- original acoustic places -
ole.01 festival
First Prize at the OLE.01 Festival Internazionale della Letteratura Elettronica.
PAN (Palazzo delle Arti Napoli) in 2014.
spare parts sound project
The project aims to repurpose everyday objects and materials as musical instruments.
Spare Parts Sound Project © was founded in 2011. These objects are fitted with an electroacoustic setup consisting of small speakers and microphones. Containers and pipes are generally equipped with speakers sized appropriately for the object. Conversely, smaller pipes or components like strings and springs are fitted with contact or electret microphones.
To control these components, a small custom console is used, featuring self-built pre-amplification and amplification circuits calibrated for the required power. This is integrated with a basic mixer that allows for the blending of two or three microphone inputs with their respective audio outputs. The system is entirely power-independent, running on a 12V battery.
Through the mixer-console, the instruments are interconnected, offering various feedback possibilities. Beyond their inherent resonances, the objects are influenced by the surrounding environment (the venue, the performer, the surface they rest on, external vibrations, etc.). In this system, the environment acts as an additional interacting tool: the space functions as a “modulating” element, adding natural reverberation to the feedback loop and becoming an instrument in its own right.
Performances with this electroacoustic setup are driven by feedback—a chaotic and unpredictable phenomenon that makes it nearly impossible to reproduce identical sounds or gestures (except for specific resonances tied to the objects’ physical properties). Furthermore, because the setup lacks a recording or playback system, the performer must generate new soundscapes in real-time. This “imposes” a responsibility on the performer regarding the formal quality of the piece, which can only be refined through the extemporaneous mastery of the sounds just produced.
The performer manages the interaction between the objects, creating sound textures and musical gestures. Their primary role is to manipulate the objects while adjusting the potentiometers on the console. The setup can accommodate multiple performers, up to the maximum capacity of the system (two, in this case). Performers facilitate interaction between the speakers and microphones, creating an electroacoustic feedback system. This feedback is primarily characterized by the natural resonance of the objects themselves.
Finally, as the setup is highly sensitive to environmental vibrations, the performer must study and adapt their gestures to the specific acoustics of the performance space. Consequently, the result consists of ever-evolving sounds, inherently linked to the acoustics of the venue, with significant variations in form and musical content between different environments.