual Genre (2020) stems from some questions that the artist herself posed to players with different backgrounds: “why do female images necessarily have to be hypersexualized? What is the impact of these sexy characters on the online community? on male players and female players? ” These questions have generated a multidisciplinary work, which has examined the theme of gender representation and sexual identities, starting from a critical reading and analysis of video games such as The Sims 4, among the most comprehensive and complete on the subject. The result was a podcast for Wi Watt’heure – a section of the Revue & Corrigee quarterly – and seven tracks, in which the sound was mixed with songs from Tomb Raider and Metroid, producing new sonic and immersive scenarios. Siffert has created sound spatializations and artificial reverberations which, evoking action games and historical characters such as Samus or Lara Croft, alter the perceptive and sensorial experience of the viewer. “The goal is not just to nurture inclusion and difference in the field of art – but to use genre as a prism to listen to, rethink and challenge the multiple relationships of power and domination at play in the contemporary world.”
Agathe Siffert
Agathe Siffert is a multimedia artist working primarily with files recovered from computer programmes and video games. In her research into plasticity and sound, she experiments by converting different formats to create new, hitherto unthought-of computer languages. Transforming an image format into an audio format on a computer, the artist creates an entirely digital sound from the specific language of the image itself. For the most part using video game data and programmes as the materials on which to base her advanced technological reprocessing, these conversions become her output.
Caterina Tomeo
Caterina Tomeo is an art historian, curator and RUFA coordinator of MAD in “Multimedia Arts and Design”. Focusing on contemporary art, her special interest is interdisciplinary research in the field of New Media Art and the Sonic Arts. She oversees the MAD (Multimedia Arts and Design) course at RUFA (the Rome University of Fine Arts). She teaches the “Sonic Arts” MA at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering at the Università degli studi “Tor Vergata” in Rome; the MA in “Economics and Management of Art and Culture” at the Sole 24 Ore Business School in Rome; and the MA in “Management of Art and Cultural Heritage” at the Giunti Academy – School of Management. Her recent publications and essays include: Sound Art. Asco/tare come vedere (Castelvecchi, 2017); Sonic Arts. Tra esperienza percettiva e asco/to attivo (Castelvecchi, 2019); L’elettronica e donna. Media, carpi, pratiche transfemministe e queer (Castelvecchi, 2022).
