FINDS OF SILENCE - FUNDE DER STILLE
Author: Federico Federici
Genre: objects
Technic: installation, archive
Material: organic
Year: 2016 - ?
Exhibition (excerpts): “Stille”, Group Global 3000, Berlin, (13.01.2017 – 10.03.2017)
A B S T R A C T
Trees act as living antennas, collect mechanical stimuli from air and soil pressure, adjust their freshly sprouted architecture, embody prints in the slow, continuous growth of their permanent structures. The back and forth vibration of particles, regardless of whether they belong to air, soil or whatever else, affects the living things embodied in the medium.
Trees act as living antennas, collect mechanical stimuli from air and soil pressure, adjust their freshly sprouted architecture, embody prints in the slow, continuous growth of their permanent structures. The back and forth vibration of particles, regardless of whether they belong to air, soil or whatever else, affects the living things embodied in the medium.
Each single cell hears sound, in the overall state of tension or slack a tree is capable of. Sound is an active force which constantly tends to shape things, leaving unexpected folds within vibrating structures. Silence, whose boundaries avoid tracing, hides somewhere within and around each shaped thing. It is the haunting, ultimate message morphed into dead trees transformed into a fortuitous sculptural medium.
Jede einzelne Zelle hört Geräusche, ob der Baum angespannt oder entspannt ist. Schall ist eine aktive Kraft, die unaufhörlich die Dinge formt und in schwingenden Strukturen unerwartete Falten finden lässt. Stille, deren Grenzen keine Spuren hinterlassen, verbirgt sich irgendwo innerhalb und um jede geformte Sache. Sie ist die eindringliche, letzte Botschaft, die in tote Bäume verwandelt wird, die wiederum in ein zufälliges plastisches Medium verwandelt sind.
P R O J E C T
The project I am working on explores the tiniest effects of sound on living structures, once they have come to death in their physical environment.
Surfaces are microscopically stressed and rearranged by the impact of sound. I started out recording evidences of this phenomenon in both urban/pseudo-urban settlements and in the wild. The open archive to be arranged aims to inspire inner silence by the neat recollection of the sound freezed into roots, gemmas, barks, leaves and so forth, while providing the most information about each find and its discovery.
Trees act as living antennas. They collect mechanical stimuli from air and soil pressure, adjust their freshly sprouted architecture, embody prints in the slow, continuous growth of their permanent structures. The back and forth vibration of particles, regardless of whether they belong to air, soil or whatever else, affects the living things embodied in the medium. Each single cell hears sound, in the overall state of tension or slack a tree is capable of.
Piezoelectric microphones would transduce structure-borne sound, mapping local, real-time vibrations into noise, or noise music. Sound never disappears completely though. Its imprints remain as subtle, unexpected folds within vibrating structures. That is where I learned silence: from observing fallen beeches on the Melogno hill, or dead standing limes along suburban boulevards in Berlin. Dead trees keep finds of silence.
In this preliminary part of the project, I question the beechwood along the path of the High Lands, in the western ligurian Apennines. Further investigations will address the trees in Milan, Berlin and along the A10 and A6 highways.
Silence, whose boundaries avoid tracing, is the haunting, ultimate message morphed into the structures of a dead tree transformed into a fortuitous sculptural medium. The phenomenon to be observed challenges the pure representation of facts and needs the deliberate displacement of the spectator's angle of vision out of the bare encounter with a residual, isolated dead structure in an art context.
Sound is addressed as an active force which constantly tends to shape things, while silence hides somewhere within and around each shaped thing.
The concise captions provided should help finds to be properly identified and encompass the very starting point of a possible narrative. Some implicit and seemingly acoustic relationship should then be established and the old retinal image persist as an empty stage only.
- - - - Along a path of the High Lands, in the western ligurian Apennines - - - -
Where does silence gather?
Wo sammelt sich Stille?
Some deer's tongue licked the silence of the bark.
Die Zunge eines Hirsches leckte an der Stille der Rinde.
The husk of silence which the lark's song broke.
Die Schale der Stille, die der Gesang der Lerche brach.
Buds tormented by some woodpecker's twirl.
Knospen, gequält durch eines Spechtes Wirbeln.
Air comes and goes over the unsheltered leaf, centre of the beech woods.
Luft kommt und geht über dieses ungeschützte Blatt, die Mitte des Buchenwalds.
The howling of a wolf crept into the crannies of this root that sucks the frosted snow.
Das Heulen eines Wolfes schlich sich in die Ritzen dieser Wurzel, die an dem vereisten Schnee saugt.
The dark budded and dropped the leaf without a goodbye.
Das Dunkel erblühte und ließ das Blatt ohne einen Abschied fallen.
Each leaf falls on all last fall's leaves, bud of silence, deadweight of a dying tree.
Jedes Blatt fällt auf alle Blätter des letzten Herbstes, Knospe der Stille, totes Gewicht eines sterbenden Baumes.
In the tearing deafness of frost, the ghost-leaf could not pronounce the name of the tree.
In der reißenden Taubheit des Frostes, konnte das Geisterblatt den Namen des Baumes nicht aussprechen.
Silent moths ripen in the crevices of this bark.
Stille Motten reifen in den Spalten dieser Rinde.
This deaf leaf fell twice in the evergreen shade of its tree, where the depth of the shade was the height of the tree.
Dieses taube Blatt fiel zweimal im immergrünen Schatten seines Baumes, wo die Tiefe des Schattens die Höhe des Baumes war.
Who can distinguish, under this silence waves, the falling leaf from the fallen one?
Wer kann unter den Wellen dieser Stille, das fallende vom gefallenen Blatt unterscheiden?
Trees dissolve in the word wind – wind is what they sprout from, wind is what they root to.
Bäume lösen sich im Wort Wind auf – es ist der Wind aus dem sie sprießen, Wind in dem sie wurzeln.
The mountain's shout – a splinter flicked into the knots of the dead.
Der Schrei des Berges – ein in den hölzernen Augapfel der Verstorbenen eingedrungener Keil.
WORK IN PROGRESS ...
