Works

Selected portfolio

The Loud Self (2012)

Part of the exhibition “Reassembling the Self” curated by Susan Aldworth, Vane Gallery, Newcastle, from september 20th to october 20th.

The Loud Self
Vane gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. 2012.

Sound installation, transistor radio, radio transmitter, computer connected to the internet, dimensions variable.
From curator’s notes:
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 self searches 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 .

Vane gallery

The Quest (2012)

The quest is google map documentary in the form of an public web interventions on Google April’s fool day.
more info www.alessandroaltavilla.net/thequest

The Quest, Alessandro Altavilla, 2012

Twiddletone (2011)

Twiddletone are sound artist and composer Alessandro Altavilla, and textile researcher Berit Greinke. Together they develop sound performances using e-textiles and piezo film materials as malleable yet recalcitrant interfaces for delicate digital sound control. Their work aims to improve music quality in e-textiles performances and create visually and sonically engaging live events.

They give workshop introductions to their methods and analogue and digital tools.

Project blog and website: http://twiddletone.wordpress.com

December 2011.

The Quiet Walk  (2011)

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.

September 2011. Newcastle Upon Tyne.
http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/thequietwalk

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

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.

Video documentation available athttp://vimeo.com/28506897

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.

ELC
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

Archipel

Sound design and sound track for Archipel, a short movie directed by Giacomo Abbruzzese, produced by

Le Fresnoy, Studio National Des Arts Contemporains. Lille, France, May 2010.
Awarded with the first prize at Turin Film Festival 2010.

For more information and trailer:  http://vimeo.com/14090946

http://www.giacomoabbruzzese.net/

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.