Patricia Alessandrini

Installation

This work explores themes of technological alienation, isolation and communication mediated by and addressed to technology, by exploring the relationship between a woman and a robotic “pet”. This relationship affords a cyberfeminist approach to future technologies.

Consisting of an interactive installation and a music video, Vospora sets the scene for an empathetic technological creature whose fabrication is inspired by biological structures and functions. The creature is capable of producing sounds in a manner modeled after the human voice, with sounds that are produced by imitation vocal cords and then modulated by two membranes situated in transparent tentacles. The creature breathes visibly, synchronizing its respiration in an empathetic manner with a person nearby. The creature and its vocalisation system are conceived according to principles of soft robotics, in collaboration with DEFROST, an initiative of INRIA specialized in soft and flexible robotics, and are also inspired by principles of affective computing. The name Vospora evokes the voice (vox) and biological auto-replication (spora).

In the music video, the creature interacts and interprets an aria as a duo with soprano Marisol Montalvo, accompanied by a violin (not visible in the video). Their performance takes place inside of a spaceship, a confined space in which the protagonist has spent years alone in outer space, accompanied only by the creature. This performance is a preliminary part of a larger scenic work: a chamber opera featuring Marisol Montalvo, Donatienne Michel-Dansac and Schallfeld Ensemble.

Patricia Alessandrini

Patricia Alessandrini is a composer/sound artist, electronics performer, instrument builder, and researcher, creating interactive works which are often collaborative and theatrical. Through these intermedial formats, she actively engages with socio-political issues, and notions of representation, mediation, perception, and memory. Her works and research have been presented in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia, and in more than 15 European countries, at festivals such as Archipel, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Electric Spring, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Gaudeamus, Mostly Mozart, Musica Strasbourg, rainy days, Ruhrtriennale, Salzburg Biennale, TIME:SPANS, Wien Modern and Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik. She studied at the Conservatorio di Bologna, Conservatoire de Strasbourg, and Ircam, and holds PhDs from Princeton University and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC). She is a Professor (professeure ordinaire) of Artistic Research at the HEMU – Haute École de musique and HES-SO, Haute école spécialisée de Suisse occidentale, and previously taught Composition at Stanford University, Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and Composition with Technology at Bangor University. She has been awarded Guggenheim (2022) and Radcliffe (2024) fellowships. She serves on the advisory boards of ShareMusic & Performing Arts, a Swedish knowledge center for inclusion, and the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music (PRiSM) in the UK, and currently performs research on inclusive multimodal and immersive experience, feminist paradigms of technology, soft robotics, and automata more generally. Her portrait CD of works for ensemble and electronics by Riot Ensemble, Leçons de ténèbres – described by Gramophone Magazine as “supremely well crafted” – was released on Huddersfield Contemporary Records in 2023, and her feedback improvisation duo CD with Marco Fusi, Proximity, Distance, will be released on Sideband records in 2025. Her published works are available from BabelScores.

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