In Cieli Sonori, the landscape is something you listen to. In the exhibition, hosted at BiM in Milan, Gaia Anselmi Tamburrini’s photographic work makes image and sound exist together. Recordings collected in the Peruvian Andes give life to a dimension that crosses space, making surfaces vibrate. To narrate the sound part of this project, we were in conversation with the artists who built its voice. Nicola Ratti, author of the composition that inhabits the images, and then MMMM, a collective formed by Alberto Morelli, Andrea La Pietra and Lorenzo Saini, who brought to the exhibition a performance capable of intertwining ancestral instruments, electronics and improvisation.

Composer and sound artist Nicola Ratti constructs the soundscape of Cieli Sonori based on recordings made by Gaia during her journey. In his work, sound permeates the image, creating a sensory dialogue between what is seen and what vibrates beneath. Through careful use of materials and frequencies, Ratti restores the memory of landscape and the stratification of time to photography. 

GAIA V. MARRAFFA: When you first listened to Gaia’s recordings, did the raw sound material immediately suggest a direction to you, or was it more of a process of listening and waiting?

NICOLA RATTI: It’s very interesting to listen to environmental recordings without being the author and without knowing where they were recorded. Mainly because they allow you to create images that closely resemble the way dreams generate experiences, where what we have lived is integrated with elements of pure fantasy. Sound has its own identity unrelated to its source, which in concrete music is called objet sonore, and which is able to suggest a direction to follow and other sounds to combine it with, even before you “understand” what it is. 

GM: In Cieli Sonori, sound not only accompanies the image, but also flows through it. How did you construct this relationship between listening and matter?

NR: Gaia’s photographs freeze a very dynamic moment, both for the subject, which is “flying”, and the background – the sky – which is most often portrayed in a moment of perturbation. All this “movement” is made physically perceptible as vibration from a sound point of view. Let’s say that I focused a lot on the background, trying to bring the subject to the same level. The sound work is consistent with the level of attention required when you are facing an image on a medium that you cannot “zoom in” on and which therefore pushes you to get closer and pay more attention. 

GM: Is there a moment in your work – a sound, a passage, an unexpected event – that sums up the Cieli Sonori experience for you?

NR: I think it was the first time that Gaia and Sara experienced the effect of the sound material reworked through the transducers applied to the panels. Somehow the photos came to life and we aligned ourselves with the final result.

GM: How can listening to environmental recordings change our perception of the world?

NR: It’s difficult to summarise in a few lines, but we’ll try. There’s a very nice book by David Haskell called Sounds Wild and Broken, which argues that every sound has a physical memory that comes not only from the object that generated it, but also from the set events that generated the object itself. When we hear the sound of an engine, we are actually also listening to all the chemical changes that have taken place over the centuries that have transformed sunlight into fossil fuel, as well as the sound of the materials that make up the engine itself. Imagine, then, how much the sound of a landscape can tell us about its present and its past, at the same time. Applying this “listening point” to common hearing makes our perception of the world deeper in time and space, and distances it from an anthropocentric view of reality.

GM: Looking at the project now, after having experienced it, is there anything you would do differently or that surprised you in the final result?

NR: I was pleasantly surprised that it worked so well! After all, every project is a leap into the unknown until it comes to life in a physical, shared space. Often, imagination takes up too much space and blurs the possible outcome of an idea. With a little experience, you learn to navigate between project and reality, and in this case, I think the distance between the two was quite short.

The MMMM (Memorie Marine Music Manifesto) collective, formed by Alberto Morelli, Andrea La Pietra and Lorenzo Saini, brings a performative and experimental approach to Cieli Sonori, intertwining archaic instruments and electronic languages. Guided by a tension between play and research, MMMM explores the matter of sound as a living body, where tradition and contemporaneity merge in a fluid harmony, recalling the same ancestral and iridescent energy of the places that inspired the project.

GM: How did your collaboration with Gaia and the Cieli Sonori project come about? What convinced you to take part in it?

ANDREA LA PIETRA: The collaboration began when Gaia asked me for some ideas on how to add a sound dimension to her performance, starting from musical instruments that she herself had collected in the Andes. Considering the fairy-tale and playful aspect of some of the instruments, MMMM immediately struck me as the project capable of giving chromatic resonance to these instruments. 

GM: During the performance at BiM, traditional and electronic sounds intertwined in a very natural way. How did you build this dialogue between ancient instruments and contemporary languages?

LORENZO SAINI (LO.SAI): One of the founding elements of the MMMM project is the pulsating dialogue between electronics and acoustic instruments. MMMM is a bit like an opportunity to explore an elastic time, typical of classical music and often present in experimental electronic contexts. The result is halfway between various genres, and is guided by a general interest in not sacrificing melody, but remaining faithful to a musical narrative permeated by the context in which it is inserted.

GM: Where did you start from to develop the sound language of the performance? Was there a common reference point or sound that guided the entire creative process?

LORENZO SAINI (LO.SAI): The rules of the combining game of electronics in Cieli Sonori were to use as few instruments as possible in order to best enhance the wooden quena (Gaia’s flute) and to construct sound objects as if they were voices in a choir or animals in a landscape. We defined the very nature of the object even before the musical structure, which continued to change until just before the performance. It takes a lot of mutual trust, especially on Gaia’s part, who didn’t know us well, and for that we have to thank her.

GM: During the performance, you interchanged original Peruvian instruments, electronic instruments, and even sound objects such as a seashell. Can you tell us how you chose and combined these elements?

ALBERTO MORELLI: We can find the starting point when, in July, Gaia came to visit me and brought me the instruments she had picked up during her trip to Peru. I have a number of musical instruments in my home that I have brought back from my travels, including to Central and South America. While we were discussing Gaia’s idea for her project, I explored these instruments by playing them. The most important instrument among those Gaia brought me was a quena, a wooden flute, that the luthier had given the curious name of Fluta de Gaia. Other unusual instruments that Gaia had brought were the Tlapitzalli, clay ocarinas common in Peru and Mexico, a bone Quena of Peruvian origin, and two Palos de Luvia, percussion instruments that reproduce the sound of rain. Later, in agreement with Andrea and Lorenzo, we added other acoustic and electronic instruments. Among the acoustic instruments, we included a Bendir, a frame drum of North African origin, and a Lyra, a plucked instrument from ancient Greece. Lastly, I also used primitive trumpets made from Charonia Tritonis, which are sea shells that are true universal sounds. Playing these instruments means making them speak, and for Cieli Sonori I thought they could create a beautiful chorus that could tell the story of Gaia’s journey. For me, every sound object is like a living form that has its own Voice. That’s why I like to combine multiple sounds and voices, whether acoustic or electronic. One of the basic elements of the MMMM project is undoubtedly the investigation of the possibilities offered by opposites. For me, MMMM is a celebration of differences, allowing us to explore the primordial dimension of music, that of the game, with respect for history and tradition but without wanting to reproduce it faithfully.

GM: Is there a sound, instrument or moment in the preparation that, for you, represents the essence of Cieli Sonori?

ANDREA LA PIETRA: All the sounds and instruments we have chosen are equally important to us in the balance created during the performance. One aspect that transcends the preparation was when Lorenzo and I stood up, leaving Alberto to dialogue freely with the sound environment through the flute. After listening to the chorus of echoes and instrumental colours, the listening experience is projected centrally, in a more contemplative and celebratory dimension of the “Flauto de Gaia”.