Horizon Deep, 2022
Audio – video installation, variable dimensions, loop
Comprising three videos:
Horizon Deep A, 9’, HD video, colour, stereo sound
Horizon Deep B, 9’1”, HD video, colour, stereo sound
Horizon Deep C, 6’, HD video, colour
Horizon Deep is an environmental audio-video installation and an original site-specific work for the spaces of the Galleria Civica Bressanone with a view to then being installed in other venues, following the similar principle of adaptation to other architecture/settings, taking on various forms each time.
With an evocative impulse, Silvia Hell and musician Nicola Ratti imagine ‘measuring’ Piazza del Duomo in Bressanone by recording the echoes and reverberations generated within it through the use of simple percussion instruments. Like sonar, these sounds allow us to perceive the dimensions, distances and depths of the square itself; the urban landscape thus metaphorically becomes a landscape of the depths of the sea. These sounds, put together in audio tracks by Nicola Ratti, form the acoustic element which is combined with the three video installations created by Silvia Hell from documentaries on biodiversity and bioluminescence in the ocean depths. In her videos, the artist manages to concentrate the light and colours produced by creatures of the abyss, while also carrying out a super-zoom on their bioluminescence. Furthermore, in the videos, footage that Hell shot inside the Galleria Civica di Bressanone appears from time to time, depicting details of the lighting system. The installation venue is thus transformed into a sensory experience, a metaphor for the largely unexplored ecosystem of the ocean depths.
Horizon Deep, installation view, Silvia Hell & Nicola Ratti, Horizon Deep, Galleria Civica Bressanone, Bressanone, IT, 2022