Acoustic set-up at Tesa 2, Venice Biennale | Antonio Galeano

The project by invitation relates to two acoustic installations for the "Biennale Musica" of the Venice Biennale.                                                                                                                                     The Teatro alla Tesa 3 is a project relating to a permanent staging to be obtained in the nave called "Tesa 3" of the Teatro alle Tese at the "Arsenale".                                                                   The Acoustic Set-up at Tesa 2 - we call it "Space T02" - is a removable set-up that can also be of a temporary nature. The Project provides in the initial conditions not to modify the original volume of the sixteenth-century building of the "Tese", - so called because it was originally intended for a nautical sail factory                                                                                                   The pre-existing volume is a cusp volume considered unsuitable for the correct diffusion of sound. To mediate this criticality, our choice of Studio is to think of a distinct acoustic apparatus in a stage shell and in an orthophonic surface above the audience audience. The orthophonic surface is geometrically a ribbed vault, also to create a thematic reference with the space of the Tese, an ancient factory for the construction of nautical sails.                             The stage shell is made up of a fixed shell and a system of mobile rhomboids. The rhomboids are able to rotate around their own center of gravity, and for this reason they show two surfaces at the front of the incident sound, one of medium sound reflectance in fir from the Val di Fiemme, and one in fabric on a "mollettone" with high sound-absorbing power.             The vault is made up of mobile rhomboids with a rotary function similar to those designed for the acoustic shell. In this case, the Project has foreseen for the first time the possibility that the Rhomboids, mounted on articulated mechanical arms, can also configure other geometries of the vault, in addition to the starting one with sail geometry. This last option allows the performers - the musicians - to also choose the shape geometry of the orthophonic vault of the space involved in the musical performance.The anticipated triple movement of the ceiling, its surface and the stage shell allows a range of the sound reverb tail between 0.6 and 2.2 seconds, effectively making the space intended for listening tunable, like one musical instrument.