On Sunday, July 12, “Confluences”—the audiovisual project created by RUFA and Saint Louis for Videocittà 2026—will come to a close at the Gazometro in Rome with the final two live performances: “suspended floating point operations” and “Tear Model”

7:00 p.m. — *Suspended Floating Point Operations*, by Cor Langerak. Ensemble: Iacopo Franceschini on electronics, Leonardo Cervini on bass, Caterina Zanella on vocals

The title is the conceptual key to the work: floating-point is the numerical format underlying every digital simulation—the way a computer represents a continuous quantity such as the flow of water. Viewed another way, it is also the point left floating in a vacuum—the unit to which the river is ultimately reduced—and it carries with it its own margin of error: the small, permanent loss of precision that every discrete measurement of something continuous cannot avoid. The work is based on slow-motion footage of the surface of the Tiber, which flows undisturbed until the current begins to distort it: where the water moves faster, the image breaks down, and the pixels are carried along in the direction of the flow. In the final movement, the image collapses into its smallest unit, and the water reappears as a cloud of drifting three-dimensional points—a simulation generated from the original footage that then breaks free from it, continuing to flow on its own. “The river,” writes Langerak, “is no longer filmed: it is calculated.”

Accompanying the images is an ensemble featuring Iacopo Franceschini on electronics, Leonardo Cervini on bass, and Caterina Zanella on vocals.

8:00 p.m. — *Tear Model*, by Angela D’Onghia and Simona Vacca. Ensemble: Iolanda Isabella (electronics), Silvia Olivier (piano), Angelica Bianchi (vocals)

“Tear Model” explores the possibility of artificial sadness through the computational simulation of emotions. The starting point is water in its most intimate form: a tear. Using an artificial intelligence model capable of predicting human neural responses to audiovisual stimuli, the performance translates pain into data, images, and sound, exploring the boundary between emotional experience and algorithmic processing. If artificial emotions are clearly contrived, the authors ask, to what extent can we really say that human emotions are authentic and not, at least in part, learned? The tear thus becomes the point where the body and the algorithm meet, where the line between genuine emotion and simulated emotion grows increasingly blurred.

Angela D’Onghia (Martina Franca, 2001) and Simona Vacca (Cagliari, 2001) are a duo of multimedia artists based in Rome. Their practice spans audiovisual performance, installation, and hybrid territories, creating experimental scenarios in which the body and technology become tools for interpreting the present.

The ensemble—comprising Iolanda Isabella on electronics, Silvia Olivier on piano, and Angelica Bianchi on vocals—creates the soundscape of the opera.

This double performance brings the Confluences series to a close. Three evenings, five works, one fundamental question: How much of the human experience—from water to emotions—can still be said to be unmediated by technology?

Full Credits
suspended floating-point operations — Visual artist: Cor Langerak. Ensemble: Iacopo Franceschini (electronics), Leonardo Cervini (bass), Caterina Zanella (vocals).
Tear Model — Visual artists: Angela D’Onghia, Simona Vacca. Ensemble: Iolanda Isabella (electronics), Silvia Olivier (piano), Angelica Bianchi (vocals).

Confluences, organized by RUFA and Saint Louis College of Music, is part of the Videocittà Watercult 2026 program, the Festival of Vision and Digital Culture, which returns to Rome’s Gazometro from July 10 to 12, 2026, dedicating its ninth edition to the theme of water.

Light installations, immersive, interactive, and virtual reality experiences, digital art, DJ sets, and live audiovisual performances will bring Europe’s largest urban industrial archaeology site to life.

Videocittà Watercult 2026

• Via del Commercio 9-11, Rome (Metro Line B, Garbatella)
• Doors and ticket office open to the public at 7:00 p.m.
• Admission: €20 per day; three-day pass €50; free admission for children under 12
• Discounted tickets (20%) for students, teachers, and staff at Saint Louis (promotional code in the newsletter)
• About: https://www.videocitta.com/