Rui Costa | Portugal

Rui Costa began his public activity as a sound artist in 1997. In 1998 he started a close collaboration with the Spanish musician Iñaki Ríos inside the project ja_dijiste, which covers several areas of common interests as sound art, free improvisation and video creation, using software-based (max/msp, etc.) composition & improvisation techniques and developing several conceptual projects such as the intermedia work „Nodar”, presented in 2002 at the Music Ex Machina festival in Bilbao, Spain.

http://www.myspace.com/ruigcosta

Project: Nodar: Espaços Vivos
Category: Sound Art
Co-authors: Iñaki Ríos | Natividad Plasencia
Period: September 2006
Event: "Nodar Pushing the Medium #2" Symposium

“Nodar: Espaços Vivos” is the continuation of a series of interventions carried out by Iñaki Rios and Rui Costa in the village of Nodar. Initiated in 2004 with the multimedia project “Nodar: Matança” and carried on in 2004 with the sound installation “Nodar: Casa Reverberante”, the series is completed with this project.

“Nodar: Matança” was a performance/installation premiered at Musica Ex-Machina 2002 festival, in Bilbao, about an annual event (the traditional pig slaughter) and the space where it occurs (the patio of a rural house) and which dealt with the ancestral conception of the time as a circular reality (agricultural cycles, etc.), which has been recently “modulated” by a progressive abandonment of the space.

“Nodar: Casa Reverberante” consisted on a sound installation inside a nearly unoccupied rural house. Its main purpose was to consider a house as a living organism, which vibrates independently from the human presence, by the effect of time (aging) and the atmosphere (temperature, humidity) on its materials.

With the project “Nodar: Espaços Vivos” we intended to turn our attention to the natural space surrounding the village and set up there a series of sound actions. Following the ancestral foot trails that lead to the sheepherding and agricultural spots outside the village and that nowadays have lost their original function (they lead to “nowhere”), we proposed to identify certain spots that, by the specificity of their soundscape (natural element) and the presence of certain vestiges or abandoned structures that can be sonically manipulated (human element), propitiate the setting up of artistic actions (performances, installations or sound walks).

The trails and the spots where the actions occurred were marked on digitized cartographic maps of the area and the events were recorded on audio and video so that a sonic, visual and geographical memory was constructed.

This project intends to confront a “utilitarian” vision of the space, which is perpetuated by the local inhabitants, with a “vital” notion, according to which the spaces are alive because they exist and transform themselves (even away from the human eye).

Project's video:

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