Sound Art & Performances
Sound Art & Performances
Selected Multimedial Works and Sound Performances
B O X E
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BOXE is a hexaphony sound performance focused on the use of boxing techniques and objects as visual and acoustic world. The work, which includes some characteristic elements of the sport in order to employ them as musical instruments through an electroacoustic approach, revolves around the idea of training, confrontation and play using all available objects and devices as dramaturgical elements.
Inside BOXE, steps, strikes, lights and live electronics become narrative possibilities within a study on sound, movement, agonism and absence. The performance establishes a very close relationship between the highly human element of the boxer's body and all the technological devices (purpose-built and programmed) for simultaneous control of the lights and live sound processing; the inhuman becomes a mirror, an untouchable "other" with which to confront and collide.
The used area (within an open space without a stage) does not define a boundary between the audience and the performance, which diverges from the typical frontal fruition and takes advantage of the areas behind and to the side of the spectators. The work also includes moments of electroacoustic improvisation with digital instruments intended as breaks between the various "rounds" of the show and further axis of encounter and dialogue between the two musicians (the performer and the sound/light designer)
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Premiere: Prima Onda Fest 2022, Ecomuseo Mare Memoria Viva, Palermo (October 31st, 2022) [later performed at DAS, Bologna]
Concept and direction, live electronics, performer, music: Federico Pipia
Sound engineer, live electronics, light designer: Andrea Trona
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Lost Tapes
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Lost Tapes is a quadriphonic installation and electroacustic concert that engages with the places and contexts in which it’s hosted, investigating the soundscape perception.
The audience enters a dark closed area provided with weak torch lights to discover the space, hearing interferences coming from various directions.
Then, through a sound journey of live electronics improvisation, a narrative percourse undergoes a musical transfiguration. The memory and possibilities of the surrounding context become a starting point for tracing a system of perceptual and symbolic associations.
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Premiere : Prima Onda Fest 2023, Ex Lavatoio Comunale, Brancaccio Concept, Set Design, Composition, live electronics : Federico Pipia
Video : Ivan Di Vita
Assistant Director : Francesca Melluso
Sound engineer, live electronics, light designer: Andrea Trona
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Full Footage
ArounD
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ArounD is an improvisation system in which a variable number of musicians dialogue in one or more free improvisation sets. Each musician must have two sets with two different instruments and must have the ability to move between one and the other at will. The positioning of the instruments allows the musician to play from two different physical and acoustic perspectives: the first is located in a central or frontal position to the audience where musicians play within a few meters of each other; the second should be located away from all other sets, possibly beyond the audience line. While changing set the musician can move freely in the space and play at will or interact with whomever they wish. The instruments available to each musician can be of any nature: different from each other, similar or identical.
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Concept Federico Pipia, Simone Faraci
Company Minus Collettivo
Produced Orobie Residenze Artistiche
Agenda
Curva Minore, Primavera Contemporanea 2022, Palermo
Festival Catalysi 2022, Societas Teatro Comandini, Cesena
Festival Rami d’O.R.A. 2022, Alpi Orobie, Sondrio
Festival Collagene, D.A.S. Bologna, 2024
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Video Documentation
https://youtu.be/KzV1Db-p-oE?si=EvOFLeWGTUevmAEP
A newer and more representative version of the performance will be updated soon
TOTEM
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TOTEM is a system of non-idiomatic improvisation based on the usage of a software designed for generating musical instructions; the program, developed with a random decision-making structure, acts as a sort of conductor for the improvisational performance, resembling a conductor who randomly selects ideograms and associates them with the musicians/players. These players must interpret the instructions according to their own instruments, the choices of others, and the sonic landscape in which they find themselves.
The TOTEM system is strongly characterized by its own aesthetics, which, thanks to the graphics, menu construction, and conception of various gameplay modes, evokes an arcade video game.
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Project, Research, Musical Coordination: Federico Pipia Software Development: Thomas Benzoni
Sound engineer, live electronics, light designer: Andrea Trona
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Video Documentation
Other Projects
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Patriarchy demands that all men obey with an act of psychic self-mutilation, that they mutilate a part of themselves [Bell Hooks]
Man In The Mirror #1 (working title) is a performative study based on the dialogue between sound and movement, initiated by dancer/choreographer Lucio Seta and director and sound artist Federico Pipia. The project begins with a static image, seemingly harmless yet filled with nostalgia: a storefront display from the 1960s.
Drawing on the formal and expressive stereotypes of self-confidence from the past century, Man In the Mirror seeks to uncover the openings and fractures that emerge within the model of apparent masculinity. Through this process, it explores the choreographic and narrative possibilities arising from the disruption of a solidified certainty, such as the ethical and formal mask often tied to the male figure.
Credits
Concept, Dramaturgy: Federico Pipia, Lucio Seta
Choreography, Performer: Lucio Seta
Live Electronics, Performer: Federico Pipia
VIdeo Footage (First Studio) -
Minus is a collective of sound artists, composers, and performers exploring new multimedia languages across electroacoustic music, sound theatre, and the visual and performing arts.
Founded in 2017, the group focuses on systems that integrate sound, movement, and space.
Federico Pipia is a co-founder and works inside the collective as performer, composer, director, dramaturg.
Over time, Minus has developed and presented projects in collaboration with theatres, research centers, and public and private institutions, with the support and hospitality of organizations such as:
Societas Teatro Comandini, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Bologna Modern, Tempo Reale, FontanaMixEnsemble, Curva Minore, Orobie Residenze Artistiche, D.A.S., and others.
Contacts
Email: minuscollettivo@gmail.com
Site: www.slowthrecords.com/minus-collettivo
Instagram: www.instagram.com/minus_collettivo
Facebook: www.facebook.com/minuscollettivo
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Inscape/Outscape is an improvisational practice based on the relationship between the musicians’ sonic presence and the performance site, conceived as a container of sound events.
This exploration stems from an inquiry into the sonic behavior of elements within natural soundscapes, and the impact of human sound presence on them—seeking to explore the threshold between musical improvisation and the creation of an artificial sound environment.
Credits
Concept: Minus collettivo
A performance developed within the framework of ORA – Orobie Residenze Artistiche.
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Clan is an improvisational practice designed for an ensemble led by a conductor whose gestures do not refer to pitch, sound type, or morphology, but rather to the intentionality of improvisational thought and the relational dynamics among players.
Concept Federico Pipia
Company Minus Collettivo
Premiere BOLOGNA SOUND, Gallleria+, 2018
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Telemarketing - for electric bass and live electronics - was one of the first solos I ever worked on, written and performed in 2018. The main idea was to combine different musical suggestions to create an evolving sound composition on one side and to explore technical complexity on another: every instrument is indeed entirelly live controlled, without pre-fixed materials. The various sections follow both a sound typologies division (such as noise, synthesis, voices, soundscapes, instruments) and a morphological division (gestures, textures, melodic behaviour, rhythms, etc).
Full Footage