This is an excerpt taken from the raw material for a sound installation I’m currently developing.  The original recording is Marino Zuccheri’s Parete 1967, a concrete tape composition designed to accompany a projection by the painter Emilio Vedova in the Italian Pavilion during Expo 67 in Montreal.  This recording was made during the summer of 2014, on the present day site of the Italian Pavilion, now an empty, buggy field on Ile Notre-Dame.  South of the field is the French Pavilion, co-designed by Iannis Xenakis, now a casino.  Across the water to the north is the more famous American Pavilion, a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller.  Like many World’s Fair pavilions, the Italian Pavilion was torn down shortly after the fair ended.  This seems a compelling metaphor given the overblown idealism of Expo, which impacted the planning of the rest of the city.  Rather than suggest a linear notion of time, which becomes exhausted and sinks into poor maintenance, corruption, and unrealized ideals, here I suggest circular conception of time that creates a feedback loop between the past and present in order to imagine a new future.

The installation consists of an abstract architects model of the Italian Pavilion, turned into a speaker by a transducer in its base.  The model is surrounded by 8 speakers, 4 playing the field-recordings from the present-day site.  The other 4 are the output of contact microphones connected to the model, creating a literal feedback loop.

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