COLLABORATORS

Massimiliano Cerioni

Massimiliano Cerioni (Italy, 1986) is an award-winning composer, sound engineer, sound artist, educator, and Max Certified Trainer. He explores new sonic possibilities through coding, generative algorithms, and augmented instrument design. He also performs on stage with his creations. His artistic production includes acousmatic and electroacoustic music compositions, live-electronics, audiovisuals, music for video, performances, sound-art installations, and multimedia projects. He is from Pomezia (Rome, IT) and lives in Berlin.

Cerioni graduated with an MM in Electronic Music from A. Casella Conservatory of Music in L’Aquila (Italy) under the direction of Michelangelo Lupone and Agostino Di Scipio. He has been an intern for Institutions like Centro Ricerche Musicali of Rome, INA-GRM of Paris, and GMEM of Marseille. He attended workshops with Gavin Bryars, Alvise Vidolin, Khyam Allami, and Giorgio Sancristoforo.

As an educator, Cerioni has worked for several educational institutions in Italy and abroad and teaches sound design at the Mediadesign Hochschule in Berlin. He also conducts his teaching activity in one-to-one sessions in person and via Zoom, teaching audio signal processing, electroacoustic music composition, sound design, DSP for music application in Gen, and generative algorithms.

As an audio engineer, he worked for companies like Agorà SRL, which made him assist in relevant projects such as the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. In 2020, he announced his audio plugin project Culto, made for releasing Max For Live devices for experimental sound design. From 2023, Culto plugins are distributed by Isotonik Studios. He accepts commissions for developing custom audio software and M4L device development projects, including works for the producer Albert Van Abbe and the audio hardware company Enjoy Lab.

As an artist, he participated in events like the Artescienza Festival in Rome, ICMC 2014 in Athens, Psychedelic Film and Music Festival in NYC, Live Performers Meeting, Venice Biennale Theatre College, Chilean Conexión in Berlin, Radius Collective Exhibition in Boston, CTM Festival in Berlin; his works have been featured in venues like National Academy of Dance (Rome IT), Contemporary Cluster (Rome, IT), Goethe Institut Rom (Rome, IT), Tempo Reale (Florence, IT), Teatro Vespasiano (Rieti, IT), Auditorium del Parco and Auditorium Shigeru Ban (L’Aquila, IT), Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, GR), TEUC (Coimbra, PT), Kuopion Musiikkikeskus (Kuopio, FI), HAU2 (Berlin, DE), Kunsttage (Basel, CH).

Cerioni has received awards, commissioned works (Cycling74 and Artescienza Festival), and distinctions, including placing 1st at the Italian national art prize Premio Abbado in 2015 under the Electroacoustic Music Compositions category.

In 2017, Cerioni presented his first augmented monochord prototype called Metastring at Tempo Reale Festival in Florence. Coming from a long tradition of experimental luthiery in Rome that goes from the Eolian Harps of Mario Bertoncini to the Feed-Drum of Michelangelo Lupone, and built with the help of the luthier and engineer Maurizio Palpacelli, this instrument embeds an acoustic feedback chain system that gives infinite sustain to the string. He keeps expanding the research work, currently focusing on the 4th prototype. In 2019, he was in Stockholm (Sweden) as a resident artist at EMS — Elektron Musik Studion and a guest of the CM Lerici Italian Institute of Culture.

Since 2021, he has been a resident artist from SCOPE BLN in Berlin, where he premiered his video installation Inner Landscape inspired by Filipa Tojal’s paintings, his solo show Rebirthing — featuring an audiovisual performance and prints of digital artworks, and the collaborative Performance-Installation Obscuritas (2023), together with Silvia Morandi. Also at SCOPE BLN, Cerioni co-founded the collective Wasch, an intermedia art collective active in Berlin.

In 2022, Cycling74 commissioned him to create a MaxMSP Gen patch, for which he implemented a modified version of the Lotka-Volterra two-species competition-cooperation model as a sound synthesis system. In 2023, the same project was featured in the Radius Collective Exhibition Underline at the Midway Studios gallery In Boston and the Linea Festival in Biella, Italy; later on, it became a kinetic sound installation designed with the artist Fabrizio Di Salvo and presented at Kunsttage 2023 (Basel CH) and Scope BLN (Berlin, DE).

He is part of the artist collectives Wasch (Berlin) and Radius (US). Also, he collaborates with the online learning center Music Hackspace and several artists and professionals from different fields. Notable mentions: Molly Haig, Julian Zyklus, Pixie Fairy Lawn, Silvia Morandi, Function Store, Fabrizio Di Salvo, SaraBrown, Opale Studio, Valerio De Vita, reinfected me. He releases his music under Elli Records.

Stella Sideli

Stella Sideli is an experienced curator, researcher, creative mentor and consultant with over 15 years of experience in the cultural sector, working across international platforms in the UK, Europe and the Mediterranean, both live and online.

She is concerned with the intersection of institutions and feminisms, the ethics of curating, the relationship between curator and artist, equity and inclusion within the arts, with a particular focus on amplifying the voices of women, non-binary, queer, migrant artists, and a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary practices.

Currently, she is a researcher at the University of Liverpool, supported by the Liverpool School of the Arts Doctoral Award, where she combines academic research with hands-on curatorial practice, on the theme of listening as a response to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in curatorial and institutional practices, while serving as the research curator at Fact Liverpool until 2025. She has curated and produced a wide range of exhibitions and public programs for leading cultural institutions: as curator at Somerset House in London, she has set up Gallery 31 in 2019; she was also curating the artist development programme, the international artist residencies and the related partnership programmes on occasion of new commissions; as the programmes consultant at Space Studios, with a focus on the online, community and public programmes she has worked closely with a community of nine hundred artists, across artist development, community and public programmes. Between 2014 and 2018, she was curating exhibitions at Tenderpixel in London.

As mentor, coach and consultant she merges curatorial and institutional experience to support artists and creatives (eg. Creative Impact Research Centre Europe (CIRCE), Berlin, DE; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Primary, Nottingham; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Somerset House; Women Connect UK; Artist Mentor all UK) to transform knowledge and research into impactful creative practice.

Her work spans across multiple global platforms, where she has consistently demonstrated expertise in project management, creative coaching, strategic consulting, collaborative leadership to transform research into impactful cultural projects, and the development of artist-led initiatives. Stella is deeply committed to creating inclusive cultural environments that reflect the diversity of contemporary society and enable world-making through collective imagination and collaborative world-building.

She completed her postgraduate studies at Goldsmiths University of London, UK, in Critical Theory and Practice (Cultural Studies); with prior training in communication and semiotics from the University of Palermo, Italy. She also holds a PGD from Birkbeck University on Arts Management and Policy.

Recent curated projects include: Temporary Compositions, with Abbas Zahedi, Phoebe Davies, Joe Namy, Sonya Dyer, Somerset House, London UK (2021-2022); Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise, with Josiane M.H. Pozi, Majed Aslam, Ilona Sagar, Col Self in collaboration with Farvash and vvxxii (Sp0re), Somerset House, London UK (2021); I Should Be Doing Something Else Right Now, with Maeve Brennan, Vivienne Griffin, rkss & Laura Fox, Rhea Storr, Sam Williams & Roly Porter, Somerset House, London UK (2020-2021); Bonds, with Laura Grace Ford, Anna Mikkola, Imran Perretta, Hannah Perry, Nick Ryan and Flora Yin-Wong at Gallery 31, Somerset House, London UK (2019-2020); The Distance is Nowhere, with Paul Maheke, Sophie Mallett, GAM Palermo IT (2018); Nimiia Cétiï, Jenna Sutela, Somerset House, London UK (both 2018); A Gesture Towards Transformation with Aimar Arriola, Nicole Bachmann, Omer Fast, Pedro G. Romero, Paul Maheke, Amalia Pica at Tenderpixel, London, UK (2017); Unknown Tongues, off-site sound event at Five Miles, London UK (2017); Tropical Hangover, with Salvatore Arancio, Zuzanna Czebatul, Rowena Harris, Laure Prouvost, Suzanne Treister at Tenderpixel, London UK (2017); Feeling In The Eyes, with Nina Beier, David Ferrando Giraut, Will Kendrick, Seth Price, Rustan Söderling at Tenderpixel, London UK (2016); The Role of Unintended Consequences, with Eva Fàbregas, Joey Holder, Laure Prouvost, at Syndicate, Cologne DE (2016).