un_i[n]verso - audiovisual sculpture
un_i[n]verso – audiovisual sculpture is a site specific work for sound, video, metal sculptures, light and shadow.
The work arises from the desire to explore the broad concept of matter, situated between concreteness and transparency, aiming to establish a system in which different media merge with one another. This creates an artistic form in which the viewer no longer perceives the elements as separate, but rather experiences them as an integrated whole. On a dramaturgical level, it can be summarized as a slow exploration that begins with digital landscapes and moves into deconstructed cities and architectures and their details, floating between reality and imagination.
“It is a synthetic work. That becomes political, then pictorial, then architectural, then mineral to become in the end cosmological”. (Lucrezia Nardi)
Commissioned by
Recontemporary (Turin IT)
Category
Audiovisual Sculpture
Specifics
1ch video, 2ch sound, metal sculptures, light and shadow | 10’30”
Years of creation
2021 – 2023

The project begins with the insight that each element contained within the audiovisual sculpture can become a container itself, and vice versa. Adopting a phenomenological approach, the various constituents of the sculpture were first classified based on their material characteristics to identify points of convergence and divergence and to foster stronger interdependencies among them.
The metal sculptures, with their wire mesh texture, evoke an absent materiality that allows the viewer to see through them, presenting tangible forms with ethereal qualities, while preserving their monolithic character. This duality seamlessly integrates with the video projections. The sculptures become extensions of the video, while their shadows in turn extend the sculptures themselves, magnifying their physicality. Light and shadow merge, becoming indistinguishable from their sources and creating a natural continuation of the artworks. These shadows amplify the sculptures’ spatial presence as traces of matter, and the movement of light animates them, generating perspective distortions that transform the sculptures into dynamic performers.
Transparency and concreteness interchange fluidly, where what is concrete can become transparent and vice versa. The videos offer a visual narrative oscillating between cinema and computer graphics, beginning with distant, deconstructed digital landscapes and indefinite spaces, then moving closer to digital architectures and dismantled buildings. In this context, the process of visual fragmentation and deconstruction is closely connected to the concept of glitch, which not only informs the narrative but is also employed as the main aesthetic and conceptual sound element.
A central focus of the project was to rethink sound not as something ethereal, but as a tangible material entity. Although this perspective may seem unconventional, it is supported by contextualizing sound through elements such as clicks and noises, which help to activate our spatial orientation and enhance the perception of sound’s materiality.
Michel Chion’s concept of the sound object, understood as a perceptual whole that remains consistent across different listenings, underpins the idea that sound possesses objective material value. This notion aligns with Pierre Schaeffer’s efforts to reveal the concreteness of auditory experience beyond its semantic or representational aspects, and it resonates with phenomenological insights from Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, who embrace sound as a “thing” in its own right. While the concreteness of sound often reflects its mimetic, representational nature, this project highlights its material potential, creating forms through the interplay of sculpture as body, signals, and ideas. By considering sound within its immediate phenomenological context, a more material perception emerges.
Formally, the work is structured in two main sections, each composed of four scenes that unfold with varying degrees of transition, ranging from abrupt cuts to fluid passages. The first section features visual content predominantly made up of landscape imagery, which serves as the basis for sound generation through an audio synthesis technique known as scanline synthesis. This method converts pixel values from images into audio waveforms, effectively translating visual data into sound in a process of image sonification.
In contrast, the second section focuses on deconstructed architectural elements derived from photogrammetry, such as floor plans and structural skeletons. Here, the sound is produced through chaotic generators, deterministic systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, whose variables, in the context of this project, evolve according to the pixel values of the video. This tight interdependence ensures that sound is generated directly from the visual content, avoiding arbitrary synchronization and reinforcing the intrinsic connection between image and sound.



![un_i[n]verso](https://iademastudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Schermata-2024-01-08-alle-13.40.26-scaled.jpg)








Video and sound
incipit no.3: transparency and concreteness are interchangeable: what is concrete can become transparent and vice versa.
Videos carry the visual narration, floating between cinema and computer graphic. Far away, starting from deconstructed landscapes and indefinite spaces, the camera moves, approaching digital architectures, dismantled buildings, entering their details. As a metaphor of glitch, naturally connected to Un_i[n]verso’s sound components. Another fundamental point was to think of sound no longer as something transparent but rather as something that could be perceived as material. The idea of “sound as an object” may seem unusual, due to its characteristic. Therefore my research led me to think it in relation to other elements, to contextualized it, being able to stimulate our perception to imagine it other ways. Contextualization, as well as the sound sources (for example clicks and noises), are fundamental to trigger such process, since we may perceive sound materiality according to its potential of making humans orientating in a space. Many composers and philosopher confronted them selves with this question, elaborating different hypothesis.
As Michel Chion writes in Guide to Sound Object, sound objects can be understood as a perception of a totality that remains identical through different listenings, assuming that the material value of sound is given by its objectivity. Somehow close to the French composer Pierre Schaeffer’s concept, who tried to discover a concreteness of the lived auditory experience, often obscured by the semantic aspect. These concepts naturally expand in the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, that helps to embrace the idea of sound as thing. As with any object, the tendency is to place it in relation to another. But, in this case, is essential to shift our attention to those processes and relations of material individuation that give rise to sound identities, introducing the idea of independence of sound from a possible listener. The concept of concreteness of sound often reflects on its mimetic nature of its possible representation, but it is equally interesting to think about the perspective that offers us the material potential of sound, to give rise to forms through connection and association between machines, bodies, signals and ideas. Therefore the materiality of a sound is also linked to its function. The relation of a certain sound, in a precise context, focusing on its phenomenological immediacy, can
therefore lead to a more material perception of it.


Formally, the project consists of two macro-sections (a and b), divided into eleven scenes which follow one another, sometimes with abrupt interruptions, sometimes with smoother transitions. Section a, as far as video content is concerned, is characterized by the prevalent use of imagery landscapes which are then used to generate sound material through an audio synthesis called scanline. The basic principle of scanline synthesis is based on copying pixel values from a digital image into an audio buffer which is then used as the waveform for a wavetable oscillator. The pixels are usually read along a straight line in the image, but generally speaking an arbitrary grouping of pixels could be translated to a waveform.
Thus, we can say that is a type of image sonification. The visual content of section b, on the other hand, uses various elements of deconstructed architectures, starting from floor plans and skeleton of buildings. The sound component in this case is generated through the use of chaotic generators, which represent a deterministic set of equations, which can take different starting parameters. The equations define a system whose evolution over time is highly sensitive to initial conditions, and can exhibit highly intricate behaviour. In the case of Un_i[n]verso, the variables of those generators change
according to the videos pixel values. It was essential to create a strong interdependence between sound and image, hence I thought of using techniques that would allow the sound to be generated directly from the video, rather than using arbitrary
synchronizations.


