SMALL FLOATING ORACLES
Interactive audio/video performance with Akasha
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
After releasing the highly acclaimed album “Little Floating Oracles” on Lady Blunt Records and being named one of 2022’s best live performances by ADAF Greece, the artist ATŌMI announces a new audiovisual live show. This visceral and emotional journey incorporates sound design, musique concrète, ambient techno, and cinematic soundscapes inspired by embryogenesis and cosmic aesthetics, thanks to the visual contribution of Turin-based 3D and visual artist Akasha (Riccardo Franco-Loiri).
The seven-track album by the Berlin-based producer and sound artist is inspired by the concept of the fetus as a physical incarnation of cosmic essence, embodying the endless knowledge of an Oracle. ATŌMI translates the beauty and power of this concept into sound, recreating atmospheres and delving into various ancestral states of a new life in formation.
RockIt
“One of the best albums of the year.”
Foxy Digitalis
“ATŌMI’s music feels huge and all-encompassing. Enchanting.”
Threshold Magazine
“Some of the best songs ever produced in the field of techno ambient”
Radioaktive
“A complex job, practically perfect.”
Nicchia Elettronica
“One of the most interesting producers of his generation.”
ATŌMI performs an audio deconstruction of a DIY kalimba, transforming the sound of a metal sheet played with a bow, mallets, and rattles, combined with androgynous voices and synthesizers that are sometimes dreamy, sometimes scratchy. This creates suspended, tense, and dense atmospheres aimed at completely redesigning the album’s dynamics while enhancing its characteristic fusion of aesthetics and moods.
Akasha merged studies on embryology and scientific aspects with ancestral knowledge about the soul beyond this world, drawing inspiration from the Upanishads. This approach literally brought to life an artwork that deepened its roots in a surreal environment where symbolic forms and dynamism coexist.
He modeled all the main elements of the artwork in Virtual Reality, emphasizing gesture, fluidity, execution speed, and the infinite possibilities of precise intervention.
> Show duration: 60min
> Load/Sound test: 120min
// Please contact the booking agent to discuss the necessary logistics and equipment in relation to the venue and the booked show.
// A specific technical rider will be provided by the production manager after consultation.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE DUO
The collaboration between ATŌMI (Lorenzo Setti), a sound artist and electronic music producer based in Berlin, and Akasha (Riccardo Franco-Loiri), a new media artist based in Turin, delves deep into a shared need to question reality and materiality as layers of anthropocentric perception. This narrow view struggles to understand the full spectrum of nuances, preferring to define and categorize rather than embrace the unknown.
“Respira VR” is the first project marking the collaboration between the artists: a VR immersive installation, which is an implementation of the previous artistic residency by ATŌMI and Chiara De Maria that took place in 2019 at the Tuscan House of Photography, Pisa (IT), and was presented at the Imbarchino del Valentino, Turin (IT) in 2021.
After their initial project, the artists joined forces with scenographer and video mapper Tommaso Rinaldi (Co-Founder of High Files Visuals with Riccardo) and electronic engineer Davide Fauro to start experimenting on a new immersive performance/installation titled “ETERNO.” This project explores the human perception of the nonlinear relationship between time and space. “Eterno studio-1” was showcased in 2023 during the Bright Festival at Stazione Leopolda, Florence (IT).
In 2022, Akasha designed the artwork for ATŌMI’s latest album titled “Little Floating Oracles,” modeling all the main elements of the artwork in Virtual Reality and taking the dialogue with technology to a further level by guiding AI to create a number of variations for the three singles of the album. The duo is now planning to take the audiovisual performance of “Little Floating Oracles” on tour in 2023/24.
For the Canadian publication MEFD, ATŌMI “does nothing like the others.” The Berlin-based Italian music producer and sound artist, Lorenzo Setti, has been described as “spellbinding” by Foxy Digitalis and “one of the most original of his generation” by Nicchia Elettronica. His work blends elements of immersive installation art, spatial sound design, and interactive A/V performance. His sound spans a wide range of electronic music genres, including ambient techno, mystic minimalism, cinematic, with hints of contemporary classical music.
He has released two solo albums: “Little Floating Oracles” (Lady Blunt Records, 2022), “ARMØNIA” (Jikken Records, 2020), and has been featured in VA compilations and collaborative releases such as: “Creatures 4” (White Forest Records, 2023), “Sounds of Solidarity,” “CLOSE/STARE” (Oigovisiones Label, 2022), and Laura Masotto’s “WE” (7K!, 2021).
His debut A/V live album show was nominated as one of the best performances of 2021 by ADAF Greece. He has exhibited and performed at various festivals and venues, notably Ars Electronica Garden NY, MMMAD Urban Digital Art Festival in Madrid, Venice Climate Change Pavilion, Lightbox NYC – Creative Code Festival, Graphic Days Torino – Seeyousound, and Fuorisalone Milano.
Riccardo “Akasha” Franco-Loiri, born in Turin in 1995, is a visual artist who specialized in Audiovisual Production at the Scuola di Alto Perfezionamento Musicale di Saluzzo and in Motion Graphic & CGI at iMasterArt. Since 2015, he has been exploring the relationships between light and pixels, blending glitch and post-internet aesthetics with the aim of showcasing his vision of digital illusionism and abstractionism, influenced by hyper-technology and the relationship between perception and representation.
He develops techniques related to video mapping, real-time digital performance, Machine Learning, and VR, utilizing them in his projects and commissions with the aim of breaking down the boundaries between software and lived reality.
Since 2018, he has been the co-founder of High Files Visuals, a creative studio specializing in 3D architectural mapping and immersive installations, earning international awards and showcasing his work across all five continents. He has displayed performances and artworks at international festivals such as Seeyousound, Blaues Raschen, Constellation de Metz, Smart Life Festival, and Bright Festival.
