Ten stages to traverse ROBOT16 through the lens of Dream On: a curatorial journey that fuses places, bodies, and sounds into a single collective rite. The festival’s sixteenth edition highlights 10 oneiric moments—as many acts and performances—in which the festival’s contours become sharper and more visionary. This page is designed as both editorial and practical guidance: each Dream offers a poetic reading key and the coordinates to navigate the festival. An invitation to experience ROBOT16 as a single organism in metamorphosis—a shared, waking dream.
Dream 01 — Threshold
“Playing a game whose rules keep changing.” — Ursula K. Le Guin.
Chiara Zaccaria (live) – Parco Archeologico di Kainua, Marzabotto — h19.00.
At the Etruscan dusk, matter vibrates and rules dissolve: the festival’s first breath teaches unlearning. The landscape listens; electronics become a sounding stone that opens the passage.
Dream 02 — Path
“Time is not a line, but a path that opens as you walk it.” — Karen Barad.
Murcof (live) – Parco Archeologico di Kainua, Marzabotto — h20.30.
A topography of overtones bends chronology. There is no “forward”: only divergence. Every grain of sound is a step that renders the journey visible.
Dream 03 — Breath
“In the beginning there was silence. From that ancient silence, something began to vibrate.” — ROBOT16 Manifesto
Antonina Nowacka, Riccardo La Foresta & Renato Grieco — trio premiere – Palazzo Re Enzo.
Breath, percussion, string: three sources refound the origin. Whispered baroque, drone, and improvisation become a single column of air. Silence doesn’t precede music: it generates it.
Dream 04 — Vision
“Every sound is a dream incarnate.” — ROBOT16 Manifesto
Sarah Davachi presents Double Reeds (solo organ with film by Dicky Bahto) – Pop Up Cinema Medica 4K — h20.00.
The organ becomes ultra-slow cinema: light flows through the chords, frames turn into resonance. Contemplation in a minor diapason.
Dream 05 — Frequency
“We dream, we dream together, at high frequency.” — ROBOT16 Manifesto
Félicia Atkinson (live) – Oratorio di San Filippo Neri — h19.00.
Word as infrasound, speaking objects, micro-noises. Concrete poetry activates receptors: you don’t interpret—it vibrates you.
Dream 06 — Ritual
“Music as revelation and ritual language.”
Hatis Noit (live) – Oratorio di San Filippo Neri — h21.00.
The voice multiplies into imaginary choirs. A rite without folklore: melody as an incision on time, the body as a threshold.
Dream 07 — Matter
“Sound, once released, is living matter: it deforms, changes, breathes with us.”
Alessandro Cortini AV (live) – DumBO, Binario Centrale — h21.30.
Circuits as organs, light as breath. The synth sculpts plastic landscapes: the bass is emotional geology, the video a molten flow.
Dream 08 — Abyss
“Every human being is an abyss: it comes toward us, looks at us, and withdraws.” — Clarice Lispector.
Lucy Railton presents Blue Veil (live) – Oratorio di San Filippo Neri — h17.00.
Bow and electronics cleave the veil. The abyss isn’t empty: it’s extreme detail, the friction of horsehair, the shadow of sound.
Dream 09 — Roots
“Let us find again the original rhythm: heartbeat, breath, fertile waiting.” — ROBOT16 Manifesto
Lino Capra Vaccina & Mai Mai Mai (live) – Oratorio di San Filippo Neri — h19.00.
Slow drums, ancient harmonics, electronics like embers. Tradition not as weight but as thrust: memory vibrating in the present.
Dream 10 — Transfiguration
“Man is invested in things and things are invested in him.” — Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Rival Consoles (live) – DumBO, Binario Centrale — h23.20.
The final gate. Melody turns into mobile matter, rhythm into a headwind. We leave altered: the dream remains in objects, in spaces, in the relations that resound with us.