Nicola Ruffino

Maybe Stick Together is a live interactive installation in which the audience becomes both performer and compositional material. The piece takes the form of a cooperative game that explores whether human biosignals can synchronize through emotional connection. Three custom-built bioamplifiers pick up each participant’s electrophysiological signals, such as cardiac pulses and encephalic signals. The signals trigger a light on their respective controller. The light increases gain of the amplification, and it encourages participants to physically move closer, “sticking together” to make the biosignals audible. The work delves into the invisible interplay between our body’s electrical activity and the possibility of shared emotional resonance. It questions whether interaction and proximity can shape our inner signals, and whether a unified emotional field can emerge from collective presence. By turning scientific measurement into a playful, embodied experience, Maybe Stick Together invites us to rethink the boundary between self and other; not as fixed, but as electrically co-constructed through contact, emotion, and feedback. Picture Credits Ira Grünberger

Maybe Stick Together is a live interactive installation in which the audience becomes both performer and compositional material. The piece takes the form of a cooperative game that explores whether human biosignals can synchronize through emotional connection. Three custom-built bioamplifiers pick up each participant’s electrophysiological signals, such as cardiac pulses and encephalic signals. The signals trigger a light on their respective controller. The light increases gain of the amplification, and it encourages participants to physically move closer, “sticking together” to make the biosignals audible. The work delves into the invisible interplay between our body’s electrical activity and the possibility of shared emotional resonance. It questions whether interaction and proximity can shape our inner signals, and whether a unified emotional field can emerge from collective presence. By turning scientific measurement into a playful, embodied experience, Maybe Stick Together invites us to rethink the boundary between self and other; not as fixed, but as electrically co-constructed through contact, emotion, and feedback. Picture Credits Ira Grünberger

It’s just a cube, nothing more. It is an ambient audio/visual live show, investigating the resilient evolution of a cube. The move keep moving altered by the sound, getting stuck, shaping is form. Will still it be a cube at the end of the journey? The work start from the Italian saying “if you born square you cannot die circle”. 6 channel - Audio/ Visual performance installation.

“Boltzmann Time” questions the very nature of time. In Boltzmann’s interpretation, time is not an absolute, linear progression, but rather a statistical concept tied to the increase in entropy, where the direction of time is defined by the tendency of systems to evolve towards greater disorder. The installation features a gold leaf, moved by the contraction of heat exchange, as it is heated by a continuous heat stream from a lamp and lens. As the gold leaf moves and then returns due to the heat, it is always influenced by the ongoing heat, resulting in a movement that continuously evolves. With each cycle, the leaf moves in a different way, symbolizing the non-linear, ever-changing nature of time. This dynamic movement offers an interpretation of time that highlights its continuous, unpredictable flow, in direct relation to the increasing disorder of the system.

It’s just a cube, nothing more. It is an ambient audio/visual live show, investigating the resilient evolution of a cube. The move keep moving altered by the sound, getting stuck, shaping is form. Will still it be a cube at the end of the journey? The work start from the Italian saying “if you born square you cannot die circle”. 6 channel - Audio/ Visual performance installation.

Microscopically for Them is a microscopic sculpture designed not for human eyes, but for microorganisms. Constructed with metallic microbeads and shaped by a magnetic field, the work exists at a scale barely perceptible without magnification. The structure hovers between the visible and invisible, blurring the line between art object and living environment. As microorganisms navigate or inhabit the sculpture, the human audience, viewing through a projected magnification, assumes the role of microscopic spectators, witnessing a scene not centered around them, but around another scale of existence. The piece invites reflection on perspective, authorship, and the agency of non-human life. As we more and more approach the nanoscopic and microscopic scale in industrial production, it also encourages us to contemplate the effect of human pollution onto the microscopic world.

The Mangle, Complexity, and Tomatoes is a post-performance work that merges sound art, theater, and autobiographical narrative. At its center is Mostly For Human Relational Gate, a spatial sound instrument built from microphones and speakers arranged across the venue. Tuned near the state in which resonance starts forming dense standing waves, the system invites failure. Minor gestures or movements can push it into chaotic feedback and loud standing waves, locking it into a particular sonic conformation; only a performer's action can change the sonic fate of the instruments, permitting again the dynamic flow of standing waves, tone, timber and/or their collapse. The audience immerses into the storytelling through the sounds that build a new perception of the environment. The sound shifts from low tones putting in vibration all loose architectural structure, felt on the skin to soft and smooth vibrant tones whispering to the ears. The piece begins with a choreographed script, but as the system spirals into instability, it disrupts performance cues, covers the voice, and forces a live negotiation between intention and system behavior. Framed by personal history, the work follows a path from misdirection, wrong choices, ego-inflation and systemic entanglement toward scientific research and creative intuition as salvation. A martial arts–inspired choreography meets humorous, raw storytelling to explore failure not as breakdown, but as method. When moments of unexpected synchronicity emerge from layered interferences- silence matches a line, a sonic amplification triggers movement, or noise captured outside the venue requires the performer's intervention. In this unstable field, failure becomes a tool for navigating both complex systems and inner transformation.

The Mangle, Complexity, and Tomatoes is a post-performance work that merges sound art, theater, and autobiographical narrative. At its center is Mostly For Human Relational Gate, a spatial sound instrument built from microphones and speakers arranged across the venue. Tuned near the state in which resonance starts forming dense standing waves, the system invites failure. Minor gestures or movements can push it into chaotic feedback and loud standing waves, locking it into a particular sonic conformation; only a performer's action can change the sonic fate of the instruments, permitting again the dynamic flow of standing waves, tone, timber and/or their collapse. The audience immerses into the storytelling through the sounds that build a new perception of the environment. The sound shifts from low tones putting in vibration all loose architectural structure, felt on the skin to soft and smooth vibrant tones whispering to the ears. The piece begins with a choreographed script, but as the system spirals into instability, it disrupts performance cues, covers the voice, and forces a live negotiation between intention and system behavior. Framed by personal history, the work follows a path from misdirection, wrong choices, ego-inflation and systemic entanglement toward scientific research and creative intuition as salvation. A martial arts–inspired choreography meets humorous, raw storytelling to explore failure not as breakdown, but as method. When moments of unexpected synchronicity emerge from layered interferences- silence matches a line, a sonic amplification triggers movement, or noise captured outside the venue requires the performer's intervention. In this unstable field, failure becomes a tool for navigating both complex systems and inner transformation.

We Will See is a multi-day performance that explores anger as a creative and structuring force. Through daily conversations with visitors, emotional triggers are collected and transformed into automatic writings. These texts are performed live through Mostly For Human Relational Gate, a custom feedback instrument that warps, blocks, or amplifies the voice. As the performer fights against acoustic resistance, sometimes physically intervening to collapse standing waves, anger emerges not as spectacle but as material. The performance spatializes emotion, inviting the audience into a shared field of tension, resonance, and unresolved affect. The piece draws from Lacanian surplus enjoyment, Žižek’s critique of postmodern desire, and Jung’s individuation to frame anger as epistemological. Rather than suppress it, the performance asks if anger can expose social noise, systemic silencing, and personal dislocation. Across its unfolding duration, anger is collected, transformed, and finally composed into a closing sound piece modulating the formation of standing waves resonating in the room. We Will See becomes not just a performance, but a lived exploration of emotional feedback and cultural resistance. Picture Credits Ira Grünberger

We Will See is a multi-day performance that explores anger as a creative and structuring force. Through daily conversations with visitors, emotional triggers are collected and transformed into automatic writings. These texts are performed live through Mostly For Human Relational Gate, a custom feedback instrument that warps, blocks, or amplifies the voice. As the performer fights against acoustic resistance, sometimes physically intervening to collapse standing waves, anger emerges not as spectacle but as material. The performance spatializes emotion, inviting the audience into a shared field of tension, resonance, and unresolved affect. The piece draws from Lacanian surplus enjoyment, Žižek’s critique of postmodern desire, and Jung’s individuation to frame anger as epistemological. Rather than suppress it, the performance asks if anger can expose social noise, systemic silencing, and personal dislocation. Across its unfolding duration, anger is collected, transformed, and finally composed into a closing sound piece modulating the formation of standing waves resonating in the room. We Will See becomes not just a performance, but a lived exploration of emotional feedback and cultural resistance. Picture Credits Ira Grünberger