Matteo Bettini

Lately: doing some long aluminum sticks to point at things / possibly become tent poles / measuring tools / ground marker etc etc. They kept in position some drawings at @mamarotterdam for the last two months

Well……… 3 years ago today I was cycling, walking, hallucinating along the Rhine-Alpine Corridor’s gas pipeline, which since 1973 has connected Italy to Dutch gas fields. Today is carrying neither Italian or Dutch gas anymore, but lives on as just one thread in a much larger, much more complicated energy web. I followed an endless series of poles stuck in the ground, cartographic leftovers left by mapmakers so they could later find what they had hidden previously on paper. Here some pieces that never came out of my hard drive. A lot of awkward filming, shaky hands, hands that cover the lens, hands that point at somewhere etc etc. And @4khd__

🪨 Introducing –1 Residents: Matteo Bettini and Sonia Górecka @600mt (Matteo Bettini) is an information designer and visual artist striving to understand what lies between the map and its territory. Through different mediums ranging from graphic interfaces to videos and installations, he explores the narratives, ambiguities, and power structures embedded within visual information. @s.gorecka s.gorecka is a multimedia artist and designer exploring contemporary translations of the aesthetics and meanings of local heritage, through remediation processes that bridge analogue and digital realms. Her practice combines textiles, image-making, and software-driven visual experiments. It unfolds through fragments of lore, informal archiving, and speculative gestures that blur belief, memory, and materiality. 22.86 × 11.43 × 11.43 is a collaborative research project focused on the disappearance of a large erratic rock in north-eastern Piedmont (Italy). The rock, once a visible landmark, was gradually cut and removed for its material value in the late twentieth century. What remains today are dispersed urban fragments produced through its extraction, and a name on a map marking where it once stood. This project investigates how the object shifted in meaning over time—from natural formation, to sacred presence, to exploitable resource—and how such transformations are reflected in fragmentary archives and images. During the residency, Matteo and Sonia approach the work as a form of digital archaeology, experimenting with different modelling and imaging tools to bring together fragments of the story, address gaps, and extend it further. 🧩 Visit Matteo and Sonia’s ongoing work and research process in –1 Digital Lab or via our are.na channel 🔗 Images: 1. Portrait Matteo and Sonia 2. Photographic postcard. North Side of the rock. Author Unknown, ca. 1920. 3. Granite crumbs found on site. Matteo Bettini and Sonia Gorecka, 2024. 4. _Transfer, Jaquard Weave (16x58 cm). Matteo Bettini and Sonia Gorecka, 2025.

A year ago, we played with a thousand blurs and timeouts, building the most chaotic interface possible for the 2025 edition of @transmediaresearch.institute . The whole navigation is built around: pointing at something and find out. If you don’t move the interface goes sleepy zzzzzz

• Field Note: A Place without a Name by Matteo Bettini In A Place without a Name, Matteo Bettini approaches the toponymy of the Monte Rosa massif as both subject and method, tracing how language precedes and structures our perception of territory. Matteo treats toponyms as spatial annotations, suggesting that to name a place is to determine how clearly it comes into view; words operate as a form of resolution that long predated maps in defining the visible world. Rather than neutral descriptors, names emerge here as historical artefacts shaped by state power, religion, imagination, and scientific inquiry. Accumulating over centuries, these words form a layered strata of naming practices. Unfolding as a glossary-turned-visual inquiry, the project reveals how mountains become legible through systems of navigation, resolution, and imagination, and how even “nameless” peaks testify to the persistent urge to fill every blank space. Matteo Bettini @600mt is an information designer and visual artist currently based in Rotterdam (NL). His work focuses on the visualisation of information, its spatial dimensions, and diagrammatic translations. He explores data visualisation and information design at large as a form of image-making: a tool to render things ambiguous, simplified, or, at times, deliberately complex. For the full field note, please visit our website. #cartography #landscape #geography #information #toponymy

My paper tape moodboard 1. Taped corner for invisible crash at Oud House Rotterdam 2. Construction work curtain in Rotterdam west 3. Quick repair tape 4. Tape from posters on the door of a studio I subletted for two days 5. Via Giacosa Milano tape work 6. Small grid 7. Another quick repair 8. The great wound repair, Rotterdam 9. Something something

'Transfer' [Textile, 16x58cm] Doodles on a rock surface 'Transfer' is part of the ongoing collaboration 22.86x11.43x11.43 between Sonia and Matteo, where they explores and reinterpret the story of a dismantled rock formation in northeastern Piedmont.

A diagram is an outline, a structure that holds potential meaning. Earlier this year, in June, together with @studio_folder , we built a sunless sundial: an architectural diagram on the walls of @circolodeldesign . On this structure, not with the sun but with the beamer’s light, several datasets on press freedom in Italy emerge. The data span the period before and after the 2022 general elections (spoiler: after that, it only got worse). It includes several indices and metrics, such as: the number of bills introduced by the ruling government that actively limit press freedom; the Media Concentration Risk, which measures how few people own TV, newspapers, and radio in Italy; documented media freedom violations, including verbal or physical attacks on journalists; and more. As it appears on the wall, it shows an overlapping amount of data ready to be interpreted and collectively discussed by who is watching The information featured are from the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), and AGCOM. I managed to publish something 3 days before the exhibition is over …. Run and have a look in Torino!!! together with @studio_folder @rachelestagni 3D printing and logistical struggles @silwwia Sound design il cucciolo del suono @bonfeghen 
24h video mapping experience @donato.fwn

A cartographic story 🕸️

Few weeks ago I spent 4days in a room with 50 other people - trying to record, transcribe and visualize in real-time their thoughts and proposals to rethink a museum in Turin, @museomaca . For a week I explained my creepy silent presence to the other participants as an in hybrid of an assembly stenographer, a bird watcher and a courtroom sketch artist. The result has been a series of printed booklets in an envelope containing chaotic transcriptions commented and edited by the speakers, some diagrams of how the space has been arranged while deliberating and voting ideas and finally the participants proposals. Supporto psicologico e tecnico @serena_gramaglia @nighuo grazie Curated by @circolodeldesign @mariofaranda @vsacchetti

A protective layer:: a piece of decoration:: an unintentional drawing – yet very intentional, if you like:: an imprecise measurement, thought to look precise:: a repetitive action to fill the time:: a message to myself Until 29th of June – If you walk past @oud.house.rdam you may find some paper tape on the window facing Gijsingstraat!! Part of “Always Container, Sometimes Contained” exhibition curated by the best @s.gorecka and @__helupka__ during @rotterdamarchitectuurmaand 🕯️❣️ Supported by @cbkrotterdam

Last spring a series of diagrammatic artefacts came to light, seemingly from a distant society - or perhaps a very close one - that used these images to prove and demonstrate its democracy. Mysteriously preserved through time, these boards contain pieces of complex visualisations, etched and drawn from hundreds of open-source datasets. However, the fragments lack a legend, employ different units of measurement, and divide space with their own grid. They are accurate charts, yet require contextual interpretation to be fully understood. On display, ready to be interpreted, until October 13th at the @bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. Later in 2025 at @skd.museum in Dresden. Together with @mariofaranda @il.violinista @studio_folder ❣️