The IX edition of Videocittà, the Festival of Vision and Digital Culture, took place from 10 to 12 July, one of the most important Italian events dedicated to the meeting between contemporary culture, music, innovation and new technologies, confirmed in the suggestive area of the Gazometro, Zona Ostiense, Rome. This year too, the exhibition amazes with the quality and breadth of content, focusing on water as a guiding element and unifying theme. A transgenerational event capable of bringing together institutional guests and enthusiasts of the electronic music scene, company managers and those obsessed with new technologies in the same environments, born from an idea by Francesco Rutelli. Talks, insights, exhibitions, installations, dj set of international appeal, experimental music, video art, augmented reality, digital education, for three days of total immersion in the largest urban industrial archeology area in Europe, redeveloped to the point of becoming super-instagrammable. We could tell you for hours about everything that happened, but on these pages we will focus on the aspects most linked to the musical part of the programme.
The big name of this edition was undoubtedly that of Apparat, one of the most influential composers, producer And performer of the contemporary electronic scene, capable of developing a unique and recognizable sound language. The Berlin artist was the protagonist of a huge following dj set on Saturday evening and the soundtrack of the main immersive video sound installation, the evocative “In Limpha”, a work that explores the relationship between nature, transformation and consciousness, having as its soundtrack the reworking of a track by Apparat, “Black Water”.
But numerous other top names have given prestige to the line-up, starting with producer Mace and Populous, also very attentive to aspects visual of their respective shows. Sara Persico presented the electro-ambient project “Sphaira” paired with Mika Oki, together already winners of the Videocittà Awards 2025 in the “Best AV Performance” category. Francesca Heart (Italian musician nominated for the Grammy Awards) enchanted the audience by playing a large conch, processing the sound through the use of software, while Amanda Lana performed a performance corporeal.
Nziria brought live the songs of the new work “Syysma”, in which he imagines a future sound of the Mediterranean, in which neomelodic frees itself from geographical boundaries by combining tradition and experimentation. The Voices From The Lake (Donato Dozzy and Neel) proposed their hypnotic writing, in which rhythm and textures they evolve organically, giving shape to soundscapes suspended between ambient and techno. Hypnotic narrative environments also created by Liminal State, who presented “Freefall”, one performance improvisational audiovisual in which sound, music, lights and visual generative systems develop in real time. A series of shows during which sound manifested itself as a fluid and unstable element, combining avant-garde electronics, radical vocality and sound stratifications, proposing landscapes in continuous transformation. Immersive and perceptive experiences that introduced the public into a dimension of deep but at the same time liberating listening, constantly suspended between tension and immersion, rhythm and visual matter, for a perceptive journey capable of dissolving any boundary between listening and vision.
(Photo by Claudio Lancia)
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
