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Roberto Bocci is a multimedia electronic artist born in Siena, Italy. Over the past twenty years his work has evolved from painting through photography to computer-driven interactive multimedia installations. His artistic concerns encompass multiple points of view and questions of personal and social identity. Roberto's work includes multimedia sound and video installations, single channel videotapes, photographic images and interactive CD-ROMs for desktop computers.

Bocci was born in Siena, Italy from an Italian father and an English mother. At the age of five he lived in Buffalo for one year and then returned to Italy where he earned an industrial chemistry degree at the age of eighteen. His background and interests in chemistry and technology would be very influential on all of his work to come. As a teenager he also studied music theory and solfeggio and received a music degree in 1979.
At eighteen Bocci had a life changing experience. After a severe skiing accident he was in a coma for ten days and was hospitalized for one and a half years. In 1982, when hospitalized at the neurological clinic in Siena, Italy he met sculptor and artist Alberto Inglesi. Inglesi encouraged him to pursue his interest in art, drawing and painting. After recovering from his accident, Bocci continued to work in Inglesi’s studio and applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence where he studied painting from 1983 until June of 1987. At the Academy Bocci was influenced by the work of the Cubists, the Futurists and by the writings of Kurt Schwitters and Umberto Boccioni. These artists were influential on his ideas because they envisioned the potential of using technology as a tool to integrated different art forms and create a “…total Merz art work, which combines all genres into an artistic unity.” [Kurt Schwitters].

In August of 1987 Bocci was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study Painting at the State University of Albany, New York. In Albany, Bocci embraced photography as a medium that included both technical (chemistry, optics) and artistic elements.

In 1990 he received an MFA degree in Painting and Photography. Driven by an interest in expanding his knowledge of electronic multimedia, in 1992 Bocci enrolled in the Integrated Electronic Arts program at Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute. This innovative and revolutionary program enabled him to combine his Fine Arts, music and technology backgrounds and create art works that would envelop and reach viewers on multiple sensory levels. From 1996 until 2000 Bocci returned to Italy where he worked at Studio Art Centers International and created a digital arts program. In 2000 he was offered a teaching job at Georgetown University as the head of digital arts and photography.

As a lecturer, Bocci has taught at SUNY Albany, at Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute, at SAGE Junior College of Albany, at Studio Art Centers International and at Georgetown University. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Woodstock photography grant and numerous Georgetown University academic grants to fund the production of his work.

Bocci has exhibited his work in New York at: Universal Concepts Unlimited, The Knitting Factory, The New York International Video Festival, The “Vier de Kunstvlaai” Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, The 17th Tokyo video festival; Tokyo, Japan, and in numerous other international exhibition and screening sites.