L’Ospite Ingrato. Un’ossessione medicea.

Sound Installation.
commissioned by Firenze Mostre S.p.a

exhibition:
Belvedere dell'arte / Orizzonti
Forte Belvedere, Firenze, july-october 2003 (updated till april 2004)

Lorenzo Brusci
sound designer

Mattia Di Rosa
designer

Andres Bosshard
sound architect

Dino Bramanti
sound engineering

The ungrateful guest. A Medici obsession.
The ungrateful [unwelcome] guest [host] (*). A Medici Obsession.

Photo.Gallery [watch]>

Sound Installation

(*) The Italian title implies a joke with the ambigous meaning of "ospite"
and "ingrato". Ospite means both a person who is a guest of someone and a
person who hosts somene. "Ingrato" means both a person who is not grateful
and a person who is not welcome.

all sounds produced by Kyma by Lorenzo Brusci. Sharing compositions of T1 sounds with Dino Bramanti (MaxMSP).

Suggestions by/of an ungratefull guest.

Uneasiness. Attention. Arrogance. Protection. Welcoming. Normality. Elusion. Desire. Irritation. Nervousness. Impending danger. Fitfullness. Repression. Expectation. Studiousness. Exile. Obsession. Priviledge. Strangeness. Silence. Untouchability. Irreversibility. Resistence. Vision. Invasion. Waiting. Fear. Control. Architecture.

“ ...the previous suggestions are a sequence of definitions, mainly about the obsession of the community, the town, the urban area you belong to. This danger from the inside was a continuous obsession of the Medici family: the power over the town and the escape from the town, community and separations, reality and abstraction. Here is a look at the renaissance era in Florence, between alchemy and intrigues, study and sophisticated life. Through a sound diffusion and a designed-phisycal object enbodying the effect of time over the Medici feeling, our sound installation tries an expressive sonic covering of the Buontalenti’s planning and construction of Forte Belvedere boundary walls.

the installation is distributed in 4 sites,

site #1
a diagonal descending line made by 6 Bosshard Plexiglas loudspeakers, hung with yellow ropes, in a downward oriention, leading you from the highest point of the wall over the entrance gate, to the ground:
here a 6 channel system of processed renaissance dances and songs; the basic sound metaphor is a gradual instability and uneasiness dealing with our renaissance sound memories; entertainment and gentle movements of an era, now just atmospheric gestures, welcoming at the entrance path of the Medici’s Villa built by Buontalenti.
Music content varies within a 60 minute loop;

site #2
4 Plexiglas loudspeakers, hung with grey ropes, forming a crooked line from the tower to the internal wall, overwhelming the entrance; here a multilingual voice - Giovanni Cerrone - welcomes visitors to the Villa and the whole art site. Texts about entirety, epic, and virtue, under the attack of multiplicity. The function of the site is based on the ambiguous ability of the multilingual voice (guest) to offer at a time a glimpse of meaning and a continuous subtraction of understanding. The vocal editing describes an oscillation, from a pure voice to a deep electronic processed one. Music contents vary in a 30 minute loop;

site #3
the interior of the tower: you reach the tower at the level of the Villa; you vaguely hear sounds from site 1 and 2 coming from your right and left side; from the tower you would have a superb view of the town and of entire art site;
but inside the tower there will be a presence as obstacle to the vision and to the listening: it’s T1, the object designed by Mattia Di Rosa and conceived by Timet.
The environmental perception is broken by a city-processed sound grid diffused by T1, a fiberglass anthropomorphic architecture - able to sound through a 6 channel system contained inside -. It is the abstract and at the same time concrete manifestation of the spirit of the Medici obsession, human memory and human presence, stratified and stuck in the same unity space, deep obstacle to the refreshing view;
the guest will be surprised by this subtile attack from the town.

site #4
the second tower; an attempt at a rest, an escape, towards the church of San Miniato; built by Michelangelo, it's the place to measure nature and spirituality, in that mixture of alchemy and science that characterize the entire experience of renaissance: as an escape and an abandon, you can vaguely hear a mix of Gregorian chants and Mattia’s voice, diffused outside of the tower by piezoelectric speakers, simulating a subtle density of the mind and a light sensation of sonic dust. Inside of the tower a sound cone (a simple fullrange woofer) diffuses from time to time a pure passage of the piece transfigured outside by the piezo selffiltering action.

.Consulenza storica Mario Bencivenni
.Rendering Giovanni Antignano