Twelve speakers, LED lights, stainless steel cable, sound cables, amplifiers, computer.
September 2016, Cistern of the Casa de Frescos, Tapada das Necessidades garden, Lisboa. Commissioned by Raquel Castro for Lisboa Soa.
An installation for a four-day festival, this work was installed in the cistern at the top of the Casa de Frescos (House of fresh produce), a large and shallow pool surrounded by vegetation. We explored the interplay between the building, the surrounding space, flora and fauna, landscape and soundscape. This interplay was made explicit by developing a montage of planes and reflective surfaces within and above the cistern, a system of dynamic relationships with the changing soundscape of the garden: birds in the early morning and late afternoon, rustling leaves and other vegetation noises, cicadas and other insects, wind or rain. One of the most significant sounds we had to work with was that of the large bridge that connects the two banks of the Tagus river, a structure with multiple lanes and levels for vehicles and trains that produces a continuous drone that is quite impactful in many parts of the city. If most of the sounds in the garden are biophonic, this anthropophonic sound of the bridge turned out to become one of the most salient we had to work with, and we eventually tuned the piece to it.
Thank you to Rui Rodrigues and Rui Penha at FEUP.