xname
xname is an Italian interdisciplinary artist based in London. She was born in Milan and she has been living many years in Bologna and Amsterdam. Her interests include metaphysics, electronics, software, performance and interactivity. She works with self made instruments and open source software for live performance and real-time installation, expanding from visual and software art to electronic music. Her work, ultimately cryptic, ritualistic and noise, engages in the construction of perceptual phenomena and environments that explore the concepts of illusion and the virtual, stimulating new forms of perception and questioning the notion of materiality and presence, and the role that memory, experience and eventually our ancestors have in the formation of identity. “My work, mixing different practices, talks about social and individual identities, and their interfacing with reality and imagination. [this story is to be continued…]”
“Ms Eleonora Oreggia is one of the most interesting artists in Italy in the field of net art and software art (known as xname). I first met her last year, at the Italian Hackmeeting (an annual gathering of Italian hackers, digital artists and activists), but I had been keeping an eye on her long before, following her work and reading her interventions about relevant topics in the Italian and European debates on the Internet. What was amazing to me was her ability to develop ideas and projects related to social use and social meaning of digital networks and programs, reducing to the least any rethoric or redundant notes, always aiming to spur significant reactions from users and participants. This is the case, among other projects, of Virtual Entity or The Oracle Machine. In this last work is especially put forward an attempt to link a classic (albeit unconventional) topic in computer science research – the one of ‘oracles’, as in some last Turing’s writings – to the present conditions of uncertainty and precariousness leading to many social deseases…”
– Antonio Caronia, February 2010
“…her work seemed intriguing as she was able to bring together technicality and critical judgment which is a rare… She also had extensive knowledge and critical involvement in the open source software movement.”
– Graham Harwood, 2010
“…I was always intrigued by her commitment and the capacity she has to connect critical theory and current technology, developing original art projects which reflect on various contemporary issues…”
– Geert Lovink, 2010
“…Ms Oreggia maintains a clear pattern of technical learning, deepening her capacity to work with computational and networked digital media, at the same time as engaging with its cultural meaning and significance, linking often complex theoretical concerns with both the formal and processual qualities of her practical work… The focus of her work covers questions which are of significant concern to contemporary society in ways which promise to yield benefits beyond the immediate academic and artistic research communities…”
– Matthew Fuller, 2011
X Name artista multimediale nata a Milano che vive a londra le cui performances prendono forma con l’uso di luci artificiali e micro-oscillatori fatti in casa che generano onde sonore. Al II Festival Made in Woman presenterà lo spettacolo ipnotico “Phantasmata”.
