Musical Multimedia in Contemporary Italy

On January 22 and 23, 2026, IULM University will host in Sala dei 146 the conference Musical Multimedia in Contemporary Italy, dedicated to the transformations of musical composition and sound within contemporary audiovisual practices.

The conference is curated by Professors Stefano Lombardi Vallauri and Marco Spagnolo, with organizational secretariat by Dr. Silvia Velardi, and aims to investigate the multiple forms of multimedia musical creation, understood as the integration of sound/musical dimension and visual technological dimension.

In recent years, musical composition has become more and more intertwined with audiovisual language, both through collaborations between artists with different skills and thanks to the convergence - fostered by computer tools - of the figures of the sound author and the visual author. This dialogue has given rise to a wide variety of genres and contexts: from narrative and documentary cinema to sound theater, from video art to installations, from video clips to advertising, and to content for the web, social media, and the video game.

Special attention will be paid to Italian audiovisual creation, especially that developed in and around the AFAM (Alta Formazione Artistica, Musicale e Coreutica) circuit, which today represents an area of great artistic vitality and relevant scientific interest."

The program of the conference will include the participation of scholars, composers and artists, who will be called upon to reflect on their creative practices also from a theoretical perspective. Some talks will also have a didactic focus, addressing the issues of teaching sound and music for audiovisual in Italian educational institutions. There will be no shortage of attention to the latest technological and media developments, from social media to new production techniques and the role ofartificial intelligence.

The conference is being held as part of the NextGenerationEU project "Sounding Images - Screening Sounds" (SISS) funded by the European Union through the Ministry of University and Research. In the project - aimed at the internationalization of AFAM - IULM University operates in partnership with the Conservatory of Trento (project leader), the Conservatory of Lecce and theEuropean Institute of Design (IED) in Milan.

Below is the program:

Thursday, Jan. 22

• 3:00 pm: Institutional greetings
• 3:30 p.m.: Enrico Pitozzi (University of Bologna)"The acoustic tragic: Notes on the theatre of sound", Marco Biscarini (Rovigo Conservatory)"The sonic environment as a compositional parameter", Massimo Mariani (Milan Civic School)"Training the contemporary composer/sound designer: a cyclical pathway through language, technique and practice"
• 5:00 p.m.: Coffee break
• 5:30 p.m.: Leo Izzo (Trento Conservatory)"Music for audiovisual media: experiences of composition and performance in schools", Pierandrea Villa (University of Urbino Carlo Bo)"The Italian Conservatories on social media: a qualitative content typology"

Friday, Jan. 23:

• 10:00 a.m.: Francesca Guccione (Rovigo Conservatory, Vicenza Conservatory) "The Sonic Atelier: forms of contemporary multimedia music creation",
   Pietro Dossena (Sassari Conservatory)"Intermedial practices in collaborative contexts: the examples of Traces and Veils"
• 11:00 a.m.: Coffee break
• 11:30 a.m.: Daniele Furlati (Rovigo Conservatory) "Generative models in film music composition processes", Giovanni Verrando (Lugano Conservatory, Milan Civic School)"Meta-descriptors as the central axis of multimedia works"
• 12:30 p.m.: Lunch break 
• 3:00 p.m.: Agostino Di Scipio (Conservatory of L'Aquila)"Sound installations from an ecosystemic perspective," Andrea Valle (University of Turin)"The necessary sound. Arto fantasma: a project of the sonorisation of silent film" Mattia Merlini (University of Milan)"The Italian way to 'Japanese-ness': three eclectic musical tributes in recent Italian video games"
• 4:30 p.m.: Concluding remarks
• 4:15 p.m.: A closing coffee

Download the programhere.