Ultravioletto's Sonic Arms: Robotic Dance Performance at Romaeuropa Festival

At the Romaeuropa Festival 2019, the Italian collective Ultravioletto presented 'Sonic Arms', a 30-minute performance merging robotics, generative music, and real-time video projections. Four robotic arms holding neon lights perform a choreography on pedestals in a post-industrial setting filled with fog, facing a reflective surface that conceals backlit screens. The robots' movements, the electronic soundtrack by Ipologica, and the HD synthetic images are algorithmically generated and interconnected, creating an ethereal dance. Collective co-founder Bruno Capezzuoli explains that the work explores the expressive possibilities of robotics and kinetic sculptures, treating data transformation as a reflection of human nervous and muscular systems. The performance layers four narrative levels: the robots' luminous terminals, their choreographed arms, a wall of real-time video, and a changing backlight that defines the space. Capezzuoli notes the challenge of defining the physical limits of machines in direct comparison with the human body, using lights as ephemeral extensions of movement. The project was designed, programmed, and produced by Ultravioletto, with coding in Openframeworks and TouchDesigner, art direction by Capezzuoli, technical direction by Massimo Zomparelli, 3D visuals by Francesco Bruno Viteri, creative coding by Giulio Pernice, and sound design by Ipologica. Production was directed by Tito Cetroni.