The artist Roberto Pugliese, in the exhibition Concerto per natura morta, A Concert for Still-Life, reflects on the interaction between sound and space, with an installation that involves the visitor in a poly-sensorial perceptual experience. It was the first time the museum hosted a contemporary art project in its spaces; it represented a continuation of MUSE’s opening path to the cross-fertilization of knowledge.
In the summer of 2014, wood played a leading role in the museum’s set-ups, both in the practical dimension of constructing and doing business and in the poetical artistic representation.
The exhibition Concerto per natura morta, organized by Studio la Città and curated by Valerio Dehò and Olimpia Eberspacher, is made by 13 hollow chestnut trunks that come from dead trees, suspended in horizontal position in the air at different heights. There is a tactile transducer within each trunk: a speaker that spreads the sound by direct contact with the surface. This way the sound is amplified and modified by the volume and shape of the trunk itself.
The sounds reproduced by the installation come from the places where the trunks were taken and were registered using recorders, accelerometers, contact microphones and other devices designed for the recording of sonic activities that are out of human hearing range. These sounds have been later processed in a digital way, using softwares designed for this purpose and then compositionally assembled.
The trees employed had already died of causes related to the development of the woodland in which they had grown. In this way the artist created a natural broadcasting mechanism which transmits sounds that begin their life from the very noises and frequencies mechanically generated by the preparatory operations of the trunks themselves. So we could say that the “Concerto per natura morta” gives life back to the trees and music becomes their new lymph.
Valerio Dehò, 2014