You can listen preview of this album on this page, on Bandcamp or buy it on our shop.
You can also visit Rafael Bresciani’s website.
VOX AETERNA – The Covid Variations
The voices from those who left us. That’s what you will hear in VOX AETERNA – The Covid Variations. A choir of five voices, result of Sars-CoV-2 mortality data during 2020, composed and interpreted by a sonification algorithm with use of sampled voices. Each second represents a day and the age of each registered death tells us in which voice that person belongs to. As the numbers raises, new notes are included in the harmony of each of the five parts.
The result is a series of ten pieces created after the data of ten different nations. In that way, using the exact same parameters and choices, the generative system produces a different result for each country depending exclusively on the data differences during 2020.
As one of the goals of this work is to give the possibility of an experienced comparison between territories, we will able to hear the difference between the impact of the disease identifying which age group was more affected in each given moment of 2020. Here, sound and music will reinterpret data to emphasize the impact of the disease on the lives of real people and increase awareness about the real tragedy behind numbers.
This work was part of the ICAD Conference 2021, Audio Mostly Conference 2021, Concretehouse.art by .Art Domains to Ars Electronica Festival 2021 and the XV Premio Nazionale delle Arti, installed and exhibited in the Mas.Edu Museum of Sassari, Italy. All the programing, concept, composition, operation, interaction, project, imagination and realization was done by Rafael Bresciani with support of professor Massimo Cittadini and Domenico Quaranta, of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, Italy.
Data Sources:
ARG – Ministerio de Salud. Dirección Nacional de Epidemiología y Análisis de la Situación de Salud. Área de Vigilancia.
AUS – covid19data.com.au
BR – SRAG 2020 – Banco de Dados de Síndrome Respiratória Aguda Grave – incluindo dados da COVID-19
CHI – DEIS – Ministerio de Salud – Gobierno de Chile
JPN – Toyo Keizai Online “Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Situation Report in Japan” NZ – National Collections & Reporting | Data & Digital
PERU – Centro Nacional de Epidemiologia, prevención y Control de Enfermedades – MINSA
SPAIN – Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) / DATADISTA
Ministry of Health
UK – NHS England and NHS Improvement
USA – National Center for Health Statistics – CDC Case Surveillance Task Force
Rafael Bresciani
Rafael Bresciani, or bresciani, is a sound and media artist who works with data and algorithms. In his work, he crafts sonic contexts by mixing composition, real instrumentation, generative music and field recording to introduce the listener into a whole universe of sound possibilities. Not always real, not always possible, but that stimulates reflections upon our world.
He’s driven by the idea of provoking, stimulating another perception of the reality that manifests before our eyes, our senses. On constructing sound narratives, he focus his messages on metaphors and ideas that evoke mental images.
In his works we can find mostly themes that deals with the relationship of the individual and the society that surrounds and influences one’s self, such as society’s standards expectations and disillusionment; sexist roles and oppression; migration and cultural adaptation; structures of power and mass manipulation.