Abituà (Gesture)
Creative works

Abituà (Gesture)

stereo fixed media, multichannel live-spatialization

"Abituà (gestures)" is an multi-channel acousmatic composition with a duration of 6:22 minutes. The piece was created on the occasion of the exhibition "We continue the evolution of art" curated by the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Turin dedicated to informal art, including world-renowned artists such as Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana.

The aim of the piece is therefore to do the same with regard to the audio material, generating an 'informal' sound and also creating a sound parallel with other gestures that we can find around us, in the realm of nature.

It is inspired by the paintings "Thaumasie - Telos - Tanatos" by Albino Galvano, whose aesthetics and technique demonstrate the importance of 'gesture' in informal art.

The painter, like the others belonging to that artistic current, concentrated his research on materials and spontaneous gestures. And it is precisely on this last aspect that the composition develops.

The piece begins with an exploration of the musical gesture in the digital world. Three percussion instruments are processed in pitch and envelope and assembled in various combinations to create varied and complex microstructures. This is followed by a more analogue reality, where the gestures are physical. Timbre variations depend on the rotation of potentiometers and the physical connection of cables within a modular synthesiser.

The listener is led to where it all begins, where each musical gesture can be found, in the real world. One can perceive some of the gestures that inspired the composition and it is interesting to observe the often unexpected similarities between the sound world and the natural world.

The piece was first performed in this form at the ZKM in Karlsruhe during the Next Generation 8.0 festival in June 2019, and was subsequently spatialised live during the AGORA Creative Festival in Grenoble in October 2019.