Projects

Sérgio Coutinho 

 

 

 

 What does it mean to perform and experience music in the wilderness? Does experiencing music in nature inform and influence people to reimagine how they live? To answer these questions, this project proposes to evaluate the artistic and social significance in creating a “green” electroacoustic instrumental orchestra in the future, together with specific repertoire, to perform music with and in the wilderness. In order to achieve this goal, we will develop two electroacoustic instruments specially designed to perform concerts in the wilderness, which will be tested in the context of two public concerts to assess the audience’s musical experience. Despite the obvious and continuously confirmed climate change (e.g. floods, droughts), affecting countless people around the globe, one can say that the public knowledge has not produced a social change of mind. Our research assumption is that performing and experiencing music in the wilderness has the power to strengthen our collective relationship to nature, hence, “music can provide a sounding model for the renewal of human consciousness and culture” (Herzogenrath, 2012). To address our problem, we have established three related procedures: first, we will design two different mid-size standalone sustainable electroacoustic instruments; second, we will create specific music to be performed in wilderness spaces played by the electroacoustic instruments; third, to pursue and validate our exploratory research we will adopt methods from the Arts, Computer and Social Sciences. Concerning the first procedure, we will look at topics on physical computing, sustainability, portability, and at sensors that can “sense” the surrounding environment (e.g. sound, temperature, light). We will create two electroacoustic instruments: a replicable instrument, both technologically and economically easy to play hence accessible accessible to the interested layman. This instrument will be used in school workshops during the project. A second instrument, complex to play, will be designed for experienced musicians, thus presenting a steep learning curve. By complex we mean the soft ware mapping of numerous sensors and actuators which will offer a wide range of possibilities to “talk” to the surrounding environment and a wide range of physical gestures to produce a wide range of sounds. Concerning the second procedure, we will study how to compose music with a space, particularly focusing on the poetic and structural relationship between music, nature, and electroacoustic instruments (Lopes&Rodrigues, 2021; Lopes&Guedes, 2020). To do so, we will ask two composers to create compositions for specific spaces in the wilderness (i.e. places with low visual and sonic noise) to be played by two musicians using the electroacoustic instruments. Our intention is to perform music which will resonate with nature, and therefore develop a compositional approach which enables to integrate in a real time performance the specificities of a wilderness environment, because “the more the environment as material informs the sound processing, the more the two will blendin to each other” (Ripatti&Bovermann, 2017). For the third procedure, we will employ research methods that will thoroughly document the creative processes and collect data from the audience about the experience of being in a music concert in the wilderness. We will look at the artistic relationship between music and nature, as well as the impact of this experience on the audience. Our team is integrated by researchers, composers and musicians that are actively and consistently involved in artistic research and technologically mediated music performance (Lopes&Rodrigues,2021; Penha, 2019; Bernardes, 2020; Dias,R., 2018; Ferreira&Lopes, 2022), and acquainted with the requirements of the investigation tasks. The team will also include two master students: one studying new interfaces for musical expression and another studying documentary filmmaking. Our outputs include new instruments for musical expression, journal articles, online resources, research supervision, artistic creations, public lectures, academic events, workshops for schools and a documentary film. We intend to contribute with an in-depth discussion about the role of art on important contemporary issues, the relationship between Art and Science, as well as what we mean by the Anthropocene. By designing a music instrument that can “see, listen and talk” with nature, we will be able to demonstrate the feasibility and significance of creating a “green” electroacoustic instrumental orchestra, and associated repertoire, to perform music with and in wilderness spaces.

Keywords

New Interfaces for Musical Expression; Music Composition and Performance; Music and Nature