Sparks is a project by Roberto Paci Dalò that includes an exhibition, an installation and a musical record. The exhibition, inaugurated on 6 October at the Palazzo delle Papesse, a centre of contemporary art, explores the relationship between the invisibility of sound and the tangibility of space. On the same exhibition is shown the multi-channel sound installation Sparks, which creates a familiar and mysterious sound environment at the same time.The homonymous disc, presented at the opening of the exhibition, contains some rare tracks produced for the radio program Audiobox of Radiorai. The project is a tribute to the era of the pioneers of radio broadcasting at time of the morse code.

The title comes from the word “sparks,” used to define the marconimen, “marconists” or “radiotelegraphists” in navigation in the early twentieth century. The installation, designed for Siena, is located inside a space never used in the Palazzo delle Papesse and is composed of drawings and sounds. It is in fact a sound installation on twenty channels, a familiar and mysterious sound environment at the same time, with almost cinematographic characteristics. The work is also the result of a reflection on this “unknown” space at this artistic centre, the never-opened café of the Papesse – together with the memory of a very precise scene from Stanley Kubrick’s film Shining.
The homonymous CD is an integral part of the project. It features some fully acoustic materials from recordings made over a period of more than ten years, including some rare tracks produced for the now deceased Audiobox programme by Pinotto Fava and Pino Saulo.

“on site”, “on line”, “on air

On October 6, 2007, at the Palazzo delle Papesse, the exhibition Sparks by Roberto Paci Dalò was inaugurated and the homonymous CD was presented, the third issue of 21 Records, a series of records founded by the centre of Siena with the Horus Music label.On the same day the Palazzo delle Papesse participates in the III Day of Contemporary Art, promoted by AMACI – Associazione Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, and therefore allows free admission to the exhibition of Dalò.

Sparks is a work that should be “seen” with your ears, in three places at the same time: “on site”, “on line”and “on air”. This means that together with the physical spaces of the Papesse, the materials are also transmitted via radio through the FM frequencies of Radio Facoltà di Frequenza and in streaming from Radio Papesse. For those who are “on site” it is possible to organize a remix of the installation while listening to both the radio and the streaming at the same time, to create an unusual personalized polyphony

Unknown cafeteria

“With this exhibition we wanted to pay homage to the telegraphy of the dawn” – explains Roberto Paci Dalò. “The whole work has a system strongly connected to sound and listening. With Sparks I wanted to create an exhibition and an installation that works on the creation of a place starting from the invisibility of a sound, which is able to create a tangible space. A sort of psychoacoustic illusion that allows you to open the doors of what is actually the cafeteria, never opened, of the Palace of the Papesse. The relationship between sound and image is one of the most interesting points on the reflections of what is today art. It is no coincidence that there is also a project like that of the Papesse series of records, where the music produced is a contribution to contemporary artistic research that works on several languages.”.