sosta#1

alessandro de francesco_sosta #1 project description sosta#1 (stop#1) is a sound installation - performance 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. The atmosphere was completed by a low but shiny afternoon light, created through use of window shutters. A choice of the poems of my cycle 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 sound assisants (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. Parts of the audio were proposed as playback, but a relevant part of the treatments was realized in real-time (the whole multi-channel spatialization and some of the filters, delays, plate reverbs, ring modulations, etc.), and a half of the cycle was also read in real-time (other parts were played back). No external controller was used: as an aesthetical choice, everything was done through softwares. The only hardwares consisted in the mouses, in two audio-interfaces and in the microphone preamplifier. It is also important to underline that all the sounds created came only from the reading voice. technical details material 7 brown armchairs 3 cathodic monitors 7 white wooden pedestals white sound-absorbing panels 8 speakers 1 Shure KSM27 condenser microphone cables hardware 1 Millennia-Media Td-1 recording unit 2 firewire multi-channel audio interfaces 2 Macintosh PowerBook laptops 1 DVD-player software Digital Performer 4.61: hard-disk recording, digital effects, live electronics and multi-channel spatialization, mixing; AudioSculpt 2.4: sound analysis, sound design, pitch shifting, time stretching; Diphone Studio 4.0: sound morphing; Pluggo: filters, digital effects; Max/MSP: live multi-channel spatialization, live electronics. credits Alessandro De Francesco: project, poems, voice, digital sound treatments, live electronics, set-up Manuel Billi: backstage video, video advice, set-up Alessandro Brucini: video editing of the poems and video advice Giulio Carmassi: sound advice Claudia Gabler: translation italian-german of the poems Paolo Ingrosso: electronic 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 Angela Sanmann: translation italian-german of the poems Marco Settimini: video advice, set-up Verena von Koskull: translation italian-german of the poems