Visiting international scholar to compose and perform music created daily from wind measurements

April 2, 2014

Creating a new piece of music every day for a week is challenging; creating that music from unique daily wind measurements, composing the piece and then performing it live an hour later is another level of challenge.

It’s a challenge that Martín Bonadeo, visual artist and visiting international scholar at University of Richmond, is ready to tackle.

He’ll perform his music for four minutes each day, beginning at 5 p.m., April 14–18 in the tower of the university’s Boatwright Memorial Library and then April 19 at Byrd Park Carillon. He will compose the music about an hour before each performance, using wind measurements taken during the previous 24 hours at Richmond International Airport. The measurements provide him with a code that he develops into a “soundification” — a sound representation of the data.

Bonadeo wants to connect people with their soundscape. During his performances, “the day is finishing and many students, professors and staff are ending their day on campus,” he said. That’s when he will “let the wind speak.” 

“Campuses and parks are the perfect outlets for this form of public art because there is such a large congregation of people. In those moments, everyone is connected,” he said. He composed and performed music the same way a decade ago when he was teaching at UCLA and wants to create the same experience for Richmond.

Bonadeo is a professor of Latin American and Argentine contemporary art at Universidad Católica Argentina, a Richmond partner university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At Richmond he is teaching two classes, “Art & Culture in Contemporary Latin America” and “The Avant-Garde in Latin America.”

Videos of Bonadeo’s previous wind soundification projects and other work can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/user/martinbonadeo.

All performances are free and open to the public. Listeners should gather outside Boatwright tower or the Byrd Park Carillon to experience the sounds.

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