CESSE Papers / SOUND OF THE ISLAND – LUC FERRARI AND OTHER SOUND TRANSMITTERS / Siva zona – space for contemporary and media art, Zagreb- Korčula / 12:30-12:50 / 1th December, 2018
1967 to 1970 French composer Luc Ferrari enjoyed summer time at Vela Luka at the Korčula island in Croatia. There he made a fields recording and with minimal processing or manipulation composed the milestone soundscape work Almost Nothing No. 1: Daybreak at the Seashore, embracing all captured environmental sounds equaly valid for an artwork, described by author as “absence of abstract sounds”.
1968 Ferrari alongside fields recordings at Korčula island, participated in a summer colony International Visual Artists’ Meetings in Vela Luka, in 1968, where he produced a mosaic with motif of red star and a participatory sound performance, envisioned as a folk festival, whereby he successfully included the local population in a music procession which made its way along the coast of Vela Luka.
Within the 1972 edition of the International Visual Artists’ Meetings he joined teams from radio station Baden Baden and educated local population in workshops of sound recording, that was later used in radio program.
2107, exactly 50 years after Ferrari’s first field recordings, Slovenian artist Robertina Šebjanić and French curator Annick Bureau at same island of Korčula participated in micro-residency program organised by the Grey Area, space for contemporary and media art, under the title: ‘Critical Tourism: Aquatocene micro residency: Escaping Sound Pollution’. They made series of underwater sound recordings and live performance. Šebjanič deploying new notion of the Aquatocene in which the sound of the underwater pollution is at the core of the sound compositions. The subaquatic soundscape encourage us to reflect upon the anthropogenic sonic impact on the underwater habitat and marine life. Her work explore the phenomena of interspecies communication, sonification of the environment and the underwater acoustic as well investigates the phenomenon of underwater noise pollution created by humankind in the seas.