ROBERTO  FUSCO

What stands between recording and memory ? A recording is only a suggestive link to a felt experience, it displays with sound and image an approximated version of the elements constituting the memory.

In Field Reductions, realized in collaboration with composer and sound artist Andrea Mancianti, field recordings of sound are deconstructed in units of sound objects that are mechanically activated to stage the original field.
Transparent boxes are filled with natural objects commonly found outdoors, such as fallen branches, grass, leaves, dirt. Small motors let the matter collide, crackle and rub, to generate a soundscape that resembles at times a sonic environment we can experience in a forest or the countryside.
The kinetic element is not used as a sound object in itself, rather it is used to recreate, as an imitation, the sound as I remember it at the moment of the experience. It creates a plausible but approximated soundscape. For me this process let the visitor experience both a familiar environment but at the same time wonder about the construction of the real experience.
The soundscape is a re-enactment of fields as opposed to a composition of field recordings. The sounds are not recorded as-is but reduced to a recipe or a script for individual elements.
The main question regards the experience of this object: is this an imitation of the real soundscape or does it become an entity of its own? And further, how is in fact constructed our notion and expectation of natural beauty projected onto nature?

The exhibition is supported by AVEK – The Promotion Centre For Audiovisual Culture.