Selected portfolio
This is an updated portfolio of the recent artworks produced, workshops given and ongoing projects.
Alone with Empire (2018)
Soundtrack composition for multichannel audio-video installation; Soundtrack composition for promotional videos
A commission by IC Visual Lab, Bristol (2018), curated and designed by Alejandro Acin and Isaac Blease, in collaboration with Nick Diacre (Software Design), Edson Burton (Narration author and voice) and Daniel Bosworth (building).
The installation provides a critical space to be alone with films from the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection (BECC), aiming to challenge the ways in which colonial film footage can be presented and experienced.
This event was organized by IC Visual Lab in conjunction with Bristol Archives, with the support by the Arts Council of England, and Heritage Lottery Fund.
Form Follows Sound: Embodied Sonic Interaction Workshops (2013-2014)
a series of workshops in Sonic Interaction Design in which participants drew upon their everyday sonic experiences to ideate imagined sonic interactions, and then realise interactive prototypes.
In collaboration with Baptiste Caramiaux, Atau Tanaka and Scott Pobiner. Hosted at Goldsmiths (London), Parsons New School for Design (New York), IRCAM (Paris) and ZHdK (Zurich) between May 2013 and January 2014)
Loom: Chartless Rudderless Night (2012-2014)
a digital choreography by Claire Pencak.
Presented at Alchemy Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland (2012) and Papey Listskjul, Papa Westray, Orkney Islands, Scotland (2014).
4 channels music composed with Helen Papaioannou.
Chartless Rudderless Night is a collaboration between choreographer Claire Pençak, dancers Merav Israel and Will Thorburn, moving image artist John McGeoch and composers Helen Papaioannou and Alessandro Altavista. It is part of the Loom project, and here the loom is inspired by the lighthouses of Orkney. The title is a composite of words taken from George Mackay Brown’s ‘The Weaver’. The choreography conveys the collision of wave on rock, ships that pass in the night, the scanning beam of a lighthouse on dark seas. The sound element draws on the mapping, individual light characteristics and rhythm of the 11 lighthouses of Orkney and is written for saxophone, double bass and digital sound synthesis.
Chartless Rudderless Night (Promo) from Claire Pencak on Vimeo.
More info on Helen Papaioannou’s website.
The Loud Self (2012)
Sound installation, transistor radio, radio transmitter, computer connected to the internet, dimensions variable.
Part of the collective exhibition “Reassembling the Self” by Susan Aldworth. Vane Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Alessandro Altavilla’s sound installation, The loud self, explores auditory hallucinations, phenomena frequently described by people affected by schizophrenia. These hallucinations are often heard as real voices, creating a concrete inner dialogue between the self and other selves. In extreme cases this causes subjects to feel themselves in a state of paranoia or even persecution. The loud selfsearches for people tweeting the phrase “I heard voices” on the internet, which are then spoken aloud by a computer synthesised voice. This voice is broadcast to a transistor radio in the gallery. This work can also be heard every night from midnight until 1am during the period of the exhibition on an internet radio programme at culturelabradio.ncl.ac.uk.
An Arbitrary System for Tuning Fabric (2012)
(w/ Berit Greinke)
Premiered at the exhibition “On Geometry and Speculation” curated by Hicham Khalidi as part of the Fourth Marrakech Biennale (29 February – 28 March 2012).
Performance: Berit Greinke, Alessandro Altavilla, An Arbitrary System for tuning fabrics, 2012, ESAV, 38x54cm, cotton, silver thread, sound synthesis and recordings.
Altavilla’s and Greinke’s An Arbitrary System For Tuning Fabrics is a series of responsive, embroidered textiles for delicate digital sound control. This collaborative project investigates the common grounds of textile patterning and sound sampling with the aim to improve music quality in e-textile performances and to create visually and sonically engaging live events.
Chrome Live Workshop (KHiB, 2012)
(w/ Berit Greinke)
In Chrome Live workshop we investigated visual and audio pattern creation in real time through colour chromatography and participatory sound design.
Amplifying Textiles ( KHB, Berlin, 2011)
In Amplifying Textile workshop students augmented textiles and were involved in sessions of participatory sonic interaction design. While learning basic sound programming in Pure Data and physical computing platform such Arduino, students applied their fresh knowledge to design textile/sonic working prototypes, carefully combining synesthetic interactions between tactile qualities of fabrics and imagined sounds.
Project blog and website: http://twiddletone.wordpress.com
The Quiet Walk (2011-present)
(w/ Tom Schofield)
The Quiet Walk is a pedestrian exploration of urban space, driven by sonic information captured by a mobile device.
Instead of using a geographical reference in order to navigate around the city, the mobile suggests to avoid particular noisy areas of city, giving directions to reach quiet zones.
The data collected generates a constantly changing map of the city according to its sounds.
The Quiet Walk transforms the user into a temporary cartographer, technologically aided and at the same time detoured, drifting on the thresholds of acoustic territories, aware of the continuously changing soundscapes of the city.
The Flying Ear (2011)
A tour of the sounds of the city through the ear of a balloon.
Latex balloons, six meters audio cable, semi-binaural microphones, audio recorder, headphones.
Commissioned by Newcastle City Council, for the exhibition Creative Stuff in Public Space (May 2011), part of the festival Invisible Architecture, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Sept. 2011.
Osmosis (2011)
A site-specific installation by Ewelina Aleksandrowicz, Alessandro Altavilla, Andrzej Wojtas.
Osmosis a response to the physical and infrastructural characteristics of 5 Forth Street in Newcastle UponTyne, a space carved from one of the main railways bridges of the city.The passage of the trains above the space will work as a sonic catalyst for an exchange between the outside and inner spaces.
Jul 2011. Culture Lab On Site, Newcastle Upon Tyne.
- Osmosis. Culture Lab OnSite, Newcaslte Upon Tyne, 2011
Video documentation
osmosis :: from Culture Lab OnSite on Vimeo.
The Quest (2012)
The quest is google map documentary in the form of an temporary public web interventions on Google April’s fool day.
Taranto, an ancient colony of Magna Graecia, along the centuries known as port and maritime town, a hundred years ago has been transformed into the main industrial and polluted center of southern Italy.
ELC (2011)
Workshop on electronic noise instrument making, addressed to inexperienced people.
Commissioned to a team of 6 artists from the North East by Copeland Borough Council.
Whitehaven, Cumbria, United Kingdom. June 2011.
ELC is Alessandro Altavilla, Ewelina Aleksandrowicz, Andrzej Wojtas, Benjamin Freeth, Ben Thompson, Jane Dudman.
Documentation available at http://niochnioszki.net/elc.html
Taranto Sonora | SonorApuliae (2010)
A workshop on acoustic ecology, sound walks and improvisation in the old town of Taranto, southern Italy, in order to create a sound map of the city. August, 2010.
The workshop has been organized by Lab Lib and Francesco Giannico. Worked as assistant of the workshop and co-director of the final improvisation performance, held by the participants of the workshop itself. Mainly non-musician dealing with the sound recorded during the 6 days of Taranto Sonora.
Documentation and website onhttp://sonorapuliae.altervista.org/.
Photo by Sante Cutecchia, editing by Francesco Giannico. All rights reserved.
Super Corpore (2009)
An Arduino and Max/MSP based real-time reactive musical instrument designed for dancers and actors, developed with Giuseppe Salatino. Taranto, Italy, 2008.
A complex system of flex sensors and accelerometers are connected to the body articulations of a performer.
Super Corpore has been used for several contemporary dance gigs, in particular with the dance group “Res Extensa”, by Elisa Barucchieri (Bari, Italy).
Super Corpore is my final thesis project of B.Mus. in Music and New Technologies, in Conservatory of Music in Bari, Italy.
Leave a Reply