Archive

A notion of expression and a sphere of creative questions

Adriana Sá

OPEN CLASSES OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC PRACTICES_2024_25
NOVEMBER 13TH OF 2024, 5.30PM
ROOM 34 OF EP1 – ESAD.CR

Adriana Sá approaches music as a construction of the experience of time; it encompasses vision and physical space, as well as listening. Drawing on issues underlying her artistic practice, in this open class she will combine the sciences of perception, audio-visual theory and interaction design to explain her creative process – in which the conception of new instruments is intertwined with the discovery of new musical languages.

Adriana Sá is a transdisciplinary artist, performer-musician-composer. She considers that music involves vision and space, beyond audition. Her graphic scores suggest sonic texture, density, playing techniques and sequence variations, while leaving other aspects open to interpretation. Similarly, she designs and develops her instrumentation so as to enable complexity, unpredictability and discovery. Between 1998 and 2008, Sá used sensor technologies to explore music connected to light, space, movement, architecture, weather and social context; her architecturally-scaled instruments combined analogue and digital components. In 2008 her practice turned to audio-visual performance. Her bridging of creative practice and perception science informed the development of audio-visual 3D software, which operates based on pitch detection from a custom zither input.
Sá has been developing and presenting her work in Europe, USA, Brasil and Japan since 1997. Her creative process has been fed through the collaboration with a wealth of different artists. Her custom instrumentation emerged in the context of residencies at STEIM, Metronom Electronic Arts Studio and Experimental Intermedia Foundation NY. It was further explored throughout site-specific projects, presented at the Aomori Contemporary Art Center in Japan, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Serralves Museum and the Maria Matos Theatre in Portugal, at Caixa Forum and Arteleku in Spain, Monty in Belgium and EyeBeam in NY, among many other venues. She also presented site-specific work in a codfish-drying factory (Circular Festival), a chapel (Colina Project), a cave with water (Lisboa Soa Festival) and a convent (S.Francis, Coimbra), as well as in an active a textile mill in the U.K. (Ultrasound Festival).  She performed with portable instrument setups at Casa da Música, Culturgest, Teatro Rivoli and Chiado Museum (Portugal) as well as the Institute of Contemporary Arts (U.K.), among many other venues. Other performances and installations were presented in festivals such as Atlantic Waves (UK), Luzboa Biannual (Portugal), xxxxx (UK), Version Beta (Switzerland) and Festival Novas Frequências (Brasil).