On Air

The final and comprehensive document on the series of installations named “On Air” or “Magnetic Air” which Christina Kubisch exhibited in Italy and Europe from 1982 to 1986. Twenty years later, “on Air” has remained a fascinating listening experience, and represents a unique illustration of the artistic integration of sound and vision.The interactive section provides a virtual journey through the spectacular 1984 installation created for the medieval town of Gargonza in Tuscany, complete with 1 hour of additional music and a 15-minute video, also including photos, biography, info and scores

This cycle of environmental/sound installation explored the relation between ambient and sound, it was realized using magnetic induction and special headphones, so space and music really can form an indissoluble unit.
“…Even if our listening reality is spherical, in general our way of listening is frontal: a comparison between the player and the listener, between podium and orchestra seat. I left the concert hall to look for new settings for music, places where you could listen while moving freely in space. Places where resonant space becomes a fundamental element along with the musician and the audience. Thus were born concerts in a forest, a basement, a tower, a former factory, shipyards, a cloister; on walls, roofs and terraces. Each work is a different composition, created for “that place”. From this came the need to investigate the sonorous reality of the setting itself: to become acquainted with it, listen to it, live it by welcoming its vibrations. This is how various sonorous territories originated, inside of which I distribute the individual musical parts, composed especially for them. The guiding thread of sound in this case should be understood in the literary sense: a series of electrical wires form an electromagnetic labyrinth which the listener deciphers with the aid of special earphones, designed and realised for the purpose. During the journey, the visual structure is transformed into sonorous material. Thus, a composition is born which opens up the possibility of a mixage between one musical flow and another, caused by the free movement of the listener among the individual sonorous sectors”.

C. Kubisch, 1984

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