Asymmetric mirror

[Texto disponible solo en inglés] ASYMMETRIC MIRROR

NEW SOUND PERSPECTIVES

A performance joining technological innovation and musical tradition

With

Tiziano Zanotti, stylus contrabass & electronic effects

Diego Gavioli, video design

“Asymmetric Mirror. New Sound Perspectives” is a new audiovisual project that was developed by a group of artists and technicians around the Stylus Contrabass, an innovative musical instrument with extremely sophisticated technology matching a very natural sound.

The audience is involved in an absorbing multi-sensory experience where images and sounds, closely connected since the beginning of the project thanks to a shared design and composition process, are intersected to create a space thick with iridescent emotions and atmospheres. Songs have been composed by Tiziano Zanotti and Nicola Ciarmatori specifically for the Stylus Contrabass, to experiment the endless potential of such a peculiar instrument. Different pieces of pre-recorded electronic material are processed live by the bassist to create multiple sounds and give energy and variety to the performance (almost like having a whole band on stage). Video installations by Diego Gavioli are synchronised to the music and mix images taken from the external reality, dancers, animations and digital elaboration. They tend to reflect the music that is being played (or vice versa), but sometimes these analogies and parallels are not so precise… asymmetric, so to say.

The Stylus Contrabass was born after three years of hard work by the bassist Zanotti, the luthier Mauro Marchesini and the bassist, luthier and IT expert Paolo Betti. Almost a piece of art whose futurist design is inspired to the double bass but complemented by state-of-art electronic equipment. The sound is produced experimentally by special optical pick-ups never applied before to such kind of instrument, while the integration of a Midi channel helps create unlimited sound tones.

An Echoes production 2011

Composers

Tiziano Zanotti

Nicola Ciarmatori

Performance selected for participation to the “roBOt Festival - Digital Paths into music and art” 4th edition. Bologna 28 September - 1 October 2011 (www.robotfestival.it [http://www.robotfestival.it])