Ciciliani, Marko

Tullius Rooms

Label: Unsounds Country: The Netherlands

"From Antiquity up through the Renaissance, there are reports of people whohad the ability to retain unimaginable amounts of information. These peopleaccomplished such feats of recollection by means of a particular technique -the ars memorativa - which worked in the following way. One created apersonal, imaginary building, all of the different spatial divisions ofwhich one came to know well. In order to remember a particular subject, onewould place various virtual objects in the rooms of the building. Theseobjects would symbolically represent information. To recall something later,one would imagine oneself walking through that particular part of thebuilding which housed the objects pertaining to the subject at hand andwould then "decode" them.

The idea of a fictitious building which, although uninhabited, is still'imbued,' serves as the inspiration for this piece and as a metaphor for itsformal organization. The form consists of 126 sections that were derived bymeans of a magic square. The architectural metaphor lends itself well to thepiece and its sections, in that although the physical characteristics ofindividual rooms may greatly differ, together the rooms form an edifice.

A second aspect in the piece is derived from architecture, in that theacoustic characteristics of the hall in which this piece is performed playan important musical role, as do those of the piano and the musician's body.These last two are also utilized as 'architectural' entities untothemselves. Furthermore, artificial and remote acoustics are brought in bymeans of electronics and soundscapes. Tullius Rooms is a diverse musicallandscape of piano sound, electronic material, singing, whistling andpercussive or 'performance' actions."-Unsounds