Author: Giuseppe Gavazza
Title: Semafori/Lighthouses
Eight videos with sound diffused over 8 digital frames in a not-too-bright and quiet space
Year of composition: 2011
First performance: The Bank, Folkestone; Folkestone Fringe triennial 2011. Strange Cargo production
Semafori/Lighthouses later became a work for the web to which it is closely related Semafori/Sirene, realized in Bergen, USF, Studio 2, February 2012
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Semafori/Lighthouses
First project description
Semafori/lighthouses
Italian: semaforo English: traffic light French: feu
Semaforo comes from Greek σεμα (signal, meaning) e φερω (in this case: to bring).
(In English semaphore indicate “a system of sending messages by holding the arms or two flags or poles in certain positions according to an alphabetic code.”)
Personally I feel lighthouses as more semaphoric (bringer of meaning) then traffic lights.
Italian: faro English: lighthouse French: phare
Every lighthouse has its own “voice”: his simple rhythm is its name and declare the position in which it is. Lighthouses are visual sirens (and in Italian sirena means both siren and mermaid), are visual and musical communicators for the navigators.
During my residence in 2000 at La Napoule Castle Art Foundation I had a beautiful room just on the sea, in the castle's tower; from the little balcony of this room I could see 8 lighthouses, everyone with his own luminous voice.
An eight voices silent night choir.
I recorded on video and audio the 8 lighthouses, overnight and during the day; of course both images and sounds are very different during night and day.
By adding an artificial audio-voice - a different short sound for every lighthouse - synchronized with its light rhythm, we can reveal lighthouse's voices also during the day transforming the silent luminous choir in an audible poly-rhythmic one on the background of original natural soundscape.
Every video with his audio will be transmitted through 8 different audio-video equipments being all in the same, quiet and silent and (quite) dark space.
Giuseppe Gavazza, December 2010