THE BODY IMITATES THE LANDSCAPE
FOR TRANSDUCER SPEAKERS TAPE (PRE RECORDED VOICES) ELECTRONICS AND ENSEMBLE (Amsterdam 2019)
The body imitates the landscape is an interactive sound installation and a live concert. The project is a collaboration between the visual artist Adi Hollander, composer Claudio F. Baroni and the ensemble Maze. The premiere will take place during The OtherAbilities festival in Amsterdam, at Broedplaats LELY.
The project is inspired by Michitaro Tada’s book Karada (“the body” in Japanese). The sound installation translates the textual experience of reading the book into a sensory one. In the book, Tada presents his years long study of the “school of the body”, while his writing about the human body actually talks about culture, memory, science, expression, and reality.
About the installation
In this installation Hollander was fascinated with how Tada presented the human body as an object among other objects, but also as a being that sees and touches other objects. She created a space for the audience made of seventeen objects in different shapes with waterbeds, 60 wooden benches and 180 transducer speakers embedded In them. The installation enables the human body to expand its possibilities of hearing. Listening not only through the ears, but using different body parts as well, and experiencing an intimate and private relationship with the object similar to the one between two people sharing a secret. The work attempts to address, through different perspectives, the “body” as archive of memory through sounds, text, gestures, movements, and space.
About the Music:
The core idea for the music is a whispering voice, which is something that is actually perceived much more as a noise than as a melody. The whispering voice is also called un-voiced speech to distinguish it from normal speech. The composition is written to disclose hidden harmonies which exist in normal speech, and to create a work that is made from the tension between the flow of “un-voiced speech” and the sustained harmonies that are brought to the surface by music instruments. The script is based on text quoted and abstracted from Mitchitaro Tada’s book Karada.
Claudio F. Baroni Short Bio
Claudio is an Amsterdam-based composer specialized in experimental music. His work can be described as a systematic approach oriented towards the investigation of the nature of sound and the passage of time. Since 2001 he has worked on numerous commissions for internationally renowned ensembles and projects. Baroni has also collaborated in many multimedia projects with artists from different disciplines. He studied piano and sonology at the Universidad de Humanidades y Artes de Rosario, Argentina, and composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Netherlands.