B-AIR Days - Cuneo

B-AIR days in Cuneo were the bridge between the first meeting in the presence of the B-AIR Consortium, organised by CRESSON and held in Portbou, Spain a year earlier (27 September - 1 October 2021), and the following one held in Cerisy from 14 to 20 of May 2023.

The presence in Cuneo, hosted by the Conservatory of Music, was an opportunity to involve the students(electroacoustic composition, sound engineering, pedagogy and music didactics) in some activities presented, tested and discussed in Port Bou in October 2021. The period between the B-AIR days (October 2022) and the workshop in Cerisy in May 2023, coinciding with the first semester of the 2022-2023 academic year, allowed the organisation of some courses on the themes, offering to the students the opportunity to develop the concept for the TAROT performance that was developed, realised and performed in Cerisy and subsequently at the French pavilion in the Biennale di Architettura di Venezia (5 August 2023), as part of the artistic and educational activities of the Rifugio Levi Molinari (10-11 August 2023) and that will be scheduled in Cuneo in the artistic season 2023-2024 of the Conservatory.

The theme, as well as the title of the B-AIR days held in Cuneo was: “How does the world sound? Composing the sound / with the sounds?”

Taking inspiration from a phrase of Jean-Claude Risset(See note 1): “One of my early desires as a musician was (...) to compose the sound itself, instead of merely composing with sounds”, the CRESSON team worked to activate a B-AIR Antenna in Cuneo.

The Antenna is an agile media that can follow, shifting in time and space, the activities all along the B-AIR project developments. It has involved, as an active host, the METS (Electronic Music and Sound Engineering) Department of the Cuneo Music Conservatory, as well as local realities related with B-AIR themes.

The theme of musical composition was a driving force, but certainly not the only one that fuelled the activities in these appointments: uniting under a common theme, the different skills, knowledge and interests of the representatives of all B-AIR Consortium partners led to an extended concept of 'composing' as an organisation of sounds extended to space design, and to the concept of ambience that is the meeting point for the network partners.

Involving experts and specialist departments of education, this process has been open to research and experimentation on sound and listening in the world of children and disabled and vulnerable people.

Following this thread in the three meetings which covered the time span of 18 months, local stakeholders and guests came across

Composers, musicians, architects, urban planners, university professors and researchers, philosophers, radio programme directors, theatre directors, neurologists, psychologists, all played a significant role in the meetings, as well as the Conservatoire and art school students who followed the didactic and pedagogical programme aimed at and synergic with the themes.

B-AIR Days brings together international partners from universities, radio and sound arts. It aims to explore new theoretical, methodological and practical tools to promote listening as well as sound creation. Through the prism of ambiances, we question our inhabited and living spaces in the face of environmental and societal changes, and we are particularly interested in so-called vulnerable audiences (very young children, people with disabilities, the elderly and the sick, etc.).

This seminar, including guests, took place in 4 ways :

- theoretical presentations or reports of experiences in the morning;

- small group working in the afternoon (writing, recording podcasts, walking, preparing sound installations, etc.);

- listening and discovery of sound installations at the end of the day or in the evening;

- a creative workshop with students from art schools (Annecy, Tours) and the Conservatory of Cuneo.

Contents, participants, podcast and pictures of the seminar:

https://aau.archi.fr/cresson/cres-s-o-u-n-d/cuneo-days/

(Note 1) Jean-Claude Risset (1938-2016) was a composer, a pioneer of musical research, a founder of Music Research Center ACROE and initiator of the AST - Art Science Technology concept.