The Wind Pressure Concert in public space is a concert for a diverse orchestra, audience, and fine dust particles. In a kind of space-time short circuit, a composition is experimented with and experienced, the motif of which is the air.

In 2008, the European Parliament issued a directive for monitoring ambient air quality in its member states. The artist Silvia Hell decided to approach this document as if it were a song. Instead of reading it, she began singing it repeatedly as the blues. Her work deals with the rhythm of information as well as the possibility of song to transform an aspect of control into an emotional substance.

The score of the Wind Pressure Concert consists of the data on fine dust particles between the years 1980 – 2020, which Silvia Hell researched and collected from the public archives of two different cities: Munich and Milan. The data is divided into PM2.5 and PM10 (the most polluting particles in the air we breathe) and reflects the daily levels of pollution within that twenty-year span.

The score branches out in a quantum effect, from the composers and musicians to passers-by who are also involved in the performance. From a visual, fact-based, linear score, a concert emerges, which is guided into a precisely defined and structured cycle of interaction that partly arises from different types of improvisation. Thus, three scores emerge that resonate with one another—all refer to the scientific data but also deviate from it to build momentum on different scales: a linear and progressive chronology fluctuates between chaos and cosmos.

The focus of the Wind Pressure Concert’s score is both the publication of the data on air quality as well as the penetration of an emotional substrate via music and participation.

The concert is being directed by Frida Split, using the improvisational Conduction method.
The interaction of the audience is guided by Nicola Ratti’s score, which includes suggestions for listening, spatial positioning, and sensory interface, i.e. acoustic and physical interaction with the help of their smartphones.

The concert is being recorded in audio-video.
Sound recording: Attila Faravelli

We kindly thank Casa degli Artisti di Milano and Sclupet for their generous support.

Funded by
Kulturreferat Landeshauptstadt München, Kunstraum München

Silvia Hell’s (Bozen, 1983) work takes the form of sculpture, photography, site-specific installations, digital processes, and interdisciplinary projects Her work often deals with the analysis and processing of information and public data from various fields with the aim of conveying a spectrum of values ​​in a single aesthetic form through the clarity and simplicity of visual intuition. Hell completed her studies in painting at the Brera Academy in Milan.
http://silviahell.eu/

Nicola Ratti is a versatile musician and sound designer who has been working in various experimental fields for many years. His sound production involves systems that arise from repetition and expansion. Particularly important for him is the construction of environments that balance architectural space with emotional and perceptive orientation.

Frida Split is a researcher, educator, and instrumentalist. Born in Italy in 1979, she graduated with a degree in bassoon from the G. Rossini Conservatory, Pesaro, in 2014. She is currently studying with Maestro Marco di Bari in the composition course at the Piano Academy of Imola. She has collaborated with Chilly Gonzales in his Gonzervatory Project in Cologne (2020) and Paris (2019) as well as with Christian Scott at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2020/21.