way, following the style and concept that was developing organically. I work a lot with video editing to make sense of the sound, and vice versa, especially when I produce site-specific installations. At the end of the process, when I was scrolling through the photos I had on my camera, I found the perfect image for the cover: a little girl playing on her own in a room (she is the daughter of a friend of mine). The girl is positioned at the centre of the frame with a strong interplay of light and shadow. Q: Indeed, there are close similarities between your visual and you aural work, in the way you create and investigate intricate textures and explore different surfaces. Water, for instance, is a strong element, which finds its sonic counterpart in the use of loops. There’s also often some kind of journey involved. What has your own journey been like with this album? A: The journey was beautiful and intense, but also difficult. Music is the only area in which I am extremely meticulous so many songs have been reworked several times. I must admit that initially, I wasn’t even 100% convinced of some of the songs selected by Tim. I thought that
they were good songs for “Soundcloud” but maybe not for an album, and that I could do better. Therefore, I reworked the music concentrating above all on the mastering. After that, another problem was born: to produce something in line with that same mood, and with the kind of concept that had emerged. Of course, the music was more difficult and required more time. The videos evolved almost naturally. For “Lacks Soul”, I already had some nice shots I’d taken at the “Eur Park” in Rome. For “Further”, instead, I worked mostly on the editing with pre-existing material and I focused on the post-production side of things. Q: Since we last spoke you have conducted a number of further soundwalks and workshops in different cities such as Bisceglie and Bologna amongst others. How did these new experiences compare to your first forays into sound mapping when you worked in Taranto and in the Pigneto district in Rome together with Alessio Ballerini? Is it still difficult to find financing, for instance, or were you able to build on past experiences? A: Sure enough, many things have changed. When I realized the sound map of Taranto, back then AIPS (Italian
Soundscapes Archive) did not exist and I still hadn’t met Alessio. Only one year later, when I moved to Rome, I eventually met Alessio and together we decided to create AIPS. We then found a formula, and a shared method that could be applied to every workshop within different contexts in various cities. There is a lot of work to be done during these workshops, both before, and after. Alongside the promotion of the event, and the event itself we now also produce a collective performance on completion of the workshop, which is something we started doing only a few months ago as a way of engaging even further the participants to the workshop. At that point, all the post-production work begins and one has to upload all the audio samples online and embed them onto an interactive map of the city. AIPS proposes this kind of project to public institutions and associations. Unfortunately, due to budgetary constraints and the cuts to arts funding, there is generally a lot of interest but little money available, which makes it very difficult to get a project off the ground. Ideally, we would love for these workshops to be open and free to all, but this could only happen if someone covered the running costs for the whole event. We are indeed currently working on trying to find more opportunities to get public funding in order to allow more people to attend our workshops. www.francescogiannico.com
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