CANTI SPAZIALIZZATI #18
Post-operas

Maximiliano Bober - They/We listened: On the Becoming of Space (2024) *

Alina Dzięcioł - Processes in Four Phases (2024) *

Simi Fyda - In My Personal Heaven, I'm the Devil's Spawn (2024) *

* - word pemiere, Canti Spazializzati commissioning

Maximiliano Bober
Słuchałośmy: O stawaniu się przestrzeni (2024)
Spatialised Post-opera

Post-dramatic chamber piece for vocals, portative organ, electric guitar, violin and audience. Audience participation is indicated by a score based on selected literary excerpts. The underlying concept of the composition is sound as a slowly evolving element that structures the collective space. Słuchałośmy (they/we listened) is an untranslatable but audible word (the inspiration comes from a word used by Ada Adu Rączka in their poetry). We understand sound directly, in its ambiguity and multitextuality. The piece offers an experience of language and sound as shared and accessible to all, where silence becomes a mediator between individual and collective experience. The process of listening is closely linked to reading. The word activates the voice, the voice evokes the sound, the sound creates the space. The text becomes a score and a guide to the composition and its transient, ephemeral sound space. The work's polyphony is an open system, an invitation to experience the space from multiple points, to observe its transformations, to immerse oneself in the acousmatic fabric of the story that unfolds in the process.

Literary excerpts used:
Gonçalo M. Tavares – Encyklopedia. Notatki, translated by Wojciech Charchalis, słowo obraz/terytoria (2018)
Anna Świrszczyńska (1909-1984) – Jestem Baba, Prószyński i S-ka, (2000) oraz Budowałam barykadę (published in 1984 to mark the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising)
Ada Adu Rączka – Chciałośmy, SDK, 2022 oraz spółdziel lub nie, 2022

Notatki i Flores ensemble:
Maximiliano Bober – violin
Ryszard Lubieniecki – portative organ
Michał Sember – guitar
Małgorzata Wrzosek – vocals

Alina Dzięcioł
Processes in Four Phases(2024) *
for electronics

The main idea behind the composition is the multidimensional representation of distortion processes occurring at different levels of listening perception and reasoning. The employed means include delicate colour-dynamic transformations, distribution of sounds in space (constructed differently in each phase), listening exercises opening up the interpretative field. The piece consists of four parts, individually approaching their content with sound in a highly intuitive way.

Phase I Earth – at first it appears as a quiet imitation of the sounds of nature or the surroundings, but what will their gradual tonal transformations result in? While the initial source of sound will consist of what we can actually hear in everyday life, will we retain a sense of being in a familiar and 'safe' reality?

Phase II Disasters - takes the listener into a slightly less 'safe' reality, as its title suggests. What makes the surrounding nuclear sound so "dangerous" is that after a sudden explosion occurs, we can get a bit spooked, especially since we don't know if there will be another one, and if so, when and what it will turn into…

Phase III Ayahuasca – the process begins with the reflection of a human individual, a quiet, contemplative narrative. What conclusions will they reach after what has happened in the previous phases? For some reason, they will decide to partake in the Ayahuasca ritual, which will open a door leading to the subsequent reality!

Although the narrative of the first three phases provides a similar 'general' scheme for presenting the process of distortion - the appearance of sound entities that are subjected to distortion increasing the density of their sound, the opposite is true for the arrangement of the phases in this particular order – from totality to the individual human entity.

Phase IV Sparkling – represents the most abstract section with regard to its narrative construction method. The sound events wandering in space seem to form a collage of disordered events from the previous phases. However, they too are part of a certain process.

Simi Fyda
In My Personal Heaven, I'm the Devil's Spawn (2024)

An octophonic piece exploring the artist's personal experience of reading the works of Deleuze and Guattari. Each of the eight sound tracks represents key concepts of their philosophy, creating an immersive sound experience. The project brings together elements of reflections on desire, the body and drive

The composition represents fragmented networks, transitions between chaos and control-imposing structures, mechanical and organic rhythms, irregular sound spaces, field recordings, chaotic sequences and contrasting elements.

With regard to the philosophical context, the piece is a reflection on masochism, which Deleuze conceives as a tool of subversion and creation. Masochistic experience challenges established structures of power and identity, becoming a creative act that explores the limits of desire and identity. Masochism is not a negative experience of pain, but an affirmative process of sublimation in which suffering becomes an aesthetic quality.

The sound and narrative layers of the piece represent a contemplation on the unity of being, emphasising non-hierarchical, multidirectional thought networks as well as a productive and creative approach to desire.