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sosta#1 - READING ENVIRONMENT

a reading environment is a poetry reading where voice and text are put in relation to space through spoken voice digital processing and multi-channel spatialization.

This reading environment has been realized with live and playback voice processing devices at University of the Arts, Berlin, 21 and 22.07.2006 (see below for a detailed description).

Credits:

Location: Room 307, Universität der Künste Berlin (www.udk-berlin.de)

 

Manuel Billi: video advice, set-up

Alessandro Brucini: video editing of the texts and video advice

Giulio Carmassi: sound advice

Alessandro De Francesco: project, texts, voice, voice design, morphing, treatments, installation.

Paolo Ingrosso: digital sound advice, live electronics, sound assistance, set-up

Giovanni Moretti: computer supervision

Antonio Pisanò: installation&media advice and assistance, live electronics, set-up

Sarada Rauch: installation&media advice

Marco Settimini: video advice, set-up

Martin Supper: coordination, production, advice

 

Languages: Italian and German (translations by Alessandro De Francesco, Claudia Gabler and Angela Sanmann).

Production: Alessandro De Francesco and Studio für Klangkunst und Klangforschung, Universität der Künste Berlin (http://www.udk-berlin.de/sites/unik/content/index_ger.html)

 

DESCRIPTION

sosta#1 (stop#1) is a reading environment realized in the room 307 (Musiktheater-Raum) at the Universität der Künste Berlin (Fasanenstraße 1b) on the 21th and the 22nd of july 2006.

The space consisted in a series of armchairs, white pedestals and three television monitors. These objects were conceived to appear in their everyday lifestyle and at the same time in an “out of context” situation. The disposition of the objects was apparently irregular, but created at the same time several perception paths inside the room. A fundamental element of the installation’s structure was that the armchairs, the pedestals and the monitors were disposed in order to allow people to see the monitors only if they didn’t sit on the armchairs, so that people were invited to move inside the room. The atmosphere was completed by a low but shiny afternoon light, created through use of window shutters.

A choice of texts from sosta nel sottopasso in dormiveglia was represented on the monitors. The screening of the poems (only words, without any video element) was coordinated with the sound of my voice reading the poems. The reading and the sound representation of the poems was conceived as follows: a big pedestal partially hid (from the perspective of the visitors entering the room) a desk where me and two other artists (Paolo Ingrosso and Antonio Pisanò) were sitting during the whole installation time. Through several sound treatment processings (see the technical details) my voice was modified, designed and spatialized. Playback and real-time sound treatments were mixed together following the structure and the semantics of the work. No external controller was used: as an aesthetical choice, everything was done through softwares. It is also important to underline that all the sounds created came only from the reading voice and that, differently to other kinds of sound poetry, everything was done in order to make the poems understandable: the digital treatments were not covering the prononciation of words and a German translation was represented on the screens together with the Italian text.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

material
7 brown armchairs
3 cathodic monitors
7 white wooden pedestals
white sound-absorbing panels
8 speakers (at the corners of the room)
1 Shure KSM27 condenser microphone
1 dvd player
cables

hardware
1 Millennia-Media Td-1 recording unit
2 firewire multi-channel audio interfaces
2 Macintosh PowerBook laptops

software
Digital Performer: hard-disk recording, playback and live digital effects (ring modulator, plate, reverb, delay, parametric equalizer, spectral effects), multi-channel spatialization, mixing;
AudioSculpt: sound analysis, sound design, pitch shifting, time stretching;
Diphone Studio: sound morphing;
Pluggo: playback and live filters and digital effects (spectral filters, feedback network, echo, granular synthesis, delays, reverbs, vocoder);
Max/MSP: live multi-channel spatialization.