Aesthesic Waves · Sonoscopia
02 MAR–31 MAR 2023
MON – FRI · 14H às 19H
School of Arts’ Exhibition Room
Opening: 02 MAR · 19H30
Curator: José Alberto Gomes

This exhibition is part of the international program of conferences, exhibitions and performances Stepping softly on the ground. The opening will be preceded by the conference-performance “Mapas para perder tesouros - Poesia indígena e escritas de terra” (Maps to lose treasures - Indigenous poetry and earth writings), by Ellen Lima. The session will take place at 6.30 p.m. at the Ilídio Pinho Auditorium.

Sound is a complete phenomenon composed of various worlds and layers and described and analysed from different perspectives, occupying different roles in our lives. Seen as expression, art, physical, cognitive, ecological and social phenomenon but rarely as a universe contained in itself.

Only due to the sound character of being permanent and omnipresent, adding the passive, automatic and unconscious relationship, can justify the surprising neglect of the sound universe.

Sound remains an active element capable of modulating and infecting itself. It is a permanently open and involuntary external signal detected through an auditory system that receives it effortlessly, providing a constant three-dimensional perception and navigation capabilities. It is precisely in this internal oscillation that sound finds its validation as a creator of worlds, as an epistemological instrument expanding its operational capacities in speculation and knowledge, testing social, cultural, environmental and artistic connections, establishing invisible worlds.

"(...) the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible" (Attali, 1985)

Aesthesic Waves is an installation where sound is imagined and confronted through the suggestion of vibrating movements of elastic bodies, optical illusions and visual rhythms. The oscillation of different materials gives rise to diverse patterns that are organised in the form of a fragmented graphic score, and that slowly unveil some of the processes of sound attainment recurrent in the work developed by Sonoscopia.

Aesthesic Waves is an installation in constant reformulation, adapting to the different acoustic and visual properties of each space where it is presented. Given its interactive characteristics, its materialization is molded to the personal interpretations of each visitor, in a symbiotic process of collective creation.