Emmanuel Spinelli

Bregenz, 6–10 June 2010
A soundscape study of Bregenz

‘Like many places situated by the water, Bregenz is a city of dual character. Two movements co-exist on a single stage. On one side, the lake, slowly evolving throughout the day, seems to be repeating its name over and over with an infinity of subtle variations and reminds us that natural beauty reinvents itself all the time in perpetual cycles, in slow motions and trickling whispers. On the other side, the effervescent city, with its radical mixture of agitation and stillness, always in construction, wakes up and goes to sleep in what feels like a twinkling of an eye.

‘Bregenz is also a place where the old and the new coincide, 18th century buildings superimposed on state-of-the-art concrete structures. And us, listening?

‘For this project I have created a four-channel sound installation that presents these two elements. The water and the city will have their own cycle which is constantly shifting and giving the listener the opportunity to place themselves in the virtual space in between the two and experience Brengenz’s soundscape.’

Emmanuel Spinelli

Emmanuel Lorien Spinelli is a composer, sound designer and music lecturer. He has been involved in electro-acoustic composition, live electronics and free improvisation since 1998. His work has been presented at Tate Modern, Large Scale Audio Exp. (Duran Audio/Illustrious), The Shunt, Sound Fjord gallery, Dragonfly Festival (Sweden), and Footsteps in the Wind, a soundscape study of Krakow and Auschwitz, won the C.C.P. and the George Blunden travel awards. Since 2008, he has been studying towards an MPhil/Phd in composition at Goldsmiths. Through the years, Emmanuel developed an interest in issues related to soundscape transformation, manipulations of historical data, sonic remains, and memory, particularly in relation to post-war Europe and the Holocaust. His research revolves around the notion of acoustic-phenotypology, that is to say the perception of individual identities through sound. All his work, at one level or another, explores human presence and history, through the cognition of the disembodied voice, sounding body, and environment.