Venice Open Form Pavilion of Air / Padiglione Dell'aria di Venezia Modulo Aperto

Download the app https://explore.echoes.xyz/ and then open QR code in app. Use headphones while walking within the Pavilion.

An extra-national Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, a floating acoustic architecture, the 15th geo-located audiowork in the pan-European "Open Form Pavilion of Air" series by Robert Curgenven. Presented in conjunction with Dirk Yates & Speculative Architecture (AUS) https://www.instagram.com/speculativearchitecture/

Information on the Open Form Pavilion of Air series at https://www.recordedfields.net/installations/open-form-pavilion-of-air/ details on this piece at https://www.recordedfields.net/installations/venice-open-form-pavilion-of-air/

Walk slowly to allow sounds to enter gradually, notice the borders of these zones where new sounds fade-in, spend time in some places to notice the long sounds develop, how the view morphs with the sound.

Padiglione Dell'aria di Venezia Modulo Aperto (Venice Open Form Pavilion of Air) is a floating roof of sound across Giardini della Biennale in Venice, triggered by GPS and accessed via a smartphone, headphones and the echoes.xyz app. Inspired by Polish architects Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s “Open Form” architectural concept (ca. 1959), this audiowork is one of 15 locations in 9 countries in the pan-European Open Form Pavilion of Air series, using sound and site-mapping to offer a playful renewal and reframing of public space as an essential place of engagement for the community.

By walking through different zones within Giardini della Biennale, while using your mobile phone, the Echoes app and headphones, you become a participatory listener producing a composition in real-time. Your navigation creates a unique choreography via GPS, combining and changing sounds mapped within the Giardini through the app. Hear this unique coastal and quasi-urban international arts & architecture location become transformed by the sounds forming this floating acoustic architecture, revealing an immersive, profoundly spatial and physical experience. The Pavilion has no visible presence outside the app and can only be accessed and enjoyed at Giardini della Biennale.

This piece is the final work of 15 in the Open Form Pavilion of Air series - it aims to provide a link between Umberto Eco's writing on "Opera Aperta" (Open Work) and the Hansen's Open Form Architecture - creating an overarching structure but also aperture between these points through which politics and architecture as a kind of 'opera scultpture' can meet and exchange a spatial dialogue.

An overview of the Open Form Pavilion of Air series via RTÉ Culture: https://www.rte.ie/culture/2023/0327/1366079-new-music-dublin-welcomes-you-to-the-open-form-pavilion-of-air/

_ On the Artist - https://www.recordedfields.net/

Robert Curgenven is an extra-disciplinary artist producing large-scale audiovisual experiences, albums, performances and installations. His work emphasizes physicality, our embodied response to sound and its correspondence to location, air, weather and architecture. Reviews span the Guardian (AU) citing his "evocative" and "expansive [pipe] organ work", "epic... remarkable music" (Wire, UK), "true sound art" (Washington Post), "astounding" (FACT mag, USA) to ★★★★ from Mojo (UK).

Curgenven has produced works and installations for National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Poland (Krakow), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Palazzo Grassi (Venice), Transmediale (Berlin), Modern Art Museum of Medellin (Columbia), National Sculpture Factory (Ireland), New Music Dublin and the National Film and Sound Archive (Australia). He has presented live performances at festivals including Sydney Festival (Sydney Town Hall), Maerzmusik (Kraftwerk Berlin), TodaysArt (The Hague), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Ultrahang (Budapest), Insomnia Festival (Tromsø/Norway), Cork Midsummer and was an artist for the EU's SHAPE (Sound, Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe) platform in 2019. Curgenven is an associate composer with the Contemporary Music Centre (Ireland), has produced radio works internationally including national radio in Australia (ABC Classic FM) and Ireland (RTÉ Lyric FM) and since 2008 has been a guest lecturer in music and sound at Universities, Conservatoriums and tertiary institutions internationally.

"Curgenven makes the point that sounds are fundamental to our perception of the world... hearing the complexities of a place and time is intersected by memories of the familiar which are in turn displaced and transformed.” Realtime Magazine (AUS)

“Behind the music lurk such [disparate] presences as Alvin Lucier, King Tubby, Murray Schafer and Eliane Radigue.” The Wire Magazine (UK)