6 giugno 1999
2005 | Sound installation for mute poetry and bells
During some studies about noise I analyzed few remarks of Edgard Varèse on the nature of sound. The French-born composer celebrated the freedom of noise, he thought of sound and noise as a sonic matter to be organized. Fascinated by his thoughts I started working on this installation project. I wanted to show in a clear and definitive way the physical body of sound while keeping safe its intrinsic musicality.
6 Giugno 1999 (Marco Donnarumma, 2005) consists of a simple stereo setup. Two loudspeakers and a subwoofer are placed in a corner of the exhibition space.
The loudspeaker system reproduces an audio track consisting of the lowest part of the audio spectrum of a recorded human voice. The voice recites a poetry titled “6 Giugno 1999″; words were written as a requiem to a dead friend.
Few small metallic bells are suspended from a fixed point on each loudspeaker. Acoustic energy propagates through the speakers forcing bells to vibrate following the rhythm of the verses, thus a new sonic texture takes life.
A celebratory atmosphere fills the exhibition space. Listeners can not understand words because the poetry is reduced to an essential form. It becomes pure sound, sonic sensitive matter.
Project keywords
Requiem, death, sonic matter, celebration, reading, poetry, silence; Edgard Varèse, noise, organization, structure, sound propagation, sound object, indeterministic composition; stereo, sub frequency, low frequency, resonance, filtering, equalization.
Selected exhibition
- Contatto, Cultural Centre Candiani, Mestre, Venice, Italy, 2005
- Aula 2 Work in progress, Venice Academy of Fine Arts, Italy, 2005