Insomnia SketchBook

After 3 years of remote work, I finally got to meet the Insomnia SketchBook audience (in this photo, just before one of the performances in IRCAM’s Espace de Projection, last week).

A project coordinated by IRCAM (world-class research center for electronic music, psycho-acoustics and informatics, in Paris) and C-LAB (its twin, in Taipei).

The Insomnia SketchBook is a robotic system immersed in darkness, where two LED modules float in the air and dance with an immersive sound space which reacts to their movements, and to the symbolisms they suggest.

The system and the light choreography were curated by the Taiwanese collective Luxury Logico. I had the honour of creating the sound for it. Thomas Goepfer and Clément Cerles from IRCAM have designed and programmed a complex sound spatialization system, composed of 2 WFS lines dedicated to the movements of the LED modules, and a third multi-loudspeakers system, surrounding the audience.

At this link ->
https://youtu.be/veVdYmzr_78
a video presentation of the project.

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DanzArTe – conclusion of the project.

Year 2022 marked the conclusion of the DanzArTe project (at least in this prototype phase). DanzArTe is a protocol for the treatment of motor, cognitive and social frailty in the elderly population. It consist in a series of therapeutic movement sequences, learned through an avatar imitation game. It is a group experience, and the movements are « extracted » from historical paintings visible in local museums.
Sound design is used to create reassurance, avoid distraction and intrusiveness, and suggest fluid qualities of movement.

Clinical trials reported significant improvements in :

  • Resilience (Resilience Scale-RS)
  • Psychological General WellBeing Index (PGWBI)
    compared to control groups.

[DANZARTE – A SYSTEM TO SUPPORT COGNITIVE ANDP HYSICAL ACTIVITY OF OLDER PEOPLE, INTEGRATING ACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF VISUAL ARTS AND MOVEMENT SONIFICATION – Ferrari et al. – Geriatric Care 2021; 7:s1]

On Italian TV, interviews of DanzArTe leaders : prof. Antonio Camurri, Alberto Pilotto, Vittorio Gallese
https://www.rainews.it/tgr/liguria/video/2022/05/lig-arte-come-cura-8c49c677-0634-441c-8f7c-c90b7e8b8f5b.html?fbclid=IwAR35vsmFufGgm6xUMqqM6_G_gljXeCZlrourmfZ0xFzPJ4A0T99TDR0uYB0

DanzArTe teaser on Lavanderia a Vapore ->
https://www.lavanderiaavapore.eu/blog/2022/06/15/danzarte-il-binomio-cultura-e-salute-a-casa-paganini/

Presentation of DanzArTe Sound Design strategies at University of Oslo ->
https://www.uio.no/ritmo/english/news-and-events/events/workshops/2022/embodied-ai/p/andrea-cera.html

Electric Car Sounds Playlist

I released a playlist with all the electric car external sounds born from my collaboration with IRCAM and Renault. Starting from 2010 (Zoé), up to the E-Tech collection (2022): twelve years have flown by, between the sound of the present and the silence of the future.

Sound Design and Coffee

This is a view from the Faema Flagship Store in Milano, during the FuoriSalone week (September 2021).

I created the sound design for the wall projection. The main challenge is that these sounds have to coexist, without being intrusive, with other music (in this case a playlist by the Berlin-based label Jazz-o-Tech).

Architecture and Scenography : http://www.traverso-vighy.com/

Graphic Design : https://www.manuelabucci.com/

Music : https://www.jazzotech.com/ – https://www.grandessocera.it/

https://artandcaffeine.faema.it/en/

New collection of sounds for electric cars

Renault announced the upcoming collection of new sounds for electric cars.

After 3 years of work in the shadows, this is the moment from which I can finally communicate about this new creation.

In this post from Renault’s blog :

https://www.renaultgroup.com/news-onair/top-stories/renault-au-diapason-du-son-episode-2/?fbclid=IwAR3v-_YhIfLLidlrYZt0DWv7kWpSgiq-wPwjBybALllWc2CP_e5wJQ8Z1_4

Nicolas Misdariis and Laurent Worms revisit the long collaboration between IRCAM and Renault, of which I’m lucky enough to be part. The video was shot inside IRCAM, always a breath-taking view.

Low-Intrusiveness Notification Sounds

With this collection of notification sounds I close a project that started 2 years ago.

The main goal was to create low-intrusiveness sounds for everyday use.However, the project has gone beyond a simple exercise in sound design. It has become a journey to the border between conscious and subconscious listening : an exploration of how the self and external reality are not separated by a clear and sharp line, but by an infinite layer of interactions.

Thanks to Sean Michael Lawler for the drawings which appear on the 3 collections’ covers – and to the people who helped testing the sounds.

Pre Wake-Up Sounds

I created a collection of sounds which try to awaken the brain out of sleep in the least invasive way possible, as slowly and gently as possible. This video shows one of them at work :

You can download and test it from here :
https://andreacera.bandcamp.com/album/five-pre-wake-up-sounds

cover_pre-wakeup.jpg

These pre wake-up sounds have two features :
1) they delicately infiltrate our auditory system during sleep, activating conscious brain activities in a gradual way (instead of the sudden activation caused by a traditional wake-up sound).
2) they offer a low intrusiveness sound when the person is awake (instead of the highly intrusive sounds of traditional wake-up sounds).

These alarms are not aimed at waking you up at all costs. If you are in a very deep sleep, it could happen that your brain will continue to dream. So, don’t use these alarms if you absolutely need to wake up to catch a plane, or to go to a meeting. In this case, combine them with a traditional, intrusive alarm, maybe set 5 minutes later.