TRANSMEDIA PHENOMENON IN FAUSTO ROMITELLI’S MUSICAL WRITING

Abstract

The article is devoted to transmedia phenomenon in musical works of an Italian composer Fausto Romitelli (1963-2004). The author makes an attempt to characterize the well-known “Dead City Radio. Audiodrome” (2002) as an example of a new media art, the essence of which is encompassed in the Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan’s book “Understanding Media”. Romitelli and McLuhan both contrasted written and oral cultures, thereby shifting the axes of modern media coordinates. Fausto Romitelli’s oeuvre is a fusion of rock and techno music complemented by a sophisticated spectral technology. A spectral method adopted in Audiodrome embodies the idea of composer’s sound to be material and possess physical characteristics. The first impulse is an acoustic image followed by a computer analysis. These findings later form the basis of musical compositions. Transmedia as a new media technology functions as a substitution of reality by switching one’s perception from the really existing to an imaginary reality.