Biography

Useless Idea is the stage name of Cesare Bignotti, an Italian interdisciplinary audiovisual artist. His work, which includes painting, music, video, and images, is characterized by a dreamy and captivating aesthetic, as well as themes that promote post-humanism and alternative media use, where technology and tradition coexist in a unifying and multimedia imaginary.

He began his career as a visual designer and concept artist in the field of alternative communication. He graduated from the university of Design with a thesis on the subject of digital audiovisual aesthetics. Collaborating in the 2000s with organizations such as Fabrica and Colors. Thanks to this experience, during the same period he exhibited in important institutions such as the Shiodomeitalia Creative Center in Tokyo, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Kunsthaus in Hamburg, and Bevilaqua la Masa in Venice, experiences that have consolidated art as a territory of experimentation. In 2010, he won the European Biennial of Montrouge in Paris. 

As a composer, he has released music for specialized labels such as WeMe and Suction Records. His music is inspired by multiple genres that are often quite distant from each other, such as: Intelligent Dance Music, Braindance, Drum’n Bass, and Acid, with incursions into Classical music, Ambient, and Musique Concrète, experimenting with techniques like Field Recording and Circuit Bending. Given his versatility as a producer, in addition to Useless Idea, he releases music under various pseudonyms such as: Seven Nights Alone, Dual, Another Name, Aliasing, Nathan Mayem.

Since 2008, he has been a professor of digital art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa and works in the fields of visual and sound design, contemporary art, and research.