Category Archives: Announcements

The Torniella, Southern Tuscany, Weather Station is online

From May 29, 2019, the weather data recorded by the station installed in Torniella on May 10, during a visit in the Farma Valley by Politecnico di Milano, are online. The pibinko.org networking has been collaborating with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, giving periodic talk in the Milanese university.

The basic weather data recorded are visibile in real time from the address http://www.pibinko.org/weather-in-torniella-southern-tuscany/

The station has been inserted in the meteonetwork network (it is in fact the first sensor in the Province of Grosseto to appear there). The meteonetwork page also provides archives and various reporting option.

The weather station in Torniella represents an interesting addition to other sensors and monitoring activities which the pibinko.org network is undertaking in the area since 2008, especially with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project and the Farma Valley Community map. In the coming months the pibinko.org working group, together with local businesses and associations, and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano will coordinate on definining additional uses for this new information source in the valley.

For more information: info@pibinko.org o +393317539228

BuioMetria Partecipativa is invited to showcase its activities in Croatia

The BuioMetria Partecipativa project was invited by the organizers of the first Croatian conference on light pollution to give a presentation.

The conference spawns by the increase in interest on the topic in the country, following the approval of the Croatian light pollution law in 2018 and will be held between June 14 and June 16 in Lopar, on the island of Rab.

A summary of the event will be provided after mid June.

Releas of “It Never Ends” by Luca Guerrieri

Scheduled for May 20, 2019. Here is the presentation of the album.

Renowned Italian DJ & producer Luca Guerrieri delivers his debut long player ‘It Never Ends’ The 15 track album crosses a multitude of electronic genres pulling in inspiration from over 25 years of experience within the industry. With a mixture of unreleased music added to 6 of his standout tracks the album stands as testament to the Italian’s expansive career, culminating in this rich body of work.

Guerrieri has already seen past releases like ‘Harmony’ gain huge support along the way by the likes of Pete Tong on his Radio 1 show et al, so this body of work comes with an existing and reputable catalogue of past work.

The LP itself includes standout tracks like ‘Tears’ and ‘Colony’ the variation across multiple genres testament to the Italian’s versatility.

The fascinating ‘Synthesis’ draws progressive electro laden synth inspo from electronic heavyweights Daft Punk, alongside the likes of ‘Colony’, ‘Mellowtronic’, ‘Beltempo’ and the excellent ‘Eleven’

Techier cuts like ‘Involved’ take a more main room trajectory showing the length and breadth of the musical output on this record. ‘Go Back’ a shining example of uplifting and grooving classic house. A euphoric piano cut, laden with dramatic strings and expertly crafted crescendos, this is a summer time peak player!

Other highlights include ‘Destino’ and ‘Neptune’. An expansive, progressive synth masterpiece built for the big stages. Nestled right next to that is ‘Holding Me’ a progressive trance inspired release, another single that pulls on the euphoric heart strings with a simple enchanting vox sample layered over arpeggiated goodness.

Guerrieri brings the record to a close with lead track ‘It Never Ends’ if any track from the LP was undoubtedly inspired by the iconic robotic duo then this is it. Another hugely infectious summer cut, packed with punk!

A body of work that has taken 25+ years to compile, ‘It Never Ends’ is a timely reminder that away from the mainstream of major labels there’s an ample showcasing of amazing work waiting patiently to be unveiled

pibinko will be at Meet Music 2019 (June 25)

Meet Music is the first Italian meeting conceived for music professionals, or young folks interested in working in the field, focused on deejaying and record production. The event, now in its third edition, is always held in Follonica, along the Southern Tuscan coast, in the stunning venue of the Fonderia Leopolda Theatre.

The meeting will take place from June 25 to June 27. In the morning of Tuesday 25, you will also hear a talk from your friend pibinko, who, together with other professionals will make an analysis of the current situation of Italian night life.

For all details on the event schedule, registration, and other information, you may visit the site https://www.meetmusic.it/ (in Italian), or write to info@pibinko.org

Torniella (Tuscany), May 11, 2019 – When Politecnico di Milano met the Maremman experts

On Saturday, May 11, 2019, Opportunities for protection and promotion of inner rural areas from the collaboration of local expert networks and research institutions.

We will be reviewing some of the most significant initiatives where the presenters have been involved, in the fields of hydrology, meteorology, and in the integration of culture, environment, and open innovaiton. The talks will highlight the socio-economic impacts of these activities, and will propose opportunities for collaboration in the coming months.

For a little more context on the DICA Mission to Southern Tuscany in collaboration with pibinko.org, please see this article from April 16.

For more information, or to confirm your participation, please write to info@pibinko.org or call +393317539228.

May 22, 2019: Presentation of the pibinko.org Network in Brussels @ Piola Libri

A PDF version (3.5 Mb), is also available, suitable for hard copies

In this event Andrea Giacomelli, aka pibinko or Jack O’Malley, will provide an overview of the pibinko.org network and its activities in the promotion and protection of lesser known assets in the areas of culture, environment, and open innovation.

In the same evening there will be a tasting session with typical products from Southern Tuscany, delivered jus the day before by pibinko (who lives in the area), and a temporary exhibition of some books, part of the pibinko.org distributed library.

Last, but not least, some information will be shared on the final preparations for the upcoming tour in Germany, via Politecnico di Milano (May 30-June 3) by the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band. This is a rock-blues collective created by Jack O’Malley and three other experts (two of which under-30 rockers making records and touring Italy since 2011), as a development of the pibinko.org outreach and empowerment programme.

For more information: info@pibinko.org or +39 3317539228

Torniella (Southern Tuscany), May 11, 2019: Opportunities for protection and promotion of inner rural areas from the collaboration of local expert networks and research institutions.

As a part of the mission by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in Southern Tuscany, on Saturday May 11, 2019, from 10.30 AM to 12.30 PM there will be a meeting on opportunities for protection and promotion of inner rural areas from the collaboration of local expert networks and research institutions.

The location for the meeting will be the music hall of the Associazione Filarmonica Popolare di Torniella, in piazza del Popolo 15.

There will be presentations by Alessandro Ceppi, DICA meteorologist, Andrea Giacomelli pibinko.org coordinator, promoting since 2007 interdisciplinary research and technology transfer initiatives in Southern Tuscany, Giuseppe Milleo, senior technician at the “Fantoli” hydraulics lab in Politecnico di Milano, and Mario Straccali from Pro Loco Piloni-Torniella.

We will be reviewing some of the most significant initiatives where the presenters have been involved, in the fields of hydrology, meteorology, and in the integration of culture, environment, and open innovaiton. The talks will highlight the socio-economic impacts of these activities, and will propose opportunities for collaboration in the coming months.

For a little more context on the DICA Mission to Southern Tuscany in collaboration with pibinko.org, please see this article from April 16.

For more information, or to confirm your participation, please write to info@pibinko.org or call +393317539228.

May 5, 2019: Come to the first “buioblitz” in Southern Tuscany @ Quanto Basta bookshop, Grosseto

Here is the PDF version of the event flyer (2.7 Mb)

In the framework of the services on light and darkness offered by pibinko.org with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project, here is an “aperitivo” to start listening to light with a different ear, and to co-design the BuioMetria Partecipativa 2019 Summer Campaign. The event will also see the world premiere presentation of site from where it is possible to observe the Milky Way (in Italian) by day.

All this will be on the avenue to the upcoming conference on interdisciplinary protection and promotion of the night sky, scheduled for May 16 at the University of Brescia, and where the BuioMetria Partecipativa project is managing the scientific program of the event.

RSVP by May 4 by mail (bmp@pibinko.org), phone (+39 331 7539228) ore coming to hear us with the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band and Peter Crivelli at Caffè Ricasoli in Grosseto, also on May 4.

Why did we call this a “buioblitz“? This is a sort of loose adaptation of the bioblitz concept, merged with the noun “buio”, which means darkness in Italian…in case you were not aware, with pibinko.org we do a lot of cross-over with words and names…

May 3, 2019, Alghero (Sardinia): Talk on the Alteration of Light at Night and Marine Life at the Faculty of Architecture with the Lab Boat

As a spin-off of the March 13 workshop at the Osservatorio Ximeniano in Florence, Elena Maggi received and invitation to present the activities by the University of Pisa in the context of the interdisciplinary protection and promotion of the night sky work which is happening with the BuioMetria Partecipativa project and with the National Research Council in Florence (Institute of Biometeorology).

The event is part of the Lab Boat project, and you can register to attend on this page.

For you information, the image used for the event is by Federico Giussani, our main nightscape photographer. It was shot in a site called “Le Rocchette” close to Castiglione della Pescaia (Southern Tuscany) a couple of years ago. The guy you see contemplating the sky is in fact Federico.

We would also like to take the opportunity of this event in Alghero to remind you of previous experiences by the BuioMetria Partecipativa project in Sardinia (2008a Cagliari, 2008b Monte Arcuentu, 2012 Alghero, 2017 Sassari, Cagliari, S. M. Navarrese ecc)

May 10-12, 2019: Politecnico di Milano’s DICA goes to Southern Tuscany

Above the title, part of a rainbow between Montemassi and Sticciano, Southern Tuscany, April 14, 2019 (see the full picture here)

Between May 10 and 12, 2019, a delegation from Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will undertake a mission which will bring a meteorologist and the chief technician from the hydraulics lab from the famous university to visit various sites in Southern Tuscany. This is in the context of the consolidation of existing environmental monitoring and research projects conducted in the area by some rural communities.

Motivation

This initiative is not casual: it spawns, in fact, from a historical relation between the Department and the pibinko.org network (whose coordinator, Andrea Giacomelli, obtained his MS and his PhD from Politecnico di Milano), dealing since 2007 with projects intertwining environmental engineering, land planning, culture, and open innovation.

The results of such activities have often been unusual, and at times unexpected, considering the composition of the core team of the network, in Tuscany. This group does not have a “traditional” scientific committee, with representatives from academia or official research institutions: its scientific and technological strategies are based on the bottom-up integration of international expertise of some members with traditional knowledge of other members, and all of them reside in hamlets in the hills of one of the areas with the lowest population densities in Italy.
Starting from this setting, the group has developed collaborations with European projects, received awards, intercontinental invitations to showcase their work, and started formal training activities, always maintaining their home base in an area which is known in most of the world for its enchanting landscapes, stunning natural features, and an extremely enticing food and drink menus, but does is not generally perceived as a territory providing ideas for research or innovation.

Technical schedule and outreach events

The May 10-12 mission is composed of a technical part and an outreach part. In the technical part, Alessandro Ceppi and Giuseppe Milleo from DICA will first of all install a weather station in the Farma Valley, half way between Siena and Grosseto, to be integrated in the MeteoNetwork infrastructure. Together with pibinko.org they will then visit various sites between the Farma Valley and the Gulf of Follonica, in order to get acquainted with some peculiarities of this territory and of some agri-food and tourism businesses, which to date they have known only through the talks which Andrea Giacomelli has been giving at the Politecnico since 2011.

The technical activities will be complemented by two outreach events:

  • Saturday, May 11 AM, in Torniella, a symposium concerning opportunities for promotion and protection of inner rural areas through the collaboration of local expert networks and research institutions.
  • Saturday May 11 PM, location to be defined, a geomusical moment with components of the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band.

Please note: a detailed program for the May 11 schedule will be published at the beginning of May.

Previous experiences

If we scan our records, we will find that the DICA mission is not the first scientific delegation visiting Southern Tuscany via the pibinko.org network.

In 2012 we had the presence of a working group from the ENVIROFI project, concerning the testing of apps for tree biodiversity citizen science, with workshops in Torniella and Florence. In 2015 we hosted, again in Torniella and Piloni, about a dozen of experts on artificial light at night issues, from six different countries.

Actually, the first initiative where we had significant international visitors in the pibinko.org context is represented by 2009-2010 New Years’Eve celebrations organized in Torniella. That event was seen by the team as the summary of three years of work, and led to the discreet yet not informal presence of some researchers and officers from European institutions, who were interested to understand the context originating a series of creative projects. This eventually triggered a series of opportunities to share ideas and initiatives in high-level venues such as joint NASA Workshops, or community engagement events linked to large conferences, such as the First INSPIRE Mashup in 2010 in Krakow, Poland, or the first INSPIRE conference mini-footbal tournament.

In this line of work, the new element for the May 2019 events is that they will derive from a co-design exercise between DICA and the pibinko.org network, thus representing a novelty in our experience.

After the Southern Tuscan mission

The Metalliferous Hills Jug Band will return the visit of the DICA team with a talk on May 30 at Politecnico di Milano

In addition to not representing a casual operation, the DICA mission is also not isolated: in fact it is part of a rather rich calendar of events, managed by the pibinko.org in collaboration with various public and (mostly) private subjects. During Spring these will take place in Tuscany, Lombardy, Belgium, and Germany.
Among other events, we must flag a national conference on interdisciplinary protection and promotion of the night sky, at the University of Brescia, where pibinko.org is managing the scientific programme of the event. Last, but absolutely not least, at the end of May we will have an event at Politecnico di Milano which will represent a “dual” version of the May 10-12 experience. If you are in Milano on May 30, you will be able to find a delegation from the Metalliferous Hills (and from the Cecina Valley geothermal district, close by) hosted at DICA, giving a talk explaining how pibinko.org went “From Sound Engineering to Engineering with Sound“.

For more information: info@pibinko.org or +393317539228