Bestiari’s Public Program: Sound as a preservation tool and aesthetic experience

Animalesc
Bestiari’s Public Program: Sound as a preservation tool and aesthetic experience 

Inspired by a medieval text in which speaking animals demand interspecies justice, Bestiari is a hypnagogic environment inhabited by sounds and images of creatures from natural and imagined Catalan landscapes. Bestiari pays tribute to the animals of the medieval text by featuring dreamlike sounds and images of bats, bees, dolphins, donkeys, elephants, and other creatures, recorded in their natural habitats. Featuring Ambisonics 3D infrasound spatialization, Bestiari presents frequencies beyond the human sensory realm, inducing a sense of physical closeness with these animals and landscapes and propitiating sensorial modes of interspecies discovery. A large film installation, derived from each species’ spectrum of vision, creates hypnotic encounters with the various animals and environments, further dissolving the relationship between reality and dream. 

The seminar: This seminar will focus on the radically new trend of research and creation that unites, on the one hand, the sound as an ecumenic language for contemporary arts and, on the other, the ways of experiencing animal communication in the arts. On the basis of Bestiari’s installation, speakers will be invited to discuss topics such as: how technology may expand human perception, how recorded soundscapes can reconfigure a more sensible relation to natural environments, the sound as a transversal language in the arts, and the aesthetic experience of natural music. The seminar will gather together bioacoustics, experts on sound artistic experience, zoomusicologists, and philosophers. 

Thursday 17 October 2024 
> Palazzo Badoer, Aula Tafuri
Seminar: Sound as a preservation tool and aesthetic experience

h 9.30 > 12.30 
Francesco Bergamo
Carlos Casas and Filipa Ramos moderated by Pol Capdevila
Nicola di Croce
Giulia di Lenarda and Giorgio de Vecchi Futura Research

h 14 > 16 
Craig Ciecura
David George Haskell, Gaia Martino, Niccolò Tramontana round table

> Catalonia in Venice. Docks Cantieri Cucchini, San Pietro di Castello 40A, 30122 Venezia 
h 18.30 > 21 
Film screening of "Cemetery", Carlos Casas, 2019, 87 mins.
Followed by a discussion with Carlos Casas & Pol Capdevila

Friday 18 October 2024
> Catalonia in Venice. Docks Cantieri Cucchini, San Pietro di Castello 40A, 30122 Venezia 

h 17 
Workshop and soundwalk by Radio Safari
Reservations: martino.gaia@gmail.com 
Curated by Gaia Martino for SSH! Sound Studies Hub, Università Iuav di Venezia
Radio Safari is a multi-platform project exploring bioacoustics as a way to foster shared empathy for biodiversity. 

This soundwalk is designed in resonance with Bestiari and San Pietro, where the Catalonia in Venice Collateral Event is hosted: a distinctive maritime area, one of the earliest human settlements in the Venetian Lagoon as a part of the Castello district, at Venice’s easternmost point. Our focus is on the interactions between human-made (anthropic) and animal sounds: no longer just a human city, Venice becomes an ecosystem where the delicate balance between our activities and those of other animals comes into focus. 

h 19 > 21.30 
Live performance by Armand Lesecq
Live performance by Florian Hecker 

The program is curated by Pol Capdevila and produced by Institut Ramon Llull in collaboration with SSH! Sound Studies Hub, Università Iuav di Venezia, Ministerio de Ciencia Innovación y Universidades, and Pompeu Fabra University.