About the event

Human civilizations have always been based on the relationship with water and the ability to use it as a resource for daily life, communication and transport. Water is also a subject of study for science in its various forms and states, the object of extraordinary discoveries and at the center of questions that are still unsolved today. The history of the evolution of our planet and of life itself on Earth revolves around the role played by water and the oceans. For the writer Arthur C. Clarke, calling our planet "Earth" was a very unfortunate choice, it would have been better to call it "Ocean". In the contemporary era of climate warming, water has become a scarce resource and at the same time a potential cause of human and environmental catastrophes. The reading concert explores the multiple meanings and images of water between science and society, between past and present. We focus in particular on three turning points: the development of the classification of clouds by Luke Howard (1802); the relationship with water and swimming, thanks also to the innovation that arrived in Europe through two Native Americans (1844); the scientific and popular work on the sea as an environment by the marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson (1907-64).

All are welcome to this free performance of words and piano music on the theme of water. The reading concert with Prof. Massimiano Bucchi and pianist Arturo Stalteri explores the multiple meanings and images of water between science and society, between past and present.

Musical program

Songs

Water Music (Aria), Georg. F. Haendel

Aqua, Sakamoto Ryuichi

Smoke on the Water, Deep Purple

Le nuvole, Fabrizio De Andrè

Drowning by Numbers 3, Michael Nyman

Under the Sea, Alan Menken

Com'è profondo il mare, Lucio Dalla

By This River, Brian Eno

Bridge over Troubled Water, Paul Simon

Biographies

Massimiano Bucchi professor of Science and Technology in Society and Director of Master SCICOMM, University of Trento, has been visiting professor in Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. He is the author of several books (published in more than 20 countries) and papers in journals such as Nature, Science and PLOS. Among his books in English: Science and the Media (Routledge, 1998); Science in Society (Routledge, 2004); Beyond Technocracy (Springer, 2009); Newton’s Chicken (World Scientific, 2020); Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology (3rd ed. 2021, ed. with B. Trench, Routledge). From 2016 to 2019 he was editor-in-chief of the international journal Public Understanding of Science. 

Arturo Stàlteri graduated in piano at the Alfredo Casella Conservatory in L'Aquila. He studied in Rome with Vera Gobbi Belcredi and in Paris with Aldo Ciccolini. Since 1989 he has collaborated with Rai Radio 3, for which he has hosted numerous programs. Stàlteri began to make himself known with the group Pierrot Lunaire, one of the historical names of progressive rock of the seventies, a group that was able to mediate between rock and classicism and with which Stàlteri recorded two albums for RCA. His piano interpretations of the music of Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Franco Battiato are famous.

Bucchi and Stàlteri have performed several thematic concert readings (for the anniversary of the atomic bomb, of man on the moon, of Einstein's Nobel Prize) successfully presented in numerous prestigious venues in Italy and abroad: from the MuSe of Trento to the SISSA of Trieste, from Palazzo Ducale Genoa to Canossa Castle, Zurich ETH, Villa Nobel Sanremo.