Bio
I was born in Rome, Italy, the 27th March 1984, and I currently live in London, UK. I have been studying Media and Communications, digital media and semiotics in Rome, Copenhagen and Bologna. My interests include video game theory and culture, digital media, fakes and 'new media' art.
Academic
I am an Mphil/PhD student at the Media and Communications department at Goldsmiths, University of London. My research project is a cultural analysis of video game consumers. It involves a study of the concept of consumer/producer, the history of the video game medium and phenomena such as 'modding', independent gaming, open engines and game art. I have published several papers in English and Italian, worked on translations and presented at international conferences. The idea for this research project comes from a long experience in video game journalism, started when I was about 14 years old. From 2010, I am also a Visiting Tutor at the 'Introduction to Media and Technology' class at Goldsmiths.
Artist
I am a member of the artistic group IOCOSE. Our mission is to subvert ideologies, processes and practices of identification and production of meanings. We work with camouflage, mimicry, fakes and pranks, mostly based in news, social and mass media. Among our works, we invented a spam campaign for the Italian Democratic Party, we designed a religious hi-tech product based on electric shock, we crafted an IKEA guillottine, experimented a drug made out of floppy discs, and organized an international contest for the most valueless video on YouTube. We have exhibited, among many, at the Pixxelpoint festival (Slovenia, 2008, 2009), Shift festival (Switzerland, 2010), The Influencers (Spain, 2010), Milano in Digitale (Italy, 2007, 2008, 2009). I have also been assisting artists 0100101110101101.org, a.k.a. Eva and Franco Mattes, in their ongoing performances based in video games and digital worlds.
Other works and activities
2010: Social media community manager at LUUUX.com
2009: Tutoring and consultancy for the Italian Ministry of Education: introduction of online digital worlds in the teaching experience of high school students. I have also been assisting 10-13 years old students in their learning activities.
2007: Managed a viral marketing campaign for Sony's Playstation3 launch in Italy.
1998 - ongoing: Video game journalist. Relevant collaborations include Videogiochi (EDGE Italian edition, Future Media publishing), Videoludica.com and Gamescenes (edited by Matteo Bittanti, Stanford University), L'Altro (Italian daily newspaper), Gorgon magazine (curated ILINX column).