Teatro Arsenale, Milan, Festival Electronica, 5 May 2008
For the conference on noise curated by Steve Piccolo and Undo.net (Bang Bang, Spazio Oberdan, 28 April 2008, as part of the exhibition Rumore, with the support of the Province of Milan) we asked artists from all disciplines to send us an audio file lasting 5 seconds that in their opinion could represent the idea of “noise.” A webpage presented the results, for reading and listening (still accessible here). But the operation did not stop there. Having identified and gathered these noises, it was time to react to them, to take back control in a certain sense, imitating the sounds and making them become the ingredients of a musical or perhaps protomusical experience. If noise also means interference that threatens our comprehension of meaning, as in cases of an overload of perceptive stimuli, Walter Prati illustrated the concept by misunderstanding (on the phone) the intended title of the performance, hearing “The Choir of Musicless Sounds” instead of “The Choir of Meaningless Sound.” The only location in which a person could truly get inside the interaction between participants, noises and instruments was in the middle of the audience. Therefore the video included here is also an illustration of the concept of noise, because the point of audition of the video camera makes the instruments tend to overwhelm the enthusiastic and very interesting efforts of the spectators. The spectators and the musicians were imitating sounds from our noise survey, which they could hear in a single earbud, and the spectators were also imitating the sounds made by the instrumentalists (Steve Piccolo, Matteo Pennese, Walter Prati, Gak Sato).
Listen to the recording. Here the sensation of being there is much more vivid, because the microphone was embedded inside the audience.
Per la conferenza sul rumore curata da me e da Undo.net (Bang Bang, Spazio Oberdan, 28 aprile 2008, in concomitanza con la mostra Rumore, con il sostegno della Provincia di Milano) abbiamo chiesto a artisti di tutte le discipline di mandarci un file audio di 5 secondi che per loro doveva rappresentare l’idea di “rumore”. Potete visitare la pagina Bang Bang per leggere e sentire i risultati. Ma l’operazione non finiva li. Avendo identificato e raccolto i rumori, era il momento per reagire, per riprendere il controllo in un certo senso, “facendo il verso” ai rumori e facendoli diventare gli ingredienti di un’esperienza musicale o forse protomusicale. Se rumore vuol dire anche interferenza che compromette la comprensione di un significato, a volte generata da un sovraccarico di stimoli percettivi, il grande Walter Prati ha dato il suo contributo per illustrare il concetto, sentendo “il coro di suoni amusicali” invece di “il coro dei suoni senza senso” (The Choir of Meaningless Sound) quando gli ho comunicato il titolo della serata al telefono. L’unico posto dove potevi veramente godere l’interazione tra pubblico, rumori e strumenti era in mezzo al pubblico. Dunque anche questo video illustra il concetto del rumore, perché dal punto di udito del videocamera gli strumenti tendono a coprire gli sforzi veramente entusiasmanti degli spettatori.