Davide Tidoni: Collected Recordings #3

Davide Tidoni is an artist and researcher interested in the relational dimension of listening, and in the physical experience of sound. He works with live performance, intervention, audio recording, video, and guided listening. He recently published a sound ethnography on the ultras group BRESCIA 1911. 'Collected Recordings' is a series of works selected by Tidoni from his extensive back catalogue.

For this third episode of his collected recordings, Davide presents five works:

'Canta Che Non Passa' (2018)

This work documents part of the repertoire of the informal choir “Canta Che Non Passa”. The choir is a spontaneous group of middle age/old people that constituted a part of the NO TAV movement in Valsusa, northern Italy. The choir’s repertoire consists mainly of protest songs adapted from preexisting musical sources, with lyrics that have been created from scratch.

Davide recorded the choir during one of their rehearsals. Rather than position the microphone at a certain distance from the group to capture the multiplicity of voices, Davide chose to focus on individual voices of those members that sat beside him. This strategy was designed to stress the fallible and imperfect nature of the choir and emphasis the singular/plural dimension of collective singing and the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of non-professional voices.

'Forget The Theater! Go To The Stadium' (2015)

This work documents all the times the italian word “dai” (in english “c’mon”) was used by the leaders of the ultras group BRESCIA 1911 during Brescia vs. Catania, 2015. The word “dai” is commonly used as an exhortation to urge the group to participate in the chanting.
The work reflects on the participatory dimension of football culture and the parallels between the shared feelings of identification, involvement and complicity that characterized the origins of western theater.

'Magnifying My Sphere Of Power' (2013)

In this work, Davide sings and plays drums along with a selection of his favourite hardcore punk songs. The project amplifies the power of music as an emotional inciter, an agitator, a physical energy and a self-presence. With this work Davide wants to emphasize the role of the listener as a responsive agent, who plays a central role in the musical process, and more generally reflect on what listening to music means in terms of reconstruction of meaning (appropriation) and activation of personal agency (participation).

'Single Strokes' (2015)

In this work Davide plays the snare-drum with a pair of microphones. The recordings explore the physical properties of the microphone and present a more intuitive and analog way of approaching audio technology. By giving a body to the microphone the work reflects on the physical affection of material culture and how this sensual attraction subverts the conventional modes of consuming technology.
Single Strokes is part of a series of actions where Davide investigates the practical materiality of the microphone and violates the basic rules and principles of audio technology.

'My Loss Will Be Your Gain' (2016)

The material for this work comes from a tape cassette found by Davide in a derelict house. It consists of a series of recording-tests performed by the woman who used to live in the house. The title of the piece – your loss will be my gain – refers to the accidental discovery of the tape after years of abandonment and neglect.