Beck/ett

Beck/ett is a multi-channel video and sound installation by Roberto Paci Dalò, created for the exhibition Living Theatre: labirinti dell’immaginario, presented in Naples in summer 2003. The acoustic space is created by Julian Beck’s voice and Samuel Beckett’s silences. The image is created through veiling and overlapping of materials collected in different times and places. The installation therefore sees two perceptive levels of equal importance and intertwined, the acoustic and the optical.

The visitor enters an acoustic space made of phonemes and words elaborated through granular synthesis. As far as the visual aspect is concerned, the artist on one hand dialogues with the monochrome practices of painting (Mark Rothko with “Colorfield Painting”) and cinema (David Lynch), on the other hand he plays with the technology of the seventeenth-century camera oscura. The latter is recreated in Beck/ett through the use of digital technologies: a bridge between the 17th century and our days for a nocturnal adventure in the world of perception.
Beck/ett was presented in 2004 for Riccione TTV in a site-specific version inside Villa Lodi Fè.

Casina nel bosco

For TTV a site-specific presentation of the work is made using the entire garden of Villa Lodi Fè and what is called – with an evocation to the historical places of the Riviera – casina nel bosco. Sounds and moving lights are distributed throughout the entire area of the park, transforming it into a mysterious place inhabited by Beck’s voice and where light draws new paths between pre-existing buildings.

Credits

Beck/ett
video sound installation by Roberto Paci Dalò

Video and sound post-production
The Western Front
Vancouver (Canada)

Production
Giardini Pensili
Fondazione Morra

In collaboration with
Riccione Teatro
ACT Archivi del Teatro Contemporaneo

Thanks to
Fabio Bruschi
Valeria Buscaroli
IBACN Istituto per i Beni Artistici e Culturali della Regione Emilia Romagna

Peter Courtemanche
The Western Front Media, Department Vancouver

Luca Ruzza

Première
04/07/ 2003
Castel Sant’Elmo, Naples