ABITARE IL TEMPO

ORPHEO — The Shape of Sound

Terracotta, iron and jute
Diameter: 6 m
Height: 3 m

 

The emission of the non-coherent wave is a physical phenomenon that I have been trying to make visible and understandable for many years.

From this research came the idea of using water as a medium through which sound could be represented: a simple and universal element, capable of revealing what normally remains invisible.

ORPHEO was born from this intuition. At the invitation of Roberto Palomba and Ludovica Serafini for Abitare il Tempo, I imagined a large installation in which sound could directly manifest its own form through water.

With the invaluable contribution of my friend and artist Marc Bowditch, the technical solutions were developed for the construction and transport of a gigantic iron basin, perfectly stabilised to support a veil of water only four millimetres deep: a sensitive surface, capable of becoming a mirror of waves.

Elizabeth Frolet developed the conceptual text for the work and the name ORPHEO.

Six terracotta sound sculptures, hand-thrown at the studio of Lavinia Sarti, were made from three different types of clay and finished with natural waxes. Suspended by hemp ropes, they find their formal balance through gravity itself.

At the centre of the work, a metal disc six metres in diameter contains an extremely thin layer of water. The non-coherent waves transmitted to the surface generate complex and ever-changing configurations, revealing the real spatial structure of sound.

The conventional image of the acoustic wave as a simple circle expanding through space thus disappears. In its place, a much richer and more articulated reality emerges: the three-dimensional form of sound, finally made visible.