Massimiliano Cerioni (Italy, 1986) is an award-winning composer, sound engineer, sound artist, educator, and Max Certified Trainer. He explores new sonic possibilities through coding, generative algorithms, and augmented instrument design. He also performs on stage with his creations. His artistic production includes acousmatic and electroacoustic music compositions, live-electronics, audiovisuals, music for video, performances, sound-art installations, and multimedia projects. He is from Pomezia (Rome, IT) and lives in Berlin.

Cerioni graduated with an MM in Electronic Music from A. Casella Conservatory of Music in L’Aquila (Italy) under the direction of Michelangelo Lupone and Agostino Di Scipio. He has been an intern for Institutions like Centro Ricerche Musicali of Rome, INA-GRM of Paris, and GMEM of Marseille. He attended workshops with Gavin Bryars, Alvise Vidolin, Khyam Allami, and Giorgio Sancristoforo.

As an educator, Cerioni has worked for several educational institutions in Italy and abroad and teaches sound design at the Mediadesign Hochschule in Berlin. He also conducts his teaching activity in one-to-one sessions in person and via Zoom, teaching audio signal processing, electroacoustic music composition, sound design, DSP for music application in Gen, and generative algorithms.

As an audio engineer, he worked for companies like Agorà SRL, which made him assist in relevant projects such as the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. In 2020, he announced his audio plugin project Culto, made for releasing Max For Live devices for experimental sound design. From 2023, Culto plugins are distributed by Isotonik Studios. He accepts commissions for developing custom audio software and M4L device development projects, including works for the producer Albert Van Abbe and the audio hardware company Enjoy Lab.

As an artist, he participated in events like the Artescienza Festival in Rome, ICMC 2014 in Athens, Psychedelic Film and Music Festival in NYC, Live Performers Meeting, Venice Biennale Theatre College, Chilean Conexión in Berlin, Radius Collective Exhibition in Boston, CTM Festival in Berlin; his works have been featured in venues like National Academy of Dance (Rome IT), Contemporary Cluster (Rome, IT), Goethe Institut Rom (Rome, IT), Tempo Reale (Florence, IT), Teatro Vespasiano (Rieti, IT), Auditorium del Parco and Auditorium Shigeru Ban (L’Aquila, IT), Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, GR), TEUC (Coimbra, PT), Kuopion Musiikkikeskus (Kuopio, FI), HAU2 (Berlin, DE), Kunsttage (Basel, CH).

Cerioni has received awards, commissioned works (Cycling74 and Artescienza Festival), and distinctions, including placing 1st at the Italian national art prize Premio Abbado in 2015 under the Electroacoustic Music Compositions category.

In 2017, Cerioni presented his first augmented monochord prototype called Metastring at Tempo Reale Festival in Florence. Coming from a long tradition of experimental luthiery in Rome that goes from the Eolian Harps of Mario Bertoncini to the Feed-Drum of Michelangelo Lupone, and built with the help of the luthier and engineer Maurizio Palpacelli, this instrument embeds an acoustic feedback chain system that gives infinite sustain to the string. He keeps expanding the research work, currently focusing on the 4th prototype. In 2019, he was in Stockholm (Sweden) as a resident artist at EMS — Elektron Musik Studion and a guest of the CM Lerici Italian Institute of Culture.

Since 2021, he has been a resident artist from SCOPE BLN in Berlin, where he premiered his video installation Inner Landscape inspired by Filipa Tojal’s paintings, his solo show Rebirthing — featuring an audiovisual performance and prints of digital artworks, and the collaborative Performance-Installation Obscuritas (2023), together with Silvia Morandi. Also at SCOPE BLN, Cerioni co-founded the collective Wasch, an intermedia art collective active in Berlin.

In 2022, Cycling74 commissioned him to create a MaxMSP Gen patch, for which he implemented a modified version of the Lotka-Volterra two-species competition-cooperation model as a sound synthesis system. In 2023, the same project was featured in the Radius Collective Exhibition Underline at the Midway Studios gallery In Boston and the Linea Festival in Biella, Italy; later on, it became a kinetic sound installation designed with the artist Fabrizio Di Salvo and presented at Kunsttage 2023 (Basel CH) and Scope BLN (Berlin, DE).

He is part of the artist collectives Wasch (Berlin) and Radius (US). Also, he collaborates with the online learning center Music Hackspace and several artists and professionals from different fields. Notable mentions: Molly Haig, Julian Zyklus, Pixie Fairy Lawn, Silvia Morandi, Function Store, Fabrizio Di Salvo, SaraBrown, Opale Studio, Valerio De Vita, reinfected me. He releases his music under Elli Records.