Pesaro2024 presents the new ISAC-2024 project: 'Listening: the Sonosfera® from inside, outside and beyond'.

Pesaro 2024 presents a new dossier project that takes shape in the year of Capital: it is 'Listening: the Sonosfera® from inside, outside and beyond', located in the 'living nature of culture, implemented by the Pescheria Visual Arts Center Foundation, curated by David Monacchi. The project was born within ISAC-2024 (International Sonosfera® Ambisonics Competition 'Eugenio Giordani'): the Fragments of Extinction Cultural Association implements the operational realization of the second edition of the international three-dimensional electroacoustic composition competition for Sonosfera® conceived by David Monacchi in 2023 and dedicated to Maestro Eugenio Giordani, professor of the Rossini Conservatory who passed away in 2020 and who he directed for 40 years the historic School of Electronic Music of the Rossini Conservatory. Friday 15 March in Sonosfera®, The awards ceremony and concert of the winners are scheduled at the end of a mini-residency of the winners for the optimization of their compositions which takes place in the technological amphitheater for deep listening to ecosystems and music of Pesaro, the UNESCO creative city of music. In the name of international dialogue, ISAC-2024 makes use of a prestigious partner: the IRCAM Center Pompidou in Paris.

After the great success of the first edition of ISAC which saw the participation of 77 candidates from 26 countries, IRCAM - which celebrates the 2024th anniversary of its Forum in 30 - proposed Pesaro 2024 - Italian Capital of Culture the collaboration for the 2024 competition to create a synergistic prize. The precious confluence of anniversaries thus represents a unique opportunity for the winners who will have the privilege of traveling from Pesaro to Paris, experiencing two of the world-renowned public facilities for High-Order Ambisonics (HOA) acousmatic listening: Sonosfera® in Pesaro and Espace de Projection in Paris. At the close of the call, the results are extraordinary: 149 applications from 42 countries, more than double compared to the ISAC-2023 edition. The ISAC competition serves as a platform to support creative practices in all-periphonic music and soundscape composition. It contributes to the diffusion of a culture centered on three-dimensional acousmatic listening, a vision dear to the pioneers of electronic music but which has not yet been fully explored, given the advantages of modern software and electroacoustic technologies. There are two competition commissions: the steering committee composed of Nicola Casetta, Carmine Emanuele Cella, Tommaso Giunti, David Monacchi, Alessandro Petrolati; the international jury curated by IRCAM: Núria Giménez Comas, Sivan Eldar, Philippe Langlois, Frank Madlener, David Monacchi, Markus Noisternig (Chair). 

Listening: the Sonosfera® from inside, outside and beyond ISAC-2024

CALENDAR

Pesaro, Sonosfera®

• Thursday March 14  candidate tests
• Friday March 15

9-13 tests and optimizations of candidate compositions

16-17pm concert listening to the finalists

17.15pm-18.15pm awards ceremony location to be defined

18.30-19.30pm Concert of the winners

• Saturday March 16

17-18pm Concert of short list songs 1

18-19pm Concert of short list songs 2

21-22pm Concert of the winners

• Sunday March 17

16.30-17.30pm Concert of short list songs 2

17.30-18.30pm Concert of the winners

Paris, Projection space

• Tuesday 19th - Friday 22nd March 2024 Participation of the winners in the IRCAM Forum workshops and in situ remix work at the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique;
• Friday March 22 2024 Final event in the IRCAM 2024 Forum workshops and final concert

 

They were present at the press conference: connected Daniele Vimini deputy mayor and councilor for Beauty of the Municipality of Pesaro e Agostino Riitano artistic director Pesaro 2024; the professor David Monacchi creator of Sonosfera®.

 

Opened Daniele Vimini: this project with two important specificities: that of demonstrating the potential of Sonosfera® – ​​a technological amphitheater created to narrate soundscapes but also for digital composition – through a global competition. And then the competition in the name of Eugenio Giordani - among other things the final phase of the concerts will take place on his birthday - is characterized by a strong international involvement, with a sense of local and global community. All this with great technical work behind it. And it is precious and unique that an institution like the IRCAM of Paris has joined a competition that already had international credit. It is clear that this is one of the most qualifying events of the Capital of Culture because it also has the characteristic of reproducibility of the formula over the years, therefore a project that does not end with 2024 but has the possibility of sedimenting the experiences becoming consolidated heritage.

 

Has continued Agostino Riitano: today, with the launch of the project in which Sonosfera® is the protagonist, it is also an opportunity for us to remember that Sonosfera® was certainly one of the central sources of inspiration for the definition of the theme of our application dossier which then allowed us to win the title of Capital of Culture. At the time, the encounter with the Sonosfera® was a shock because within it art, nature and technology are extraordinarily linked to each other and gave us the possibility of having a tangible presence in the cultural ecosystem of the city of what could have been for us the declination of the nature of culture, or the relationship between art, nature and technology. This was a decisive element because from the experience in Sonosfera® we began a very strong dialogue with Monacchi who was immediately available to share all the reasoning behind what is a true artistic invention: it is important to underline this, there it is a strong pioneering aspect and an epochal change for enjoyment but also for musical composition. This is the basis of the competition of which this year marks the second edition with which we are significantly raising the bar, which has reached extraordinary maturity and which will give us further opportunities for experimentation. I remember that always linked to Sonosfera® is the Twin Color project which we will talk about later.

 

The conclusions entrusted to David Monacchi: ISAC is a competition that is in its second edition, last year we were alone, we had launched this initiative under the idea of ​​Maestro Eugenio Giordani who is no longer with us and who left us with the desire to launch a competition for the Sonosfera® that would enhance electroacoustic composition at an international level precisely for these three-dimensional spaces. Last year we already had great results, for the current year we have the collaboration of IRCAM in Paris. It was not easy to establish a collaboration, however, the interest of Paris in following all our requests and approaches was great, they miraculously joined this initiative which we gave shape to and in the wake of the 2023 edition. This year the call launched internationally and involved our contacts in the academic field but also the entire catchment area of ​​the Center Pompidou. And the numbers have doubled with all of Europe represented, North America, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong with a strong presence from the East. Thus the competition has become the most important in the world for acousmatic musical composition. Therefore, such strong support has put us in the conditions whereby the Capital of Culture 2024 has also become the capital of three-dimensional acousmatic electroacoustic music; it means that we have set in motion a virtuous mechanism to make the world understand that electroacoustic music can be listened to in a very specific way that the Sonosfera® allows: that is, being in a completely dark space and where the sound sources are all around . The metaphor of the title 'Listening: the Sonosfera® from inside, outside and beyond' gives a good idea of ​​this interpenetration.

 

Significant progress in three-dimensional sound technologies in recent years has led to the proliferation of artistic creations in various fields of music production. Genres such as electronic and electroacoustic music, the soundscape composition, thematic documentaries, audio dramas, music recordings, etc., are now adopting spatial audio techniques. This allows you to model sound within a spherical domain, transforming space (including the position, size and perspective of sound sources) into a tangible compositional tool. Founded in Pesaro in 1971 by Walter Branchi and under the direction of Eugenio Giordani for over four decades, the electronic laboratory for experimental music LEMS has cultivated a tradition of pioneering electronic composition in Italy. Although there is now a wide availability of software and hardware for the synthesis, manipulation and post-production of sound in these creations, it is evidently much less common to be able to use theaters and places equipped to reproduce these works in spherical periphony, in particular for a sufficiently large audience. Sonosfera® meets both needs: a 6th order Ambisonics technological standard of the highest sound quality level, and a capacity of 60 seats.

 

Sonosfera®

It is a mobile technological amphitheater for deep listening to ecosystems and music, designed for Pesaro UNESCO Creative City of Music by David Monacchi, inaugurated in January 2020. The space is equipped with 45 specially built speakers positioned in an isolated spherical space acoustically and with perfect internal acoustics. Circular stands transparent to sound lift the audience above an acoustically “active” lower hemisphere, while the upper hemisphere is also equipped with a 360° projection screen. The listener thus finds himself at the center of the soundscape, in the darkness of a stimulating acousmatic sensorial experience, sometimes "illuminated" by visual analyzes of the sound itself. Sonosfera® was in fact originally designed and built for the spherical reconstruction and visualization of recordings made in primary tropical rainforest ecosystems, as part of the long-term 'Fragments of Extinction' project.

 

Projection space

Located within the IRCAM in Paris, the Espace de Projection is a medium-sized performance hall with adaptable acoustics, which can accommodate approximately 400 seats. Built in the 70s, its design aimed to offer great flexibility in terms of shape, size and acoustic characteristics. Thanks to this architectural adaptability, different acoustic characteristics can be adjusted separately. The audio setting is engaging and unprecedented for new media and performing arts. It also offers cutting-edge equipment for experimental research in high-definition spatial audio and auditory spatial cognition.

ISAC-2024 is promoted by Pesaro 2024 – Italian Capital of Culture and Municipality of Pesaro/Department of Beauty, produced by the non-profit organization Fragments of Extinction in collaboration with the Pescheria Visual Arts Center Foundation and the Rossini Conservatory.