The Astronut

Digital artist also known as Massimiliano Ionta debuts in 2017 in the European contemporary conceptual art scene and continues to explore the new frontiers of digital media. In 2017, he exhibits 'Kimono Tales' at Carrousel du Louvre during Fotofever Paris, finalist at Amedeo Modigliani Foundation Award, wins RAW meet Miami New Media Festival with the sound-art video work 'Singularity', as well as Trento Art Festival and Digital Mythologies between Prato and Taizhou. The Astronut's work mainly focuses on making immersive installations in spatial audio and 3D Design, Immersive Video, NFT, metaverse in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. In the installation presented at the Milan Triennale with spatialized sound in augmented reality, he transcends the boundaries between art and technology by creating through the use of sound immersive and immersive art experiences that can be shared in an inclusive way, allowing everyone, regardless of their visual abilities, to participate in the digital art revolution. In addition, with a judgment-free message, it is committed to using art as a tool to raise awareness for the environment and more sustainable use of resources.

Opera

Glacier is Life

The Astronut's new Jubilee installation stems from a deep nonhumanocentric reflection on nature and collective responsibility. In 1674, the inhabitants of Fiesch, a village in Canton Valais in Switzerland, undertook an annual religious ritual by which they asked God to halt the threatening advance of the glacier that loomed over the village and their lives. With climate change, the danger has radically transformed: today, the threat is the rapid melting of the glacier and its subsequent disappearance. In 2019, the local community decided to officially ask the Vatican to change the ritual by introducing this new prayer, now dedicated to the protection and preservation of the glaciers themselves. This act on the part of the small mountain community not only, without delay, changes a centuries-old traditional rite but, more importantly, rightfully restores the glacier's status as the complex living organism that it is by nature. At a time when personal communal thinking feels the individual is helpless and influential, that the gesture or action of the individual cannot have an impact on such a large and global society the message this small community sends reminds us that there is no need to perform great deeds but to each do our own little daily stretch of road. The immersive sound installation features spatialized audio in forty of the world's most widely spoken languages
creating a global prayer, a universal mantra. Starting with photos and scientific data of the glacier, I chose to emphasize an emerging concept: the glacier as a holobiont, that is, a complex living organism formed by the symbiosis of abiotic and biotic elements in a vital network of interconnections. This approach emphasizes how we, humans, are also an integral part of nature and how crucial our cooperation and interconnection with the environment is. Through artificial intelligence, scientific data about glacier melt is tra-
sformed into a visual interaction. The audience is invited to recite the prayer-mantra "Glacier is Ice, Ice is Water, Water is Life "in front of a large Ledwall cheraffiguring the glacier in its current suffering. This phrase, repeated in spatialized audio in the world's 40 prin-
cipal languages, transforms the experience into a powerful immersive installation. Each vocal intervention by the visitor visually slows the degradation of the glacier, healing it for a few seconds, symbolically reminding us of the effectiveness and strength of individual actions in the battle against climate change. The installation aims to restore the visitor's sense of indi-
vidual and collective responsibility, reaffirming the value and effectiveness of our daily gestures in preserving life on our planet.

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