Roberto Pugliese's Sound Installations: A Bi-Continental Review

If this piece begs the visitor to cross the border of “inside” and “outside” spatial concepts, Roberto’s first project in the U.S. titled A Voice In The Desert (2012), expands space even further; marking the desert of Texas with an installation of 5 square steel frames and as many speakers. The optical and sonic grid produced by the 300cm steel frames, together with the synthesized sounds of the speakers, is currently on view at Ballroom Marfa Museum, Texas as part of the Data Deluge exhibition through July 29, 2012.

“To those who visited Volta 2012 in NYC, the multi-sensorial work by Tamara Repetto and Roberto Pugliese Untitled 2011 could not pass unnoticed.”

Roberto Pugliese, A Voice In The Desert, 2012. Steel, speaker, cables, aluminum wire, computer, custom software. Courtesy of the artist.

Roberto Pugliese’s Sound Installations: A Bi-Continental Review

By Vanessa Saraceno

To those who visited Volta 2012 in NYC, the multi-sensorial work by Tamara Repetto and Roberto Pugliese Untitled 2011 could not pass unnoticed. Presented by the Italian Guidi & Schoen Gallery, the work consists of seventy blown glass balls of different sizes, each containing a black cone of a speaker and floating in the empty space of the booth to catch visitors traces. In fact, as you start interacting with the tech-flowers curtain, the speakers convey sounds that are gathered in real time by a microphone located outside the work. Then, the sounds are sampled by a computer and re-directed to the speakers, and so to the viewer.

If this piece begs the visitor to cross the border of “inside” and “outside” spatial concepts, Roberto’s first project in the U.S. titled A Voice In The Desert (2012), expands space even further; marking the desert of Texas with an installation of 5 square steel frames and as many speakers. The optical and sonic grid produced by the 300cm steel frames, together with the synthesized sounds of the speakers, is currently on view at Ballroom Marfa Museum, Texas as part of the Data Deluge exhibition through July 29, 2012.

However, America is not the only place where Pugliese’s kinetic and sound experiments are interacting with the surrounding environment and visitors. On the other side of the ocean, other projects are currently on view. In Germany, his Equilibrium (2011) sound-wall installation will be held through January 6, 2013 in the forecourt of the prestigious ZKM, Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, as part of the “Sound as a Medium of Art exhibition.”

Roberto Pugliese, Critici, Ostinati, Ritmici, 201O. Electromagnets mantle, circuits, microcontrollers, cables, sensors internet, connection. Courtesy of the artist.

Additionally, Pugliese’s work is currently on view at the Center for Visual Arts in Pietrasanta, Tuscany, where the show “Archeology of the Future” is covering the most interesting plastic production of contemporary art, focusing particularly on mixed media art. In this case, passers-by may encounter the trunk of a hollow tree from which solenoids are coming out, producing a loud click under the effect of electric current. This interactive sound installation titled Critici, Ostinati, Ritmici (2010), is also connected to a website where real time statistics on the state of global deforestation can be downloaded. The “Archeology of the Future” exhibit is on view through April 29, 2012.