Gianna Santucci

MFA Painting, 2025

Using industrial stage materials, percussive instruments, video projection, text, sound, and light, I make multi-media installations and paintings that ask us to reframe our relationship to power and control.

These materials subvert expectations of primary use and reveal new functions. I tap into the unexpected noise-making capacities of electronics and percussive instruments, transforming them into objects that drone, hum, shriek, and whistle. In these installations, different registers of sound are created and transmitted between objects. A speaker relaying audio from a digitally simulated resonating body causes a sympathetic vibration in a crowd of snare drums. A closed audio feedback loop creates a private conversation between drums.

The work acknowledges the roles rhythm, noise, and technology have in organizing and controlling bodies and flows of information. Through this, I realize the potential productive and liberating capacity of these tools, and their ability to disrupt and communicate beyond conventional means.