Ruidos y susurros de las vanguardias - Medialab Prado

And a noisy modern city in which to hear noises from the morning to the night and
more noises, in which Russolo says, the ears need moments of rest and silence.
He mentions cars like most immense, the most varied source of noise; and he
adds that generally in the places where continuous noises are produced (streets,
offices) there is a low background noise, continuous, independent to a certain
extent of the varied rhythmical noises that are produced. The street is an endless
source of noises:
rhythmical movements of different horse trotting, the violent starting of car
engines when others have reached a speed tone, the rhythmical swingings of a
carriage with wheels covered with iron compared to the almost liquid slide of
automobile tires.
And it is not the same to hear it from the ground or from a second or third floor. Or
hearing at night the great and solemn breathing of a sleepy city. He also
mentioned other sources of noises like the numerous and varied factories, the
machines with quiet electrical motors of simple and regular rhythmical
movements, which produce a gorgeous continuous purring, or those of complex
movements like the printing presses; the street cars and the noises of cables of
the electrical power supply, the locomotives or the complex noises of a train in
movement; the noises that we can find in our house like those of the water pipes,
gas, heating; or the small noises like the tick-tock of a clock.
Spring is a season, as Russolo says, in that the murmurs are tenuous and delicate
with respect to other seasons, but they depend on the place and the day in which
they are produced. In order to carry out the work I have tried to impregnate myself
with that spring and the best way I thought was to visit during the days of this
season different gardens and to observe different flowers and perceive the noises
heard. And every day a garden is visited and a different flower is observed for a
while. This happens day after day, garden after garden, flower after flower. No day
is equal, as no garden and no flower are the same. There are gardens in which the
noises of nature are almost not heard and those are the noises of life, those of the
city, those that receive protagonism. And in others the silence of nature is
interrupted by the continuous noise of the background. But always, the garden
has sounded like a score in which the noises of nature and life were harmonized.
The smooth heat of a sunny day, the humming of a bee, the mechanical brooms of
the gardeners, the spurt of an irrigation hose, the trills of the doves, the crane of a
nearby construction site, the cars that sound and are quiet at the pace marked by
the traffic light, the squeak of the swinging of a swing, uniform and persistent rain,
the shouts of the children in the playground of a school, the crunching on gravel of
someone walking, the engine of a bus waiting at its stop, a sawmill, frogs
croaking, dog barking, the leaves hitting under the wind of an orange tree, a loquat
and a palmtree, the clattering of the cars on a paving ground, the trilling of birds,
hitting of kitchenware, the whispers of a conversation, the crickets, a bicycle
passing over some loose tiles, an airplane and a motorcycle, the hurried dripping
of a drinking fountain. But not only there were noises, all the senses were
activated, the sense of smell, touch, sight… and I was impregnated with
sensations, which step by step and with my thoughts in the notebook, allowed me
to better understand the proposal of the Magical flower.
Then, the aim was to carry out a work from the experience, of futurist style and
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with the mechanic and electrotechnic means. A fixed camcorder recorded for five
minutes a flower and the noises around while I perceived noises, smells, colors
and sensations, the questions, the doubts on how to build the plastic complex
arose, but the experience and the intuition have gradually shaped it. In the
catalogue as well as in the exhibition, we see an image of rotation and
decomposition. The plastic complex in the catalogue is structured around a
horizontal axis of sequence and is reversed when arriving to the end. The
decomposition in layers that the image transforms allows to synchronize the
different times from every sequence. In the exhibition, the horizontal sequence of
grid simultaneously shows each one of the spaces and time of each day, flower
and garden. The pivot of noise allows to disturb, stratify, and transform these
images by turning them into an auditory constructive complex, abstract and
expecting that they become for each one of us the intuition of a discovery.
Gema Hoyas
Futurist Tactilism
The Italian futurism was characterized by its proposal of a "multi-sensorial art and
especially theater, which is the predecessor of the most current interactionoriented
research.
The untiring search for new ways of art and the faith in its capacity to transform
society had to reconsider the obligatory relationships that the work kept with the
public. Colors, lights, sounds, tactile surfaces and smells are elements to
consider in artworks with the intention to awake the spectator's asleep perception,
to offer them stimuli and a new and dynamic world.
In this context we would like to emphasize the futurism's claims to include touch in
art, specially the proposal of the Art of Touch. As it was not possible otherwise in
such a context, its references go along with references to image and sound,
sometimes by exclusion (art of the independent touch) or by synthesis (theater).
On January 11 1921, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, presents a new futurist
manifesto, Il Tattilismo, which proclaims the Arte del tatto (Art of Touch).
Obviously, Marinetti does not attempt to invent tactile sensibility, but to reorient it.
He rejects what he considers the traditional association of touch with morbid
eroticism, and claims a recovery of tactile sensibility as conductor of thoughts and
intensifier of communication between human beings. "(...) human beings speak to
each other with their mouths and with their eyes, but do not achieve a true
sincerity because of the lack of sensitivity of the skin, which is still a mediocre
conductor of thought."
But Marinetti expects a possible education of the sense of touch. Thus, he
prepares brief instructions to start sensitizing the skin, and creates an educational
Scale of the sense of touch, which is a scale of tactile values at the same time, and
based on that distinction of tactile values, he invents different tactile boards and
proposes different applications.
After he underwent an intensive cure himself, which as he describes, attempts to
locate the confused phenomena of will and thought in different parts of his body
and specially in his hands, Marinetti proposes for the education of the sense of
touch the following:
1. "It will be necessary to keep your hands gloved for many days, during which the
brain will attempt to condense in them the desire for varied tactile sensations.
2.To swim underwater, in the ocean, trying to distinguish tactilely the braided
currents and different temperatures.