The documentary was shot between May and September last year, mostly in Tatti, Massa Marittima (Southern Tuscany), with a scene in the nearby Sassofortino.
The pibinko.org network was entangled in the project from day 1. Wolfgang Scheibe, aka Tattistampa, is one of the two main characters (the other one is Roman Arens) whose live in Maremma is documented. Furthermore, the Jug Band Colline Metallifere ended up being featured in various moments. In fact, Wolfgang’s storyline is about the preparation of the end-of-Summer and end-of-Jubel Tour concert, so you will see the band in rehearsals, interactions about the event preparation, and the event itself (and what an event that was!).
In the past days we have been watching the documentary with great attention, also considering our commitment for over twenty years now to dynamics between “aliens” and “locals” in rural areas (e.g. see https://www.pibinko.org/german-paradais/ and more articles you will find from this link).
Many many thanks to Susan Gluth for the opportunity, while we continue our work “on the ground“(and on the script for the pibinko.org network docu-fiction, codename Amenity=0).
Wolfgang Scheibe, aka Tattistampa, is one of the two characters (the other one is Roman Arens) whose life in Maremma (Southern Tuscany) is told in a documentary by Susan Gluth for Arte TV. And what happened…the Jug Band Colline Metallifere ended up being featured in the story!
We see Wolfgang, juggling between his hand-made printing business and other whereabouts in the hills, while he is organizing the September concert for the closing of the Jubel Tour, so you will see a couple of rehearsals, and the final event.
[PLEASE NOTE: For the moment we are publishing this article with no translation in English, so feel free to use your favourite translation aid, or to inquire with us if you need more details: segreteria@unirural.org or +393317539228. In any case, if you are interested in being part of the BMP team for this campaign, we do have instructions in English https://www.mappare.org/en/bmp-en/. For more explanations on the pibinko.org network update policies on translations, pleasethis article].
Dopo le prime sei settimane dal lancio della campagna 2026 della Buiometria Partecipativa (9-1-2026), dopo tre dal lancio dell’app che ci serve per raccogliere le osservazioni (che – ricordiamo- possono essere fatte da grandi e piccini), e dopo il passaggio di lunedì scorso a Roma alla conferenza Mappe di Luce, cominciamo a condividere un po’ di risultati.
E’ prestissimo per trarre conclusioni sui dati raccolti, anche se -avendo iniziato a documentare la cosa nel 2008- un po’ il quadro ce lo abbiamo.
Come nelle feste, quando cominciano le danze ci vuole qualcuno che si butti e inizi ad animare la pista: ringraziamo intanto, nella dozzina di persone che si sono fatte vive manifestando interesse a partecipare dalla Puglia al Piemonte, quelli che hanno materialmente hanno cominciato a trasmettere dati: Angelo (Circolo Legambiente Costa Etrusca), Luciano (CNR IBE), Franco da Polveraia, Federico Giussani, il nostro storico fotografo di paesaggi notturni, e Carlo Madrini (entrambi attualmente in missione in Marocco), Pardo da Livorno. Ecco che cosa hanno combinato, insieme a pibinko (cliccando su un punto si apre una finestra con varie note di campo, oltre al link alla foto scattata sul posto…vedrete anche altri dati “di servizio” ma ricordiamo che l’applicazione e le interfacce sono in versione iniziale):
I rilievi eseguiti in questa fase sono utilissimi per mettere a punto il flusso di raccolta delle informazioni e alcune ipotesi di lavoro. Intanto ci hanno fatto trovare un sacco di luci “nobbùono” ma anche situazioni “bbùono”, come avrebbe detto Andy Luotto. Per il momento vi lasciamo licenza di “clic” e non dilunghiamo in spiegazione verbose, che possiamo dare a chi fosse interessato, vedi sotto per i contatti.
non è una gara (ma potete ricevere premi se partecipate)
non è un progetto che parte con un finanziamento esterno (ma potete sostenerla)
non ha direzione scientifica esterna (ma collabora dal 2009 con istituzioni di ricerca in tutto il mondo)
e inoltre che
Vi può dare crediti formativi (sia negli studi che nella professione), attraverso il programma uni*rural* (https://www.unirural.org)
Se partecipate in modo non estemporaneo, vi metterà in relazione con diversi personaggi interessanti e/o ganzi e vi farà ripensare al vostro rapporto con la luce (e magari illuminare meglio e risparmiare due lire di bolletta elettrica)
Il 9 giugno compie 18 anni come progetto, e stiamo organizzando la festa.
Per chi fosse curioso dei dati raccolti nel periodo 2008-2025
Eccovi la mappa interattiva “storica”. Mano a mano andremo a integrare i dati della campagna 2026 in quella generale.
I am glad to share the program of a conference which will take place on Feb. 23, in Rome, at the Italian Geographic Society, and where our buiometria partecipativa project will be featured as the last talk, following experts from different disciplines.
The SGI is in Palazzetto Mattei in Villa Celimontana via della Navicella, 12 Rome (ph: +3906 7008279). It will be possible to follow the talks online at: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/32506399255263?p=OvTMx8D46jwYIHicMG. The official language of the conference will be Italian.
This one is for those who struggle as residents in amenity destinations. The first two stanzas were written sometime around 2022, and the rest was developed more recently.
The lyrics further elaborate on why people go places, on the relationships between “norths” and “souths”, etc. In this case we deal with German-speaking tourists, but we can apply the same to folks from other northern-language areas (and, always, without generalizing). The lyrics work on the base of a very “mean” Nineties tune. For more lyrics and songs on the same topic:
Chords: Ab, F, G, Cm (they never stop), and you have the video below to give you the groove. For more information, comments, details, and booking: micalosapevo@pibinko.org or +393317539228
German Pàradàis
Sono un tedesco | sono nato in germania – I am a German guy I was born in Germany
e da quando ho 12 anni | di viaggiare a sud ho smania – And since I was 12 I craved to travel South
ho girato per la Spagna | ho girato la Croazia – I’ve been wandering in Spain, I’ve been wandering in Croatia
ma è solo qui in Toscana | che il mio spirito si sazia – But it is only in Tuscany that my spirit is satiated
si sazia di tortelli | di paesaggi ed aria fresca – it gets satiated by “tortelli”, landscapes and fresh air
e non vado mai a caccia | ogni tanto forse a pesca – and I never go hunting, occasionally I might go fishing
io non cerco troppa gente | sono un tipo riservato – and I don’t go looking for too many people, I am a reserved type
spesso compro vecchie case | in un villaggio abbandonato – I often buy houses in abandoned hamlets
con l’estate si viene sai | a visitare il German Paradise – In the Summer we come you know, to visit the German Paradise
con la bici a ruote grosse | a me piace pedalare – I like to cycle with my bike with big wheels
ma se non sto molto attento | rischio poi di rotolare – but if I am not careful I might by rolling down
giù da un poggio o da un crinale | tutti posti molto ganzi – down from a hill or a ridge, all very cool places
dove spesso va il turista | alternando cene e pranzi – where tourists often go, between dinners and lunches
non pensando ad operai | contadini e muratori – not considering workers, farmers and builders
che mentre lui pedala | sono presi dai lavori – who, while he is pedaling are busy on their jobs
I lavori da cui lui | ha preso una vacanza – the jobs from which he took a break
e mentre sta in Toscana | vede il cielo in una stanza – and while he is in Tuscany, he sees “the sky in his room”**
con l’estate si viene sai | a visitare il German Paradise
Ho dipinto questo quadro | ma non devo criticare – I painted this picture , but I don’t mean to criticize
il grande indotto commerciale | lo sviluppo immobiliare – the great business revenue, the real estate development
garantito dal turista | quando vien dal settentrione – guaranteed by the tourist when he comes from the North
con i grandi portafogli | che ci lascia la pensione – with his big wallets he leaves his retirement pension here
derivata dai mestieri | degli stati protestanti – deriving from jobs in the protestant states
mentre noi si sta col Papa | la Madonna e tutti i santi – while we are here with the Pope, Mary and all the saints
a curare tutto l’anno | questo caro territorio – taking care all year long of our dear territory
che lui visita col sole | ma d’inverno è un po’ un mortorio – which he visits when it’s sunny, while in the winter it’s not very lively
If you would like to participate, not just in Southern Tuscany, since the project is active on a global scale (and remembering that it is not just about volunteering, since there are options for educational and vocational credits, and collaborations): https://www.mappare.org/en/bmp-en/
This is a call for a 300-hour music residency in the heart of Tuscany, half way between Pisa and Volterra, with lessons starting in mid March and ending in December (pausing during the summer months) with a final event in Florence. The tutors are very high-level music professionals from the Italian musical scene.
The call is open also to non-Italian citizens, provided that they are residing in Tuscany and have a knowledge of Italian sufficient to interact with others, so: here you have a full presentation in Italian to start with:
Toscana Produzione Musica e Salty Music APS, riunite in SA.MU.R.A.I. RMT ATS, presentano la Residenza Musicale Toscana SA.MU.R.A.I., nata per selezionare e far crescere nuovi talenti.
Un progetto gratuito rivolto a giovani musicisti, cantanti e cantautori residenti o domiciliati in Toscana, tra i 18 e i 35 anni, in possesso di diploma di istruzione secondaria di secondo grado, disoccupati, inoccupati, inattivi e occupati che intendano avviare un’attività nel settore musicale.
Il percorso formativo, coordinato da Matteo Zanobini (manager musicale e fondatore di Picicca Management), unisce lezioni teoriche e attività pratiche, con un focus sull’applicazione: musica d’insieme, produzione artistica, sperimentazione e co-creazione.
Da marzo a dicembre il percorso prevede 50 giornate di attività formative, per un totale di 300 ore, seguite da docenti di primo piano, in sei aree formative: Artistica interpretativa, Musica d’insieme, Tecnica e produzione, Management e discografia, Comunicazione e promozione e Aspetti legali, amministrativi eorganizzativi. A queste si affianca il Fuori Residenza, composto da dieci giornate di attività trasversali, tra cui un incontro con Dario Brunori, visite didattiche ai tour di Brunori SAS e Lucio Corsi, oltre a una fase di post-residenza. Il percorso si concluderà a dicembre con un evento finale aperto al pubblico, un concerto presso il PARC di Firenze.
Le attività formative si svolgeranno prevalentemente presso la Tenuta di Camugliano, tra i comuni di Ponsacco e Capannoli (PI), dove i partecipanti conviveranno insieme in un contesto naturale che favorirà la concentrazione e la creatività.
Sono aperte le selezioni online: le domande di iscrizione potranno essere presentate fino alle ore 12:00 del 24 febbraio 2026, attraverso il sito samurai-rmt.it. Il percorso è gratuito ed è prevista una borsa di residenza pari a 25 euro al giorno, per un totale di 1.250 euro per l’intero periodo.
I candidati selezionati saranno invitati a una selezione in presenza presso l’ExWide di Pisa nei giorni 4 e 5 marzo 2026.
Al termine di questa seconda fase, saranno individuati i 15 partecipanti, motivati a intraprendere il percorso, scelti, sulla base di capacità tecnicche, creatività, originalità e presenza scenica, da una giuria composta da Andrea Fornai – coordinatore artistico Salty Music APS, Salvatore Barbato – direttore artistico The Cage Theatre, Marina Mulopulos – vocal coach, cantante, Matteo Zanobini – esperto di management e discografia, Rossella Falco – esperta comunicazione e promozione, Daniela Di Tommaso – rappresentante ATS Samurai RMT, Francesco Mariotti – Rappresentante ATS Samurai RMT.
SA.MU.R.A.I. è finanziato dalla Regione Toscana nell’ambito del PR FSE+ Toscana 2021–2027 e rientra tra le Residenze Artistiche Musicali sostenute da Giovanisì, il progetto della Regione Toscana per l’autonomia dei giovani.
With January’s waning moon here we go with the next BuioMetria Partecipativa (participatory night sky monitoring), campaign, turning 18 on June 9.
With the coming of age of our project we will be conducting, together with those who want to join, measurements of night sky quality with the “buiometro” (dark-sky meter), and other observations to better understand how light pollution works, how it can be reduced (without worsening our lifestyle), and how to use light in a more aware way.
The activities for this year are part of the course on “Nightscapes and dayscapes (link in Italian) by uni*rural*. This is the non-formal education program by the pibinko.org network, in collaboration with various partners. Active participants will be receiving educational credits which in some cases may be “spent” with your education institutions.
To start building our new team in the past months we have already contacted some wannabee “buiometristas”, especially in the southwestern quadrant of Tuscany (Pisa, Leghron, Grosseto). Then as you know, with the pibinko.org network we are open to contacts from any land, so please contact segreteria@unirural.org or +393317539228 if you are interested.
In February 2008, over a phone call between two environmental engineers about options for an amateur astronomer holiday in Southern Tuscany with a territorial marketing plan based on lesser-know aspects of the same region, the BuioMetria Partecipativa (or BMP) project was conceived.
At the time the project was the second globally (and the first in the western hemisphere) to propose lending to citizens sensors to conduct night sky quality measurements. Without initial external funding (and, in fact, never with a lot of external funding), the project initially had a significant media impact in Italy (RAI Radio 2, TG2 Costume e Società, Mickey Mouse magazine with a “Speciale Cacciatori di Buio” ecc.) and started to develop collaborations with numerous sectors of society (see this summary from 2017)
In the winter of 2010-2011 BMP promoted the creation of the first national coordination for the collection of light pollution data from fixed monitoring stations. This happened in collaboration with Veneto Stellato, Università di Roma Tre and various amateur astronomer associations. Namely, the BMP team, after launching the idea, took care of writing the code to handl the data harvesting from stations which were using different communications protocols, the aggregation of all monitoring data in a web database, and an online query/reporting interface. The system was active between 2011 and 2019 and in its peak phase was providing data from ten stations from different Italian regions.
The European dimension
Between 2013 and 2016 BMP also had a liaison role between Italian actors and European research on light pollution issues. Andrea Giacomelli was appointed as the primary point of contact for Italy in the “Loss of the Night” project in the COST research exchange program. In the same period formal collaborations were started with the University of Pisa and the National Research Council’s Institute of Biometeorology (now Bioeconomy) in Florence. Between 2016 and 2018 BMP also had collaborations with the Stars4all HORIZON project.
Awards and recognitions, in Italy and abroad
The first award recived by the BMP project was in 2009. This was for a national contest called “La Seconda Luna”, and BMP came in fourth out of 120 applicants, curiously with a prize for a category which did not exist in the contest rules. In 2015 the project was invitated for a presentation at the Eye on Earth conference in Abu Dhabi (where it turned out to be the only Italian project out of over 600 participants). In 2019 Andrea Giacomelli was awarded the title of “dark sky defender” by the International Dark Sky Association, for the dissemination and awareness work done in the previous ten years.
Apart from “serious” recognitions, BMP also had an impact which we may define “emotional”. For example, in 2020 a book of short stories about darkness “Il Buio” (Erasmo Libri) had a story inspired by the BMP project (and the story actually won a literature award).
BMP, regulations, and policy
BMP in time also had an active role in governance support (maybe this is not by accident, since one of the two founding engineers has also been part of the drafting team for a European Directive). In 2012 BMP sent eight comments to the revision of the Piano Ambientale ed Energetico della Regione Toscana (the Tuscan master plan on environment and energy). Five of these observations, including the one which led to declaring the night sky as a tourism resource, were accepted. Furthermore, the BMP experts have periodically been invited to provide advice on lighting and energy efficiency issues on various administration levels.
In 2018-19, following the “Capraia Night Sky” symposium (co-organizzato with UNIPI and CNR IBIMET), BMP proposed once again the idea of a coordinating body across various subjects involved in outreach, administration, and research. This did not go forward, but it would not be complicated to reboot the process.
Since 2020
The 2020 pandemic gave a severe blow to participatory activities: it would have been very difficult to run a project involving hand-to-hand instrument logistics. However, the core of the BMP engine was adapted to operate in strict lockdown mode, with the Participatory Lithology project, which also led Andrea Giacomelli to be invited to be an alumnus of the Robert Bosch Foundation.
In the past five years the BMP project has essentially operated as an “on-call” project, however our effort in weaving connections across subjects who ofter operate independently (but live, in any case, under the same sky) has not stopped. In particular, we have consolidated the use of music, in addition to photography, as a means to facilitate the dialogue among different parties, and always using maps as a minimum common denominator for analysis and communication. We also got to observe the Milky Way by day, as shown in the video below!
Educational credits
Over all this time, BMP also had a practical role in the educational field. We have covered primary, secondary, and high schools, universities (including lectures and tutoring for ERASMUS students), and professional charter organizations (architects, engineers, environmental guides). To learn more on how to acquire educational credit with the BMP project: segreteria@unirural.org or +393317539228
After publishing our “year in review” article (see link), in preparation for our upcoming initiatives we are giving you a few more statistics on our web presence. Here you can see as a list (or in the header image as a map) an overview of the countries from which somebody have seen at least once of our blog posts over the past twelve months, in alphabetical order:
If we extend the analysis to all of our logs (which start from 2019, even though the web site is on since 2006), to date in the world there are only a dozen countries from which our stories have not been seen.
Since the very first online moments of the pibinko.org network (the first web page written by pibinko is dated 1994, and the first site un pibinko activities was launched in 2006) we have proudly maintained our contents at leat in Italian and English (please note that on our sites we have around 6000 articles.
For our first tour in Germany with the JBCM we actually started a line of articles in German, with Wolfgang Scheibe providing the translations in addition to hand-made prints and one-string basslines. After the months we looked each other in the eye and said “Really?“.
Translating has never been a technical issue (pibinko also works as a translator and reviewer for international companies). However, with the launch of the uni*rural* (and after publishing a couple of months ago an announcement for translators) we start with the following line, considering the significant amount of material we expect to write:
We will be stopping the creation of the English versions of our articles (unless this is required by a customer or has a specific value for the network).
If you have issues reading our material in Italian, feel free to try your favourite translator (just reminding that, with the online ones there is a history of mistakes made on pibinko text))…
If, at any moment, your favourite translator will not suffice, we are available to provide clarifications and further information.
Otherwise, we will end up spending more time translating than doing the things we write about! Thank you for your understanding, and good luck with the improvement of your Italian on the pibinko.org sites! We will be re-assessing the case at the end of May 2026.
(**) Per la precisione bisogna escludere testi di canzoni di cui abbiamo curato la traduzione et similia, che comunque sono una quota trascurabile del totale
