Bio

Roberto Maria Mongardini (Rome) is a pianist, acoustic researcher, visual artist, and composer specializing in contemporary, applied, electroacoustic and acousmatic music. He began his musical education at the age of 7, studying piano privately, later attending the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome.

At the age of 12, he embarked on the study of composition, eventually graduating in 2021 from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Traditional Composition, receiving a score of 110/110 cum laude. In 2022, he completed his master’s degree in “Music Composition & Theory,” delving into the study of electronics at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland, graduating with top honors. In Switzerland, he had the opportunity to work on spatialization in the Electro Acoustic Room, a dedicated multichannel diffusion space within LAC (Lugano Arte e Cultura). He attended advanced music courses at the Fondazione Campus Musica in Sermoneta in 2019 with Maestro Alessandro Solbiati, winning a commission from the Pontino Festival. In 2020, he was selected for the String Orchestra Composition Competition “Alfred Schnittke” in Ukraine, held in Lviv.

He participated in various composition and conducting masterclasses with Solbiati, Fedele, Manoury and Stroppa. In 2022, he graduated in Film Music from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, mentored by film critic Sergio Bassetti, and attended masterclasses with directors and composers such as Giuseppe Tornatore, Daniele Luchetti and Carlo Crivelli. In 2022, he became a registered professional Music Consultant at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. In 2023, he received funding and residency support for his work “Extensio” from the Ramon Llull Institute and the regional government of Catalonia, Spain. He won the City of Rome’s “Culture in Motion 2023-2024” competition and serves as the Artistic Director of the biennial concert series “Vibr@zioni” within the “QAcademy” social enterprise. He has received numerous commissions, and his music has been performed in Italy, Spain, Catalonia, Ukraine, and Switzerland. Through artistic residencies, he explores the transduction of physical and sonic gestures for the manipulation of self-generating algorithms for sound and image modeling. Currently, he is studying Electronics with Maestro Michelangelo Lupone at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia.

Project

At Faberllull he will come with Marcus Boman to develope their project 'Unseen stories'. This project emerges from the convergence of two artists who share a profound resonance in their perspectives on art and the natural world. Originating from their encounter at the Faberllull residency in May 2023, the project amalgamates visual and sonic arts in an artistic process to delve into the hidden dialogues of nature imperceptible to human senses. "Unseen Stories" seeks to deepen the exploration of the human-nature connection while highlighting the negligent treatment of the environment. Beginning with an interest in Umwelt spheres, clarifying how other beings communicate beyond human perception, and the implications of quantum mechanics on our subconscious relationship with reality, they encounter transduction processes, through which sensory elements are transformed into sounds and images, unveiling a reality invisible to humans. Together, Boman and Mongardini propose a new exploration of the Fageda d'en Jordà forest in Olot, employing advanced technologies to capture the forest inhabitants from multiple perspectives.

Hardware technologies such as cameras, thermal cameras, PlantWave sensors, LiDAR sensors, ARKit sensors, omnidirectional microphones, Zoom, and software technologies such as Max MSP, Google CoLab, Stable Diffusion, and Photoshop will be used. The equipment is aimed at capturing and interpreting these hidden communications visually, seeking to reconcile contemporary scientific discoveries with our understanding of the world. Through a transductive process involving sound, temperature, coordinates, movements, and spectral analysis, the project aims to create a sequence of images and sounds in a 5-minute projection made frame by frame (10-12 fps).