OLEOPHONA
Dedicated to the place where it is located, the installation originates mainly from the ancient walled jars intended for the preservation of oil. To the overall image is added another element, that acts as the ideal center of the installation: a twisted olive trunk. And from this torment that arises an underground dialogue between the jars and the plant? Arranged in two small rooms adjoining jars and trunk contribute to create a music in continuous evolution.
Museo dell'Olio della Sabina, Castelnuovo di Farfa, 2001
In the adjacent room the olive trunk slowly rotates. In its constant movement it is grazed by four shaped rods that act as surface sensors. To each of the rods is fixed a wire that goes to act on a device (midi controller) connected to the computer that processes the sounds produced by the drops in the other room.In this way is the very shape of the trunk, its plastic configuration, to determine and proportionate every sound parameter, from the envelope, to the attack and extinction transients, from equalization, to reverberation, filtering, etc.
Each drip can has its own regulation: the drops are then organized in rhythmic trains out of phase that occasionally collide giving body to accents or caesuras that constitute real ribs of the sound structure.
The analysis of the shape in relation to the position of the sensors consists of this graphical synthesis that is based on the sections of the trunk at the dimensions marked with A,B,C,D where the relative proportion of the displacement or opening of each sensor is reported.
