Plancton Art Studio
Mauro Annunziato (b.1957, Rome, Italy)
Piero Pierucci (b.1958, Rome, Italy)
Artists, researchers, scientists. In 1994, they founded the media art group, Plancton which explores the creative possibility of hybrid (real-artificial) environments composed of societies of artificial creatures interacting with humans. Annunziato and Pierucci have initiated projects such as: Artificial Societies (1999-2004), Emerging Relationships (2000-01), E-Sparks (2001-05), Swarm (2005) and The Alien and the Mirror (2005). Their works have been presented at electronic art forums worldwide, including Imagina (Monaco, 2000), SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, 1999; New Orleans, 2000), VIDA (Madrid, 2002), Experimenta (Torino, 2003), ARTWARE2 (Lima, 2003), Complexity (New York, 2002; Washington, 2003), EvoMUSART (Essex, 2003), PEAM (Pescara, 2003) and Interface (Rome, 2004). Annunziato and Pierucci have participated in several scientific conferences, among them: Generative Art I-V (Milan, 1998-2003), ALIFE VII (Portland, 2000), EUNITE (Albufeira, 2002) and EIS2004 (Madeira, 2004). They have been awarded prizes, including honorary mention at the VIDA 4.0 (Madrid).
Mauro Annunziato attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1982 and graduated in 1984 with a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from La Sapienza University (Rome). He is the author of more than 100 scientific and artistic published articles. In 2000, he was pronounced one of the top 60 artists-scientists by NASA-JPL. Annunziato is currently directing a research lab on engineering application of artificial life (ENEA, Rome, Italy).
Piero Pierucci graduated in 1984 with a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the La Sapienza University (Rome); he obtained the MIT diploma in Automatic Speech Recognition in 1996 (Como). For many years, he worked for various research laboratories (ALCATEL, IBM, IRIS, NERGAL) focusing on speech synthesizing systems. Pierucci holds several patents and is the author of two books: Speaking Machines and Sound Architectures (Angeli Ed., Milan, Italy).