The protagonist of this video is the painter Achille Perilli and the soundtrack, recorded in 1989, is an elaboration of his reading of a text that was freely adapted from the Futurist “parolibere” (freewords) of Fortunato Depero. The video footage was shot in his studio in Orvieto (Umbria, Italy) in the Spring of 2009 and it was then digitally edited in close connection to the soundtrack, using a technique of rhythmical fragmentation typical of the video clip. Achille’s voice was divided and sampled into individual phonemes in order to obtain some fundamental rhythmic elements. These sounds then became the basis of complex polyrhythmic structures, which were preciselywritten out as a musical score. The score is played by two percussionists who, instead of using normal percussion instruments, use their drumsticks to activate two sets of sensors (Octapads) that reproduce the individual phonemes. The timbre of the resulting sounds istherefore that of Achille’s voice, which the percussionists “play”, while creating the rhythmical structure in a live performance. The composition in its complete form includes the video together with a live musical performance, but it can also be presented as the video alone, or executed as a piece of live music without the accompanying video.

representations

version I
Antonio Caggiano and Gianluca Ruggeri – percussionists
May 22, 09 – Munich (Germany), Gasteig, Black Box
Jun 29, 09 – Bratislava (Slovenia), Philarmonic of Bratislava
Oct 01, 09 – Amsterdam (Nederland), Bimhuis
Oct 29, 09 – Barcelona (Spain), Conservatorio Municipal de Mùsica de Barcelona
Nov 19, 09 – Buenos Aires (Argentina), Teatro de la Ribera
Nov 22, 09 – Bahìa Blanca (Argentina), Biblioteca Rivadavia
Dec 16, 09 – Roma, Auditorium Parco della Musica – Teatro Studio

version II
Sep 29, 09 – Còrdoba (Argentina) Museo de Bellas Artes “Emilio Caraffa”, XX Jornadas Internationales de Mùsica Electroacùstica
Sep 8-11, 10 – Roma, MACRO – La Pelanda, Short Theatre, Cisterne Elettriche
Nov 15, 10 – Roma, EmuFest, Conservatorio di S. Cecilia, Sala Accademica
Apr 6-7, 11 – Perugia (Ita), Segnali 2001, Conservatorio di Musica
Jun 17, 11 – Foggia (Ita), Musica nelle Corti di Capitanata, dagli Algoritmi alla Musica
May 21, 14 – Bruxelles (Belgium), Saison Acousmatique Musiques & Recherches, Espace Senior
Oct 07, 16 – Avellino, Auditorium of the Music Conservatory, Contemporary Music Week

version III
paolo Ravaglia – clarinet, Manuel Zurria – flute
Dec 11, 11 – Moscow (Rus), XII International Festival of Contemporary Music, Theater “Na Strastnom”

The creation of this work has gone through various moments of my experience as a musician and has developed through various technologies but also and above all through the different artistic contexts with which I have come into contact in the twenty years that separate the recording of audio material from the recording of video material.
Its genesis dates back to 1989. In that year I began the creation of the music for the dance show Aniccham, with choreography by Lucia Latour, commissioned by the East-West Festival in Rovereto. The show was inspired by Fortunato Depero and for the realization of some rhythmic musical parts I thought of using as sound material some texts that refer to the futurist words in freedom, which for me have always represented one of the most disruptive

and innovative aspects of futurism, to unlike futurist music which has remained at mediocre levels.
For the occasion, I asked Achille Perilli to recite some of Depero’s poetic texts in the futurist manner. Achille, is a great connoisseur of futurism, and has a vast library of futurist texts. The recording of his declamatory performance, while remaining historically consistent, was an extraordinarily creative invention for me, a perfect material for the making of Anihccam.
Anihccam’s music was completely pre-recorded on magnetic support, but in 1992, at the request of the Ars Ludi percussion group, I made a new version of the piece with this material. To enable the percussionists to control the phonemes in real time, I created an interface with the “Formula” software

(later translated into Max) which translates the simple sensor signals into more complex information for the sampler.
But the work wasn’t done yet. At the beginning of 2009, on the occasion of the centenary of the publication of the first Futurist manifesto, I was asked to resume the piece for the two percussionists and to make a video in addition. So I thought of adding to the rhythmic game of phonemes a complementary rhythmic game of images that followed the same contrapuntal musical logic.
I then returned to Achille Perilli’s studio with a videographer and asked him to videotape his acting twenty years earlier. Achille proved to be an extraordinary actor.

Luigi Ceccarelli