“Ritratto di città (20/20,000Hz)” is the new video work by the artistic duo MASBEDO, composed of Nicolò Massazza (1973) and Iacopo Bedogni (1970), who have been living and working in Milan since 1999. The project is a clear reenactment of the “Ritratto di città” created by researchers and composers Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna in 1954. It was a kind of sound lab where voices merged with the sounds of the city and music in a more traditional sense. 

After World War II, hubs dedicated to researching new languages and techniques of sound recording emerged almost simultaneously in different countries. In 1948, the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC) was founded in Paris. In 1951, the Studio für Elektronische Musik was established in Cologne at the German radio station. In 1952, Columbia University in New York initiated Music for Tape Recorder, while in Milan, in 1955, Berio and Maderna founded the Studio di Fonologia Musicale at the headquarters of RAI (Italian Radio and Television).

On the one hand, the Studio di Fonologia experimented with electronic music (recording signals generated by electronic circuits) and musique concrète (using different recordings of sounds and noises such as voices, urban sounds, bells, knocks, instruments as initial material). On the other hand, it produced commentary and soundtracks for radio and television. In a short time, it became a means of emancipation from traditional instruments, known throughout Europe and frequented by musicians such as Luigi Nono, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, and others.

“We felt the need to pay tribute to a prolific season of intellectual vivacity such as there has never been in Italy before. A new city was being born, unique in the Italian scene, with a new idea of language, a new approach to urbanism, art, literature and even cinema. It was at the forefront precisely because of proposals such as RAI’s Studio di Fonologia, an international-level experience dedicated to sound and electronic music with features that made it unique”.

From that sound experience, what remains today is an archive of about 400 analog audio tapes, totaling over 200 hours of music. However, until the end of the 1980s, there was little awareness of what historically was the Studio di Fonologia. Closed in 1983, its modules were organized, packed, and stored in a warehouse at the Rai Radio Museum in Turin along with other discarded material. In 1996, the historical equipment was exhibited at the Turin Music Fair, and then, only in 2003, they were brought back to the RAI headquarters in Milan. Since June 2008, they have been displayed in Milan inside the Sforza Castle, in a room that reproduces the setup the Studio would have had in 1968.

It is no coincidence that the video work by MASBEDO starts with images of the RAI Studios on Corso Sempione, designed by Gio Ponti, then moves to the halls of the Civic Museums of the Sforza Castle with the setup by BBPR. In the background, avant-garde compositions blend with urban noises, accompanied by images of Milanese architectures that best evoke the democratic commitment of reconstruction.

“One screen focuses on sound, created with musicians with whom we have technically realized what they call ‘convolution reverb.’ Nine microphones – reminiscent of the nine condensers of the Studio di Fonologia – go into feedback with a speaker, creating a kind of sonic topography of the space, a scan that starts before the room and then extends to the entire city.”

The second screen, conversely, hosts a fluid, heterogeneous, and experimental ecosystem of interventions: Swedish performer and vocalist Stina Fors, artist Martina Rota, actors Camilla Semino Favro and Adriano Di Carlo, RAI Radio 3 host Pino Saulo in charge of the ‘Battiti’ program, biologist David George Haskell, ethologist Federica Pirrone, producer and author Kit Mackintosh, critic Delia Casadei, architecture theorist Manuel Orazi, and composer Nicolas Becker.

The parallel scrolling of images conveys with a sense of vertigo the elusive portrait of a complex, multifaceted city in continuous transformation: “The videos have different lengths and continue to be looped in the room, so each viewer will see the work differently from those who came before and those who will follow,” explains the project curator Cloe Piccoli.

Is it possible to build an urban horizon based on collaborative intelligence? Is there a meeting place for avant-garde research and public service? How could we bring into the contemporary era the synergy of that short circuit between radio and city by educating in listening? The result of “Ritratto di città” is a narrative on the edge between reality and fiction, which looks at Milan with a certain magical realism and, starting from the past, raises issues that are more pressing today than ever before.

Opening image: Masbedo, Ritratto di città (20/20.000 Hz), 2024. Courtesy Masbedo and Fondazione ICA Milano