zwölfzungen*
I like to listen to languages I don't understand.
I like the moment when the understanding of words stops and every language starts to "make noise".
All languages have a special sound, some more than others developed particular acoustic characteristics for the delight of a musician's hears.
For "Zwölfzungen" I recollected recordings of eleven languages I'm not, or partially, able to speak and understand. Eleven languages I met in the past years, whose sound I specially liked. Moreover I invented a twelvth one, developed and learned during the past year and featured as a last installment of the series.
I made a piece of music with each of them, escaping from the meaning of words and concentrating on his specific sound, letting my ears concentrate and developing all sound details I'll be captured by.
Those pieces are not intended as features or documentaries, while I'm not inserting any explanatory passage on the context they are coming from. I'm use whatever compositional technique the starting material is suggesting suggest to me : tape collage, electro-acoustic processing, max/msp, low-fi sound devices and perfromr them live mixing my voice with prerecorded and realtime mixed electro- acoustic materials. I feel free to "misunderstand" each one of those languuages as much as I can.
Zwölfzungen has originally commisioned in '05 as a radio art piece by DeutschlandRadio Kultur in Berlin and re-worked as a multichannel live performance in '07.
*"Zwölfzungen", in italian "Dodicilingue" could be translated as twelve languages as well as twelve tongues. >>>> listen to some installments here

african feedback
 For African Feedback I travelled in Western Africa with a CD player and a selection of experimental, electro-acoustic and improvised music.This "portable memory" represented my background as a musician or, in other words, my personal "cosmogony". My favorite records.I did propose a listening of those sounds to people completely unaware of them and I did ask for a description. I did never explain what they were listening to.They listened the music through headphones and I recorded in the meanwhile the description or imitation they produced in real time.The presence of the headphones permitted not to have traces of the original musics in the new recordings but just the "feedback" received from the listener. Once back in Europe I used exclusively this recorded material in constructing a text sound composition. The dynamics of misunderstandings, of interest or indifference in front of my propositions in sound constituted the focal point of my curiosity and reflection. Recordings took place in November 2004 in Dogon and Mossi villages between Mali and Burkina Faso.
  il fiore della bocca
 Asking myself why contemporary music, radio art and sound poetry always choose to deconstruct language while using it in a sonorous context I decided to cooperate with persons who are going along the opposite path, having to reconstruct the broken language they are born with.
The piece is based on recordings of of voices of handicapped persons, ( afasics, spastics, larynxless ) and on the development of musical aspects of their speech.
I played to them recordings of contemporary, improvised electro acoustic music and sound poetry where the human voice has been "deconstructed" and asked them what they where listening to. I asked to describe and comment it. All answers has been recorded and constitue the basic sound material upon which the piece is constructed. All sounds to be heard in the piece (apart from one) come from that recordings. >>>>>> listen#1 listen#2

 

il fiore della bocca
i've been asking myself why contemporary music, radio art and sound poetry always choose to deconstruct language while using it in a sonorous context. Looking for that answer I decided to cooperate with persons who are going along the opposite path. People having to reconstruct the broken language they are born with.
The piece is based on recordings of of voices of handicapped persons, ( afasics, spastics, larynxless ) and on the development of musical aspects of their speech.
I played to them recordings of contemporary, improvised electro acoustic music and sound poetry where the human voice has been "deconstructed" and asked them what they where listening to. I asked to describe and comment it. All answers has been recorded and constitue the basic sound material upon which the piece is constructed. All sounds to be heard in the piece (apart from one) come from that recordings >>>>> listen#1, listen#2
 

 
 
 the mouth
 I composed a "headphones score" for four players (cello, bass clarinets, tuba) and a vocalist exclusively made of sounds from voices of handicapped persons. During the piece they have to imitate the sounds they hear, as precisely as they can. They are like dolmetchers. During the piece some elements of the "headphones score" are revealed through the electroacoustic part of the composition although many other remain hidden. The piece was carried out together with the Kammerensemble Neue Musik in Berlin.
more about >>>>> video

 
 
the whistling republic 
On La Gomera, an island of the Canary archipelago, a whistled language is still used among inhabitants and helps them to communicate over distances of five or more kilometres. During a stay on the island I did write many short texts based on real experience as well as fictionary scenes I imagined. I let translate them into Spanish and gave them to whistle to some pupils of the school of San Sebastian. They have to whistle to other pupils over a distance of a couple of kilometres where I positioned myself with a microphone. I recorded the whistle coming from afar and the attempts of understanding that were reported to me. Starting from those recordings I created this text-sound composition.
 
 
die schnellsten woerter
During a research on improvised poetry in Toscana and Sardinia I prompted some of those improvisers to create poems on given topics as internet, radio and digital medias and recorded them. Starting form those recordings I created this text-sound composition developing music aspects of their speech. 

 
pinocchio
 Travelling up and down Italy, my country, I recollected many recordings of people telling the story of Pinocchio. Everybody thinks he knows the story. But infact everybody tells a different one. Also, I always asked it out of the blue so that anybody could prepare himself or read the book again. On this spoken word audio documents ( and with other sounds and intruments) I created this text sound composition.
The piece has many hidden an secret aspects I will not talk about, dealing with real persons I knew who became of wood and died right after. It's mostly a piece about that.
 
 
everyday objects
A sound meditation on the feelings of objects. It's inspired by thought and reflections in Mario Perniola's book "The sex appeal of the inorganinc". Words are taken from recorded inteviews with Chiyoko Szlavnics, Thomas Ankesmit and Derek Shirley. During the interviews I always started with the same question : Do objects have feelings ?
This project has been awarded with the Horspiel scholarship of La Muse en circuit in Paris and eventually carried out in the same studio.