A Tuning Study: Montepulciano

A Tuning Study: Montepulciano

sound installation

2024

Sound diffusion: quadriphonic

A Tuning Study: Montepulciano is a site-specific sound installation that originates from the mapping of the tonics, signals, and sound imprints that define the city's sound ecosystem. Deterministic and random processes of synthesis, intrinsically connected to the timbral characteristics of the recorded material through the processes of spectral analysis and auto-convolution, were used to generate a new soundscape, at once identifiable and imaginative. The soundscape was divided into three bands: the upper band (aerial), the middle band (proper to human activities), and the lower band (underground), each of which was investigated with the use of dedicated microphones and filming techniques, documenting the sound contexts both neutrally and through the solicitation of materials, vibrating bodies, mechanical objects and surfaces present in the areas of investigation, in order to analyze their timbral potential and activate a dialogue with the context.

 

Tracklist:
01 / Esterno Pozzo (5:00)
02 / Leave The Gun (4:47)
03 / Interno Pozzo (7:40)
04 / Avviamento (5:46)
05 / Let Ring (4:37)
06 / Parco (5:03)
07 / Terrazze (9:44)
08 / Acque (10:36)
09 / Mosaicing (3:40)

 

A Tuning Study: Montepulciano is a commission by 49° Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte of Montepulciano.

Performances
12/17.07.2024 - Chiostro del Comune, 49° Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte Montepulciano (IT) [premiere]

by Nicola

Lo Scoppio

Lo Scoppio

audiovisual fixed media

2023

Duration: 4'40''
Sound diffusion: stereophonic

Scoppio is a small town in the municipality of Acquasparta (TR), abandoned around 1950 following a series of earthquakes. It takes its name from the Latin Scopulus (cliff), due to its dominant position over the plain. Scoppio is a ghost town: the only access is a bumpy road and it’s permeated with peace and harmony, as nature is taking over everything. However, history and the genius loci are overbearingly felt, with a swarm of life permeating every stone. The video starts from the hypothetical discovery of a box of old photos of ancient inhabitants of the village, brought back to life and interacting with the landscape through a work that combines analogue and digital, experimenting with self-constructed photographic filters. The sound is defined by using concrete sounds from an imaginary unearthed memory box filled with everyday objects and mechanical toys. The soundscape created becomes the narration of a potential unrealized future, in a strong relationship with the images, to expose all the physical, historical, and remembrance fragilities of the place. Just as the Latin name suggests a concrete approach to timbre, its "translation" in Scoppio, as result of an elaboration by vulgar linguistic phenomena, becomes the key to understanding the electronic processing and synthesis used and the sound editing, emphasizing the contrasts with the appearance of unexpected sounds.

 

Music: Nicola Cappelletti
Video: Romina Bracchi Cirkus Vogler

Awards.
Zeugma Landscape 2023 Offical Selection.

Performances

18.09.2023 - Atemporanea Festival 2023, Auditorio Subsuelo, Conservatorio Astor Piazzolla, Buenos Aires (ARG).
05-08.10.2023 - Simultan Festival, Muzeul Corneliu Miklosi, Timisoara (RO).
29.10.2023 - Narnimmaginaria, Palazzo dei Priori, Narni (ITA).

by Nicola

b_k_n ()

b_k_n ()

fixed media

2023

Duration: 8'55''
Sound diffusion: quadriphonic fixed media

The piece is inspired by the the sculpture "The Broken Circle” by Beverly Pepper, an element of land art in the city of Brufa, in Umbria (Italy).

b_k_n( ) intends to restore the representation of a generating force, of an explosive event that produces the beginning of life and of the world, in a timbrical and structural dimension where the contrast between stillness and dynamism creates a formal balance poised between possibility and impossibility. The overall circular trend, from which sound structures emerge that offer as many interrupted paths of ascent and descent, interprets the materiality of the original work and its conflictual contrast with the landscape, reading it from different distances and according to different angles. The timbrical research aims to recall the materials used for sculpture (mainly steel and concrete), with the preparation of traditional instruments as violin and an electric bass guitar, to generate sound materials to feed many electronic synthesis processes (granular synthesis, re-synthesis and physical modeling) used to build the piece.
The result is a work that associates the materiality of sound and the use of residual timbres as citation s of the associated collective ancestral memory to the universal shape of the circle.

PERFORMANCES

11.10.2023 - Australasian Computer Music Conference, ElectroMUSE, UNE Sidney (AUS)
07.10.2023 - Seoul International Computer Music Festival 23, General Culture Center, National University of Education, Seoul (KOR)
07.10.2023 - Muslab 2023, Museo Antropologico Y De Arte Contemporaneo, Guayaquil (ECUA)
14.04.2023 - SICM Colloque International, Université de Lille, Lille (FR)
11.04.2023 - UNDÆ Radio #261, Radio Circulo (ES, ARG)

by Nicola

Le Jour et la Nuit A/V

Le Jour et la Nuit A/V

audiovisual fixed media

2021 - on going

Duration: 0'40'' - 4h20'00''
Sound diffusion: stereophonic

Le Jour et la Nuit A/V is the audiovisual version of the same title electroacoustic work for flute and electronics [>].

Le Jour et la Nuit A/V may be presented either as an audiovisual stand alone work or an audiovisual electroacoustic performance, in which pieces are accompanied by a found-footage video fixed media.

PERFORMANCES

09.11.2023 - SiNM 23, SESC Paço, Curitiba (BRA). Le Jour et la Nuit, fixed media audiovisual screening
28-29.10.2023 - MANTIS Festival, Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, The University of Manchester, Manchester (GB), fixed media audiovisual installation
10.02.2023 - Lund Contemporary, Odeum musikcentrum, Lund (SE). A/V performance. Flute: Agata Tuchołka. A/V electroacoustic perfromance *premiere

by Nicola

Halt And Catch Fire

Halt And Catch Fire

electroacoustic improvisation concert for violin double bass and electronics

2023 -

Duration: 40'00''
Sound diffusion: stereophonic | quadriphonic | acousmonium

HALT AND CATCH FIRE is an improvisational concert for acoustic instruments and electronics. It is the musical translation of an operational instruction that tends to build ambitious architectures, poised between electronic rhythm and timbre permutation, where the elements try to succeed and overwhelm each other in a growing and very rapid cycle that tends to the limit, until arriving at an inevitable collapse point. Halt and catch fire (HCF) is in fact a dummy assembly language instruction used to define instructions that bring the CPU into a state from which it can only be brought out with a reset.

 

Nicola Cappelletti: violin and electronics
Ferdinando Romano: double bass

Performances

 

10.04.2023 - Indigo Art Gallery, Perugia (IT) HACF #02
15.03.2023 - Murate Caffè Letterario, Firenze (IT) - HACF #01

by Nicola

Alla Coniugazione con il Cosmo

Alla Coniugazione con il Cosmo

theatre performance

2021

Duration: 55'00''

Declamation Alla Coniugazione con il Cosmo, made on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the death of Paolo Vinti.

 

Texts: Paolo Vinti
Direction: Sandro Mabellini
Declamation: Stefano Baffetti
Music: Nicola Cappelletti and Fab Mayday
Choir: Coristi a Priori
Choir direction: Carmen Cicconofri

Performances

 

07.09.2021 - Piazza S. Giovanni del Fosso, Perugia (IT) *premiere

by Anna

Asindeto

Asindeto

for dance and electronics

(2023)

Duration: 22'30''

In Asindeto the relationship between sound and movement defines a narrative structure of dislocated absences, made-up of oppositions made tangible, and builds a sublimated and represented space as the only possible context for the realization of meaning.

 

Composition, sound: Nicola Cappelletti
Choreography, dance: Lucia Guarino

 

Asindeto is a commission and a production by Opificio Sonoro, with the support of the PiGro residency program of Tempo Reale, with the support of the artistic residence of PARC (Performing Arts Research Centre) and with the communication support of Nexus Factory.

 

Photos: Claudia Ioan / Fondazione Perugia Musica Classica ONLUS

Performances

 

11.05.2023 - Festival Orizzonti, Auditorium S. Cecilia - Perugia (IT) *premiere

by Anna

Blooming Sciarrino

Blooming Sciarrino

sound installation

2022

Sound diffusion: 10 channel self constructed speakers

Blooming Siarrino is a site specific sound installation dedicated to the compositional thought of Salvatore Sciarrino, created by the sound artists Nicola Cappelletti and Mattia Parisse.

 

A 10-channel system of self-built loudspeakers, Dialettica Liminale (by Nicola Cappelletti), uses the Conicetra sound sculpture (by Mattia Parisse) as a sound source to inhabit the acoustic space, letting the resonant frequencies of the architectural environment emerge through a repeated process of overdubbing the original sound with the echoing resulting sound.

 

A generative algorithm asymmetrically spatializes the sound with a random temporal granulation thus creating a sound ecosystem sensitive to every minimum timbre variation.

 

Blooming Sciarrino is a commission by Opificio Sonoro.

 

Performances

 

10/15.07.2023 - Domus Pauperum, Perugia (IT)

by Anna

Grand Mother Bretagne

Grand Mother Bretagne

sound installation

2019

Duration: 25'00''
Sound Diffusion: 5 exciters on 16 mt harmonic steel sheet and a 2.1 reinforcement system

Brittany's version of the conceptual sound installation by Opera Bianco, a work of sound and plastic art, a multi-perceptive environment in which the circular movement of the audience completes its choreographic intention.

 

Concept: Vincenzo Schino
dramaturgy: Marta Bichisao, Ivan Schiavone
sound design: Nicola Cappelletti
field recordings: Marta Bichisao, Vincenzo Schino
text editing: Ivan Schiavone
production: Opera Bianco

Performances

 

11/12.09.2021 - Crisalide Festival,Teatro Felix Guattari, Cesena (IT)
16.05/16.10.2019 - Murmures, installations cinétiques et sonores, La Briqueterie, Saint Brieux (FR)

by Anna

Evolution 221

Evolution 221

acousmatic binaural site specific composition

2022

Duration: 7'37''
Sound diffusion: binaural (headphones)

Evolution 221 is an electroacoustic piece that investigates the relationship between man and nature from an acoustic point of view, investigating the ecological and sustainability aspects of that relation. Written in connection with the sound and visual context of the Pharo Park of the city of Marseille, to be performed only through an headphone concert in the same location, the piece presents an electroacoustic processing of discarded and recycled sound materials, deliberately elaborated to find an ideal acoustic imprint of all the passages and crossings that this place has seen over the centuries: the city, the sea, the port, the view of the horizon lines, the park and the human relationship with nature, make up an ideal sound time lapse through space and time, imposing a reflection on the kind of evolution we are participating in.

Performances

 

03.07.2022 - Viberation #4, Parc du Pharo, Marseille (FR)

by Anna

DHG

DHG

audiovisual fixed media

2022

Duration: 9'44''
Sound diffusion: stereophonic

DHG is the audiovisual version of the electroacoustic piece Dissipatio HG (for bass clarinet and electronics).

 

Both works are an homage to the same title post-apocalyptic novel by Guido Morselli, published posthumously in 1977.

 

Video direction and music: Nicola Cappelletti.
With: Amelia Renzulli, Nicola Cappelletti.

by Anna

Le Spectre Rouge

Le Spectre Rouge

audiovisual fixed media

2021

Duration: 5'47''
Sound diffusion: stereophonic

Le Spectre Rouge (Pathé Freres, 1907) Courtesy of Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino.

The music of this version of Le Spectre Rouge are composed by Nicola Cappelletti e Nicola Fumo Frattegiani for the SMC Sound and Music Computing Conference 2021.

 

The soundtrack was created using a very narrow palette of timbres, to accommodate the claustrophobic and alienating inclination of the events that come to life within a place that is instead kaleidoscopic, deep and surreal. Sounds are mostly coming from manipulations of white noise and concrete sounds that play on different environmental levels, underlining, with a current point of view, what today appear as errors or inaccuracies in video editing and post production. For the same reason, few selected sound processing techniques were used, which guaranteed synesthetic unity between listening and vision: time-stretching, pitch-shifting, ring modulation and granular synthesis. The incursion of musical fragments from different periods and different styles aims to outline an ideal path between different historical eras, as in an intuition of possible futures (up to nowadays), affirming the visionary and avant-garde nature of the film, where the magical and surreal appearance of screens and containers that transmit images in motion constitutes a dazzling foreshadowing of the television medium, of streaming habits using devices and wall mapping techniques.

 

by Anna