Senses-Based Learning

27 September 2022

Led by:

• Davide Tidoni – an artist working from the boundaries of physical, perceptual, and affective dimensions of sound. His work addresses questions regarding interactions with acoustic space, intersubjectivity, and impermanence. His practice also includes interests in the use of sound in counter-cultures and social contexts of struggle. In 2018 he published The Sound of Normalisation, a field research on the ultras group Brescia 1911.
• Simone Evangelisti – studied theatre and dance with Raffaella Giordano and the Fondazione Pontedera Teatro. He has performed with different companies (Dom, Strasse, Teatro delle Briciole) often bridging diverse fields and formats: from shows intended for children to dance theatre, in-situ performances, and urban interventions. He’s also politically active and documents his experiences in this arena in graphic stories published in fanzines and magazines.

Part of Marres’ Workshops ‘Training the Senses’. https://marres.org/en/program/training-the-senses-en/

What is the role of the listener? How does sound change the space and vice versa? How do we respond to and approach sound and listening? How does being aware of your body and movement affect sound? And how do we visualize patterns of sound?

Since 2009, Davide Tidoni has created listening scores exploring the active role of the listener and their agency to act within an acoustic field. Starting from the subjective experience of acoustic phenomena, such as filtering and reflection, the scores highlight the interaction among the physical nature of sound, its behavior in space, and the modulation of sound through body and movement.

In this workshop Davide Tidoni, together with dancer Simone Evangelisti, will invite participants to explore and investigate their own capacity to touch, filter, absorb, and block sound when realizing the performative potential of the scores. Through guided sequences and improvisational moments, participants will experiment in new ways to approach sound and listening as resources for developing movement and body awareness.

extracurricular course

general audience

workshop

Start:

• First exercise included the participants standing at different sides of the room and making their way to the other side with their eyes closed. They had to stop moving every time they heard their body make a sound – a sound of a step, a joint cracking, a swish of the clothes. They stopped for a moment and then continued on, stopping again and then continuing. This went on until everyone was across the room.

Training:

• Two people are given mics and are instructed to move across the room with their eyes closed. Each is coming from the opposite direction and their mics are connected to the sound boxes that are across the room from them, so the one coming from the left side has their mic making sounds on the right side. The observers are instructed to come into this space and create blockades for the two with mics. These two can only use their mics and the sound made by them to find their way around the room and past the blockades.
• Demonstration – a standing microphone and a speaker are put facing each other. If the mic is on then the speaker reflects the sound of the mic over and over until it reaches a high, deafening pitch. This sound wave is quite small in size so if a hand is covering the invisible wave between the speaker and the mic, the sound is not made. The dancer Simone Evangelisti demonstrates with movement how this sound wave can be intercepted – by one hand, by the body. He starts at the mic and makes his way to the speaker, trying to keep the sound from accelerating.
• After the demonstration people are instructed to go in pairs and try to repeat the the process of going from the mic to the speaker without the sound accelerating.
• The last exercise included three sound boxes and three participants. These small sound boxes were emanating white noise. The participants were given several instructions – have the speaker side of the box facing outside and walk around; put the box up to your forehead; hold it in one hand and walk, letting it swing around; stop and have the speaker face your stomach; cover the speaker with your stomach so there’s almost no noise; relax the hold and let little bit of noise come through; put the speaker up to your face; open your mouth and hear the sound change as you move your mouth around.

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