SACRED ARCHITECTURE – BENEVENTO As a part of the multiform and increasing scene of research on the soundscape which has been developed in Italy in the last decade, the work of the philosopher and sound artist of Livorno, Pietro Riparbelli, reveals a number of unique elements in the investigation of the phenomena of spatial perception and dichotomy between the visible and invisible within the soundscape.
Among the most significant projects, that together reveal the eclectic approach to the exploration of places and regions through the sound and the multidisciplinary vocation of the aesthetic investigation practiced by Riparbelli, “Cathedrals”, a real sound archive based on field recordings of sacred places made in different parts of the world (enriched by the contribution of various sound artists from different latitudes), contributes to one of the richest veins of this analysis, in which the architecture, the history, the archeology of the sacrum are highlighted in an articulated narration of places that interconnects in a complex way languages, methods and perspectives.
Inspired by this approach, and containing a series of recordings made during Suonabene (www.suonabene.it), a residency project / educational about sound held by the author at the Liceo Classico “De La Salle” of Benevento in March 2012, and curated by Leandro Pisano, this work tells of the journey of exploration conducted by Riparbelli with students in the churches of Santa Sofia dell’Annunziata and the Duomo in Benevento.
Inspired by this approach, and containing a series of recordings made during Suonabene (www.suonabene.it), a residency project / educational on sound held by the author at the Liceo Classico “De La Salle” of Benevento in March 2012, and curated by Leandro Pisano, this work tells of the journey of exploration conducted by Riparbelli with students in the churches of Santa Sofia dell’Annunziata and the Duomo in Benevento.
As reported in the critical text that related to the present release (at the moment only in Italian, soon in English too), written by the visual anthropologist Annalisa Cervone “the investigation plans around which revolves the work of Riparbelli are essentially two: the historical-cultural one and the “estesiologico” (i.e. related to the aesthetics of perception). They, however, are continuously intertwined with each other to create an aesthetic unitary discourse, a sort of large textual fold where the intellectual elements of research emerge, from time to time, in the form of mobile and ubiquitous sound compositions, whose epiphanic dimension (and so do not “visualistic”) refers – in the form of pure sound that is enough in itself (as almost completely de-secularized) – to the complex combinatorial game that governs the geometry of sacred buildings”.
[ L’EPIFANIA DEL SENSIBILE NELLA PERCEZIONE SONORA DEL SACRO ]
From the text-folds of this fascinating sound narrative, emerge a series of pictures juxtaposed as in a kind of parataxis in which, in the exploring of architectural resonances or sounds and voices from the distance, lost in the grandiloquence of the architectural spaces, coagulate itself in the meaning of a research that puts, in the perspective suggested by Annalisa Cervone, “at the center of its aesthetic discourse the moment of listening – here understood as a total perceptive fact that puts the “listening ear” and the sound source (the world-environment) in a relationship of openness and mutual self-giving”and that acquires, in the end, “a powerful ontological value that refers to a complex reflection on the “aisthesis” (esthetics), conceived as the beginning of a new way of knowing through perception”.
Notes “Sacred Architecture – Benevento” has been composed with field recordings made in three churches in Benevento (Chiesa dell’Annunziata, Chiesa di Santa Sofia, Duomo) in March 2013. This work is the final step of a workshop held within the “Suonabene” project curated by Leandro Pisano. Many thanks to Leandro Pisano, Annalisa Cervone, Giuliano Mozzillo and to the pupils who have followed me during the workshop.
www.pt-r.com
pietroriparbelli.bandcamp.com
www.radicalmatters.com/metasound
Sacred Architecture – Benevento by Pietro Riparbelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.galaverna.org.