::: Frequently Asked Questions ::: 1_ Who the FAQ is 'xname'? It's me! I always thougth 'xname' will multiply as if by mitosis, and become a collective, but in reality this is still a solo project. 2_ Why the FAQ did you call it 'xname'? There are many answers to this questions, as many as an x can instantiate, but let's go in order... In Bologna, in the 90ies, when I (finally) managed to get my first computer (Apple G3, 300 MHz, rest in peace), my friend Mauxuam, under heavy scrutiny and slight pressure, initiated me to the pleasures of electronic music, informatics, and... the Internet. When we put that computer (xxx[1]) online for the first time (calling a Provider with a modem between 8pm and 6am), he gave me my first nickname, exeoxoxa, an encryption of my name. That became also my first email address on libero.it ... After a few years, when I complained with uncle Zombie from 'ngvision' about the lack of privacy and the general crap of 'libero', he advised me to use ziplip.com, a free encrypted mail server back then based in Japan[2]. I decided, then, to create a new email account, and rename myself with an act of autopoiesis... The Bologna Hackmeeting was approaching and I was about to join a new community, and I started making my first vj/dj livesets. As I wanted to preserve a connection to my first nickname (history, tradition, identity), I decided I would preserve the x in my new name... x as in generation X, our generation, the one that doesn't have a future, that will never be adult, and never rich, the generation that saw the transitions, that was not born digital and had no mobile phone, playing video-games during the cold war but refusing popcorn at the end of real Communism. There was a French lady whose Techno music I particularly loved at that time, Ixi, so I though my new name would be a tribute to that too. For days I imagined what this name would be, and I wrote down few options and sligh modifications, but when I finally tried to register on Ziplip, sitting in my studio in Via Roncati 16, all my marvellous choices got the same answer... "Nickname not available, please choose another name". I started to get a bit nervous, my fingertips were hitting the table, the keyboard, everything. "I have to get a name, a name with an x, quickly, name x name x name..." I typed the x in the form, then added the word name, diluting with irony the solemnity of the moment. I pressed enter, et voila'... welcome to the world! It made sense though, because that was the Bologna of Luther Blisset, collective names, fake identities, the erasure of the figure of the artist as a priviledged identity, and the idea of collective spaces and efforts. But 'xname' was also talking about privacy, and the possibility, offered by the Net, to be anonymous, becoming something else, assuming multiple identities, traversing gender and surpassing the physicality of the body. One day, years later, my father bought a skype cordless and rang me in Amsterdam... "Pronto signorina xname..." Reality had lost, overtaken by imagination! 3_ What the FAQ is 'xname' doing? Using technology to make all those magic things that once upon a time people thought were impossible (read 'electronic art'). 4_ When did 'xname' start? As of 2013, I'd say I just passed my first 10 years of professional activity (=sitting in the Net). 5_ Where did it take place? Milano, Bologna, Amsterdam, London, Europe, Brazil, World, Galaxy, the Net. Press [ENTER] to Continue... 6_ Is your identity really secret? No it's not, everyone knows my name, and my address is online, should you wish to send me a bomb. 7_ Do you have a Facebook account? Nope. 8_ Why? No time, no friends. 9_ Are you one of those hackers who steal passwords and credit cards? No. 10_ So what do you mean by hacking? Hacking is an anticonformist attitude, a curiosity about the function and form of objects, it is an attempt to solve problems in a creative and unconventional way, but also the desire to understand the underlying structure of things, opening objects, looking at source code, unveiling and nakeing the machine. Basically, hacking is sexy. 11_ Did your parents buy you a computer when you were 6 years old? No, I bought myself my first computer when I was about 20 years old with the money I obtained winning a case against a dentist who accidentally drilled me in the wrong place when I was a child (I discovered it when I was a teen-ager due to incredible head-aches). I bought my first video-camera with that money too (and, YES, there's something synthetic in my head, a piece of bone I think, sort of experimental implant I was advised to do due to my early age. I paid that with the same cash, so in one go I introduced an artificial element both inside and outside my self, but don't remind me!). 12_ Did you study music when you were a child? No, I always wanted to and I spent many hours playing my grandma's pianoforte before starting the elementary school, when no one was in the house but the nanny. There was no money to pay for a private music tutor, and I was the fourth child and my elder sister had had many years piano lessons and then dropped. I liked to compose the sounds that were in my mind, and then repeat them and extend them. One day, to facilitate the process and learn the notes, I drew all the DOs on their relative keys. Since then on, I was forbidden to touch the piano, threatened of hands cut off. 13_ Do you come from a family of artists? No, but my mum was a teacher of Latin and Classical Greek, and she had an incredible immagination and the capability to invent and narrate amazing stories. Also, the house I grew up in was very big and beautiful and full of books of any kind. 14_ What do you think about women and technology? In general, I prefer to think about sex if I have nothing else to do. In particular, I think technology helped a redefinition of genders by introducing the concept of machinic identity, as opposed to human identity. Basically, genders are not such substantial differences anymore. All in all, I am a bit bored of the issue. 15_ Artists who influenced you? Re figurative artists, I have a strange obsession with Bronzino, his psychedelic, bizarre, apocaliptic bodies without weight, and I definitely have a fashination for Fernand Leger. Then Marcel Duchamp and Marina Abramovic, but also Sonia Cillari and Kurt Hentschlager. And I never got over Plasticman and Aphex Twin! 16_ Intellectuals? Heraclitus, Spinoza, Deleuze, Paolo Fabbri, Algirdas J. Greimas, Antonio Caronia... 17_ Writers? Gianni Rodari, Italo Calvino, Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Bulgakov, Jean-Paul Sartre, H.P. Lovecraft and Sigmund Freud. 18_ Will you go back to Italy one day? I don't think so. Notes: [1] - Funny enough that computer ended its life in Amsterdam, whose logo is, in fact, xxx (I didn't know any of that at that time. [2] - At the end of 2003, when I had just moved to Amsterdam, ziplip was relocated in the United States. Soon after, the free encrypted service was discontinued due to the American law: you should not provide privacy for free, if you want it, you have to pay for it.