Luca Forcucci (1971) is an Italian and Swiss composer, artist, scholar and visiting professor living and based in Berlin. The music and artistic research observe the perceptive and subjective properties and the field of possibilities of consciousness as the first-person experience. The works are electroacoustic compositions, installations, performances, videos, photography and texts. He investigates, too, transcultural aspects of the sonic arts in Southern and Western Africa and Brazil as a field of possibilities for practice-led research by combining ancestral musical instruments with electroacoustic ones through improvisation methods. His work received many international accolades and is regularly presented in contexts like 50th Experimental Intermedia Festival 2023 in New York City, Cyfest Festival 2022 Yerevan, ISEA 2022 Barcelona, Swissnex Japan, Ars Electronica 2021, Museo Reina Sofia 2020 Madrid, ISEA 2018 Durban, ISEA 2017 Manizales, The Lab San Francisco, Festival Multiplicidade Rio de Janeiro, Municipal Art Center Hélio Oiticica Rio de Janeiro, Ciclo de Música Contemporânea Salvador de Bahia, Shanghai RockBund Museum, MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts Rome, Biennale Arcipelago Mediterraneo Palermo, House of Electronic Arts Basel, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Palais de Tokyo Paris. In 2023 he is visiting professor at the Faculty of Music of the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil, and he is a regular guest professor in many universities worldwide since 2010.
Forcucci achieved a PhD in Music Composition, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University in the UK in 2015. This had included research in cognitive science at the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland, where he explored cognitive neuroscience of out-of-body experiences with a scholarship from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, and support from Zürich University of the Arts. He also conducted his research at GRM/INA (Groupe de Recherches Musicales / Institut National d’Audiovisuel) in Paris, University of the Arts and TU Electronic Music Studio Berlin with a European Erasmus Scholarship, and at NOTAM (Norwegian Centre for Technology, Art and Music) in Oslo. He achieved a MA in Sonic Arts from Queens University of Belfast in 2007. He studied electroacoustic music with the Swiss composer Rainer Boesch in Geneva, and Al Comet, former member of the iconic electronic music band The Young Gods, produced his early compositions.
Forcucci has won numerous prizes and residencies internationally like The Site-Mapping.ch Swiss Digital Art awarded by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture for a research in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. The Art & Science Scientific Delirium Madness residency in the Silicon Valley was awarded by the Djerassi Foundation to investigate the bodily sound and data of a dancer as the initial source for a composition. He was one of the first resident invited to the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai to explore the noise and experimental musical and media scene of the city. Forcucci was nominated in the arts at the World Technology Summit in New York 2011 and was finalist of the Luigi Russolo Prize 2019. The music is published on labels like Subrosa Bruxelles, Crónica Electronica Porto, Glistening Examples USA, mAtter Tokyo, Syrphe Berlin, Universal, and LFO Editions. He publishes his research for MIT Press, Springer Press or Cambridge Press.