21-09 / 15-12-2024
The core idea of this project was to make these two realms communicate, despite their long distance, their occasional conflict, and their rare ability to engage in a “friendly” dialogue on equal terms.
The software Real Time has precisely the task of creating such a dialogue. Developed with LIM, the Laboratory of Musical Informatics at the State University of Milan, it aims to act as a super-consciousness that relates the natural acoustic landscape to the human process of writing scores.
How does all of this happen? It begins with a microphone recording that is read by the software, which contains a pre-loaded track, a score, which then acts as if it were doing rhythm training exercises (e.g., solfeggio) in real time. When the software recognizes that there is a sound in the acoustic environment, a noise that has a frequency close to a known one, then it uses this proximal note.
Unlike what one might expect, no pre-sampling or machine-learning devices are used to investigate the soundscape. In this sense, it is a software that denies itself.
In the gallery’s garden shed, I installed a sound sculpture that I called Joog Box. The word “Joog” derives from the Creole, and it means “noisy” or “messy”. Thus, it matches the results returned by the real-time software, which also works within the sculpture, whose content relates to the composers of the Venetian school. The object itself is made of super-mirrored steel.
It, therefore, mirrors the outer environment. With this work, I wanted to further underline the visual relationship at the core of the work: the clash between anthropic culture and nature, embodied here by the dialogues of the trees, the garden, the lawn, the musical score, and the compositions contained within the various tracks.
(Alessio de Girolamo)
Curated by Manuela Lietti.
Photo credits: Andrea Rossetti, Riccardo Banfi.