Uncertain/Possible is a sound installation defined by the geometric figure of a cube whose physical identity is not immediately perceptible. Indeed, the cube is empty and given that it does not have delimiting walls, like a Oteiza sculpture, it is a structure which is permeable, receptive, an out and out resonator which relates to its surrounding environment. Thoughts fly to Le Corbusier and to his definition of visual acoustics and the acoustics of forms. This architect believed that works of art with their forms are not simply placed in an environment but interact with it, between the forms and the surrounding space there is a kind of flow:

“The effect of the work (architecture, statue or painting) on the surrounds: waves, screams or noises, lines which spring out like rays, as if the result of an explosion; the near or far site is upset, hit, dominated or caressed by it. Reaction of the environment: the walls of the room, their dimensions, places with the different weights of their façades, the expanses and slopes of the scenery and up to the nude horizons of the plain or the folds of the mountains, all the environment weighs down onto this place where the work of art is located, a sign of human will, it imposes it’s depth or relief onto it, its hard or soft densities, its violence and sweetness”.

In Uncertain/Possible the relationship is more complex because the interaction is two-fold: on one hand as regards the structure for what it is within the space, like a part of an everything, and at the same time, the expression of a connection between the container and its contents. On the other hand it has a dialectic relationship with the listener/viewer flexing itself according to the pathway choices made. Said creative dynamic follows the idea of a work of art as the place of the opening of the senses. Uncertain/Possible is the location of experience which is “multiple” where reality and the sense of possibility melt into an inseparable unicum. In this manner the emptiness collects fragments of other thoughts, possible universes, faraway sounds. Traces of the constellations suspended inside create a concave-convex space which multiplies the acoustic planes amplifying the listening possibilities. The sedimentation process naturally also involves the plane.

The latter, the location of the journey is not perfectly horizontal but is marked with three circular imprints of different sizes which depict the path like an out and out erosion, a sort of lunar surface. Indeed the three circles are like drops which encounter the surface at different places and times, unpredictable, their complexity cannot be completely embraced by the experience, the reflections of which invade the entire space. The emptiness between the circles is the area in which the relationships are defined and inside the listener moves during the performance but not in a preset manner.

The open configuration of the space indeed allows that there not be a single entrance and exit but different access possibilities and pathways. For this reason the entire structure is defined as the location of possibilities. Once the listener has entered they will move inside and setting themselves into a relationship with their own perception of the spatial and sound event that will envelop them arriving from different points in the space. The same altimetric variations of the pathways come into play in the perception experience and the listener is faced with a choice of pathway to follow. Indeed in certain points the emptiness is at the same level as the circles making it possible to access them and move inside them.

The sounds which give life to Uncertain/Possible have a direct relationship with the structure itself. It can be said that they are the result of the transformation into sound waves of the space in question. The sources of sound are distributed in different points of the space and each point connotes a sound pathway thought out depending on its location within the structure. For example the music set for the three circles photographs, from the perspective of formal process, the movement of water before and after the fall of a drop: stasis – disturbance – new equilibrium.

For the listener-spectator, depending on the pathway chosen, different acoustic solutions present themselves with a view to unveiling and discovery; sound pathways – experienced as form - magmatic, watermarked, counterpoint of masses and counterpoint of lines. In common, the idea of circularity and therefore, ideally, of the inexistence of a beginning and an end.

Uncertain/Possible poses a series of problems; it is not simply an installation but a pretext to provoke springing from a work of art.

Uncertain/Possible raises the question of the relationship between space and sound proposing a sound of space i.e. music whose architectural structure has the same roots of identity as an architectural space. This is also valid for music i.e. the relationship between sound and time which is also expressed in architectural forms. If time is form and form is space then time is space. Therefore a time without Kronos.

From this the problem of simultaneity that is of suspension, if possible, of the chronological structure – narrative to launch a relationship with the location, a relationship made up of moments.

The idea of providing different listening points disseminated inside the installation, sources of multi-directional sound means rethinking listening as a bringer of sense, moving away from mechanical and systematic listening, from listening as repetition of that which is already known and opening up to listening of sound in space, to the rediscovery of preplatonic listening categories.

 

CREDITS:
Design: Francesco Fiotti
Music: Gianvincenzo Cresta
Digital model: Simona Papa