Output details

Via di San Teodoro 8

This video, Via di San Teodoro 8, explores Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi’s (1905-1988) house in the heart of Rome. It is an artists’ video that investigates different aspects of this house: its spaces, sounds and vistas, and its unique ambience opposite the ancient Roman Forum. It lies somewhere between experimental documentary and the filmic poetic essay. It featured the early electronic instruments (Ondiolas) on which Scelsi composed and improvised. In this context it featured a rare performance by pianist Oscar Pizzo on these instruments, the first recorded since Scelsi’s death.

It follows on from research into both music and visual art and questions around composition and improvisation reflected in the subject matter of the film and the formal devices that mark it. Such research aims at a cross-disciplinary approach: using a visual medium to explore the sonic and bringing together potentially different audiences: from new music to film and art audiences. Research involved approaches to filming and sound that would capture both ideas around improvisation and composition (reflecting Scelsi’s composition). Durational and spatial concerns were also examined, as well as filming a performance ‘housed’ within both a physical and filmic space, and how this is unfolded.

The research for this project, especially ideas around sound and image/space and aural perspective/depth of field, also featured as papers given at the AVANCA cinema conference in Portugal (2010) and a public lecture at the Glasgow Film and Television Theatre organised by the Glasgow School of Art ( Nov. 2012). (the conference paper is included in the submitted portfolio)