PIC

a video by Luigi Ceccarelli

with Achille Perilli

percussionists Antonio Caggiano, Gianluca Ruggeri
editing Gerardo Lamattina, Luigi Ceccarelli
Fondazione Musica per Roma production

2009

see also video section in this website

IlThe protagonist of this video is the painter Achille Perilli who recites a text freely based on the parolibere (free words) of the futurist Fortunato Depero. The images were filmed in his studio in Orvieto (Umbria, Italy) in Spring 2009 and were then digitally edited in close connection to the sound, using the technique of rhythmical fragmentation typical of video clips.
The recording of Achille’s voice (made in 1989) was sampled into individual phonemes (which were treated as elementary rhythmic elements), and then built into complex multi-rhythmical structures carefully written out as a musical score.
The score is played by two percussionists who, instead of using normal percussion instruments, activate two sets of sensors (Octapads) with sticks, thereby playing the individual phonemes. The resulting timbres are therefore those of Achille’s voice, which the percussionists "play" while creating the rhythmic structure during a live performance.
The complete composition involves a live video and musical performance, but it can also be presented as a video alone, or performed as live music without the accompanying video.

The creation of this work has gone through various moments during my experiences as a musician and it has developed thanks to various kinds of technology, but also and above all thanks to the various artistic contexts with which I have come in contact during the twenty year period between the recording of the audio material and the recording of the video material.
Its genesis dates back to 1989, when I began creating the music for the dance show Aniccham, with choreography by Lucia Latour, commissioned by the East-West Festival of Rovereto. The show was inspired by Fortunato Depero’s work and in order to realize some rhythmical musical parts I thought of using texts based on the futuristic “parole in libertà” (words in freedom) as a sound material, which for me has always been one of the most innovative and explosive surprising aspects of futurism, unlike futuristic music which always remained at a relatively mediocre level.
For this occasion I asked Achille Perilli to recite some poetic texts by Depero in the futurist manner. Achilles, apart from being an artist, is also a great connoisseur of futurism and he has a vast library of texts regarding 20th century art, including a large section on Futurism. The recording of his declamatory performance, while being historically consistent, was in my opinion an extraordinarily creative invention and perfect material for some of the most successful parts of Anihccam.
The music of Anihccam was completely prerecorded on a magnetic support, but in 1992, at the request of the percussion group Ars Ludi, with this material I created a new piece by uniting all of the sequences featuring the voice of Perilli for Anihccam”. In order to allow the percussionists to control the phonemes in real time I developed an interface with the Formula software (later transformed into Max) that translates the simple signals of the sensors into more complex information for the sampler.
But my work was not yet finished. In early 2009, on the occasion of the centenary of the publication of the first futurist manifesto, I was asked to revisit this piece for two percussionists and make a video for the occasion. I then thought of adding to the rhythmic play of phonemes play a complementary rhythmical interplay of images that would follow the same contrapuntal musical logic.
I therefore went back into Achille Perilli’s studio with a video operator and I proposed that he could videotape his performance of twenty years earlier”. Achilles tumed out to be an extraordinary actor.

performances:

May 22th 09 Jun 29th 09 Sep 29th 09 Oct 1st 09 Oct 29th 09 Nov 19th 09 Nov 22th 09 Feb 17th 10

Munich (Germany), Gasteig, Black Box Bratislava (Slovacchia), Philarmonic of Bratislava Còrdoba (Argentina) Museo de Bellas Artes "Emilio Caraffa"                XX Jornadas Internationales de Mùsica Electroacùstica Amsterdam (Nederland), Bimhuis Barcellona (Spain), Conservatorio Municipal de Mùsica de Barcelona Buenos Aires (Argentina), Teatro de la Ribera Bahìa Blanca (Argentina), Biblioteca Rivadavia Roma, Auditorium Parco della Musica - Teatro Studio