Alessandro Fogar: Recent Episodes
Alessandro Fogar
'Beyond', a live improvisation using live electronics and old vinyl records.The main audio samples used for the performance have been found on old records and transformed in real time using long feedback delays and granular processing.Please listen at a very low volume and in a way so that the sound comes from everywhere in the room.Recording date: 31/12/2024 Timelash studio - GradoPersonnel: Alessandro Fogar -live electronics, hybrid synthesizer, turntables.
Lux, a deconstruction via live electronics of some orchestral material.The main audio samples used for the performance have been extracted from a recording and transformed live.Please listen at a very low volume so that the sound come from everywhere in the room.Recording date: 31/12/2023Personnel: Alessandro Fogar - Live electronicsRelease date:1 January 2024
A special live recording of the track 'Lucciole - Armonia'.Lucciole is a project by Francesco Paladino and Alessandro Fogar, supported by Slow Light-Seeking Darkness.Image courtesy of Rea Jubani.Improvvisamente nella notte cercavo riferimenti lontano dal buio.Per anestetizzare la paura.Cercavo nel cielo le stelle, bussole arcaiche mentrestringevo una mia mano all’altra, per constatare la mia esistenza.Mi apparvero così all’improvvisoin processioni bislacche,in parate carnascialesche,sfottendo le mie paure, deridendo i miei mali,ebbre di carnalità, disegni eccelsi,sfide vitali dei diademi astrali, le lucciole.Lungo il sentiero che percorrevo, trattenevo ogni stupore:mi indicavano rotte d’amore, e intanto si univano in coiti alati, brillando ancora di più.Le lucciole mi dimostravano quanto la vita fosse gioia,senza ritegno delle morali umane. Sfidavano la luce delle stelle facendo l’amore.Rendendo piccolo l’uomo che ero ancora.(Francesco Paladino)
My very late contribution for the open remix project curated by :zovietfrance:, this track has been assembled using audio sources taken from “Hidden by the Wall”, a soundwork by :zovietfrance: commissioned by Green Croft Arts as part of its Collision and Conflict project.
The recordings have been treated and remixed at Timelash 2 Studio, (Trieste), Italy on Saturday, March 26th, 2022.
Photo courtesy of Rea Jubani
'Ab sofort' is a study on the musicality of surfaces, in this case a section of the Berlin wall, seen as a score for a sort of electro-acoustic 'orchestra'.
It has been composed in the 31th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. The title is taken from a reply that an official of the Socialist Unity Party DDR Günter Schabowski told at a press conference. The misunderstood reply led to the fall of the Berlin wall.
The reading / interpretation process of the score takes place in real time using a Python script written with the assistance of Elio Corbolante.
Like a memory of the places, sound originates from the wall, and does not impose a message of its own, a narration, but derives strictly from the traces left by time on its surface and becomes part of the same environment enriching it and not overpowering it.
The public is invited to listen abandoning themselves to the suggestions originating from the Berlin wall that will be 'interpreted', imagining old memories and traces left by time and men in their drift and their transformation into sound.
The recordings used as a source for the digital sound processing are mainly from rocks scratched and beaten stones, a strings quartet, shortwave radios, a female choir and ambience noises. You can also hear a very transformed sample of a well known german pop song of that period.
Alessandro Fogar, for the installation 'Amber', conceived together with Paola Pisani, has created a sound environment, in the form of a generative system, based on the creation of a virtual microcosm made of sounds. The circadian rhythm, the alternation of day and night, regulates the sound system. The clouds, the birds, the insects, the stars complete it. The sounds of air are modulated by the data of the values of PM10 air pollution in Orleans, the sounds of water are controlled by the accelerated data of Venice tides. The combination of these elements forms an always different and organic sound world, similar to a living creature, of which the author determines the general behaviour and then stops fascinated to listen to the generated sound, always unpredictable and different. Live recording. Image by Paola Pisani.
Shizen 自然, (nature, the natural world), a live recording of a work composed to celebrate the new year and performed on 01/01/2019. The main audio samples used for the performance have been extracted from a recording of a cello and transformed live. Please listen at a very high volume to perceive the inner resonances. Recording date: 01/01/2019, Pordenone. Personnel: Alessandro Fogar - Live electronics.
Conceived and composed for Stazione Topolò 1998, Songlines suggests a deep and interior listening, an opportunity to reach a mental state in harmony with nature, inspired by the profound relationship that the Aboriginal Australians have with our planet. The orderly and linear progressions of the sound events in Songlines are inspired by the contours of the landscape of Central Australia. The 'Songlines', or dream maps are a maze of invisible paths that run throughout the Australian territory. The myths of Aboriginal creation tell about totemic ancestors who, in the 'dreamtime', created themselves and the world, singing the name of everything they saw and thus giving rise to the world through song. The whole Australia can be read as well as an immense score. The sound events in Songlines are triggered by the movements of the audience, moving over virtual paths extracted from a real songline map. In this way the piece itself exist only in presence of movements, detected with an infrared camera.
LIVE RECORDING
Further info (italian only): http://www.fogar.it/index.php?SMExt=SMPages&SMPagesFilename=Songlines
Amaranth, a deconstruction via live electronics of "An der schönen blauen Donau", Op. 314 by Johann Strauss II. The main audio samples used for the performance have been extracted from a recording of the waltz and transformed live. Please listen at a very high volume to perceive the inner resonances of the waltz. Recording date: 01/01/2018 Personnel: Alessandro Fogar - Live electronics
"Through the blue, into the grey" is a new work by Alessandro Fogar dedicated to an ideal journey from the blue (the sea) to the grey (the rocks). The piece uses mainly field recordings and a series of drones produced using a personal transformation tecnique (realized in Supercollider) applied to some audio samples taken from a recording of the adagio from the 9th symphony of L.V. Beethoven.
A short live improvisation using a system based on feedback, delays, a graphic tablet. Please listen at a very low level.
For the 40th anniversary of the Friuli earthquake (6th of may 1976), I composed a piece which uses as source material only the original main shockwave of the 1976 Friuli earthquake. The infrasound wave has been processed using varispeeed and stretching tecniques in Supercollider. The resulting sound material has been assembled using a DAW. In Japanese mythology, the Namazu (鯰) or Ōnamazu (大鯰) is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes. He lives in the mud under the islands of Japan, and is guarded by the god Kashima who restrains the catfish with a stone. When Kashima lets his guard fall, Namazu thrashes about, causing violent earthquakes. Enjoy and remember...
A short live improvisation using a system based on feedback, delays, contact mics, a tambourine, a graphic tablet. Please listen at a very low level.
L'ispirazione musicale di Chaos Logos Kronos, elaborato da Alessandro Fogar e Alessandro Bellan, sorge da alcune soluzioni proposte da Nono nel Prometeo, coniugate a concezioni dell'ascolto che concordano sulla necessità di abbandonare il mito romantico del musicista-demiurgo per un'estetica non più soggettivistica. Su tale contesto programmatico si innesta il motivo della sintonia con la natura intesa come apertura immemoriale, forza dinamica e rivelatoria scandita dalla triade χάος, λόγος, κρόνος.
Recorded Live in Tarcento (Ud), during Correnti Sonore 05 festival - Hybrida, 10/23/2005.
http://www.hybridaspace.org/correnti-sonore-2005/
Surface Study # 3 - Grass with stones is the third in a series of works inspired by the study of the surfaces, the first of which "Surface Study # 1 - Sand" was presented in Topolò in "Stazione Topolò 2003". The microphone is used as a microscope, to capture the most intimate resonance, the rustling secrets, the essence of nature. The samples are then metabolized, transformed, distorted.
Sound objects thus obtained are used to fill a kind of sound canvas in such a way that the internal architecture of the sounds, with its intimate temporal structures, become the metaphor control for the workpiece.
During the execution, the author performs controlling the evolution of the work, the generation of new sound events, mixing and diffusing the sound, their layers, composing silence.
"My obsession with surface is the subject of my music. In that sense, my compositions are not "compositions" at all. One might call them time canvases in which I more or less prime the canvas with an overall hue of music. I have learned that the more one composes or constructs - the more one prevents Time Undisturbed from becoming the controlling metaphor of music."
Morton Feldman - Between Categories (1969)
Alessandro Fogar: transFORMa(c)tion #6 "Sound transformation and generaction action" - in memoriam Alessandro Bellan
Live in Grobbia (Ud) 24th of may 2015 - Grobbia artists residency
Live performance using a tambourine, a metallic bowl, iVCS3, a feedback loop, a midi mixer, a Supercollider patch controlled by the performer. Using shortwave, field recordings and VLF soundfiles.
PLEASE LISTEN WHILE LOOKING AT MARIA PORTRAIT (IF POSSIBLE IN FULL SCREEN)
FOR EXAMPLE HERE:
http://www.fogar.it/MariaPortrait.jpg
(read on ...)
Maria has been inspired by a still frame from the film "The Mirror" by Russian director Andrej Tarkovskj (1932-1986).
The title comes from the name of the woman 'portrayed': Maria, the mother of the protagonist Aleksei.
The gaze is directed to the countryside, the forest, in a pre-war Russia waiting for something that is soon going to happen.
The author intended to make an exploration of the elements of the portrait, breaking it down into its essential components (hairstyle, woman, neck, woods, meadow, electricity wires, etc.). As well as an observer views the various elements of the portrait, in the same way the sound is focused on various elements, with a spectromorphological research applied to the image.
Each element of the framework has been associated to a timbral family, mainly using field recordings processed through live electronics tecniques. The voice is by Francesca Bergamasco.
A large amount of sound fragments was obtained this way and then recombined using a multi track sound editing program.
Composed for "Sguardi sonori 2014 - STARS" Museo Pietro Canonica Viale Pietro Canonica (Piazza di Siena) 2, 00197 Roma