2015
Sound Poem
Artist’s Statement:
Sound piece-poem, a tribute to Decio Pignatari – the editing, processing, and electroacoustic montage of poem readings by the author and excerpts of songs inspired by his poems invite the listener to listen to the creative imagination of this great poet.
In sound piece: in memoriam Decio Pignatari, speeches, poems, songs, and silences interact and become integrated. The composition focuses on the interplay of sounds, words, word sounds, words that are transformed when sounds are changed, and with sounds that by and of themselves become words. The unfolding, the combinations and possibilities evidenced by the poems prompted the creation process of this sound piece as if it were the result of a thought that is organized in the displacement of space in time, of sounds and gestures in time and space, and of space in time. We think directly about the sonorous body of the words and about the sounds of the voices.
The guiding principle of the structure of this sound piece: in memoriam Decio Pignatari, was the work Noigandres IV (1997) for a soprano, clarinet, and piano by J.A. Mannis about the poem HOMBRE, also written by Décio Pignatari, published in the magazine called Noiganders No. 4, where the title of the song comes from. DP’s voice as he reads the poem and the 1997 song become equivalent in density, in meaning and could be alternated, combined, and thus, the song disintegrates, is transformed, and permeates all the other poems included in the piece, agglutinating, uniting, or connecting, in different ways, to each one of them. In this way, this sound piece is presented as a sound creation that brings together spoken concrete poems*, testimonials, and songs.
*Concrete poetry was conceived and accomplished in Brazil by poets Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, José Lino Grünewald, and Ronald Azeredo in the 1950’s, advancing until today, for more than six decades.
Decio Pignatari
Born in Brazil, on 20 August 1927, died on 2 December 2012. Poet, essay writer, translator, thinker, critic, playwright, professor, advertising professional. In partnership with the Campos brothers, with whom he formed the basis of the Noigandres Group, Pignatari published critical texts, including the book “Concrete Poetry Theory” (1965), and manifests. In one of his most significant texts, called “Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry”, the concrete poem is introduced as “an object in and of itself, not as an interpreter of external objects and/or sensations that are more or less subjective”, and concrete poetry is defined as “an integral responsibility facing language”. For such, proposed in the manifest, the word should be thought of in its various dimensions: “sound, visual form, semantic load.”
Bios:
Janete El Haouli is a musician, radiomaker, sound artist, cultural producer. She has a degree in Music, MA in Communication Sciences, and a Ph.D. in Arts at the University of São Paulo (USP). Created and coordinated the radio program New Music: radio for thinking ears (1991-2005) and the Nucleus of Contemporary Music_NMC (1993-2008) at the State University of Londrina (UEL) where she was a professor at Music and Drama Department (1981-2011). Published her creative work and research and attended various events in Brazil and abroad in the fields of experimental voice, soundscapes, radio art and sound ecology. Accomplished projects commissioned to be created for the WDR in Cologne, DeutschlandRadio in Berlin, Radio Educación in Mexico, Radio Cultura FM in São Paulo and others. Published the book-CD ‘Demetrio Stratos: in search of voice-music’ in Italy (1999), Brazil (2003) and Mexico (2006).
José Augusto Mannis is a composer, electroacoustic performer, sound designer, faculty member, researcher. His repertoire covers a variety of musical genres and styles: electroacoustic, instrumental, music for video, theatre, radio art, and multi-media installations. His music is characterized by one over-riding factor: sound and musical gesture are essential concerns. As a performer of electroacoustic music, he has worked with La Grande Fabrique, Espace Musical and Ensemble L’Itineraire (France), Ensemble Antidogma (Turin), Grupo Círculo (Madrid), Duo-Diálogos (Brazil) and INA-GRM. He is the founder and former-director (1989-2005) of the Center for Documentation of Contemporary Music (CDMC) at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, where he is a professor of composition, counterpoint and fugue. Actualy in Post-Doctorate in Contemporary Studies of Arts at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) (2016-2019) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tato Taborda conducting research on immersive acoustic spaces. His research includes music digital library, music cataloging and the development of acoustical researches in room acoustics, bioacoustics and sound engineering for recording, musical performance and listening, musical education, musical cognition.