Italian artist Giovanni Lami presents a site-specific realisation of his work 'Bias', for buried magnetic audio tapes. 'Bias' is due to be released on a special cd edition on the Oxford-based Consumer Waste label, and will be presented live in the UK for the first time at the Cafe OTO Project Space.

Giovanni Lami is a field recordist and musician who works within the boundaries of soundscape and sound-ecology. In this work he presents an investigation of sounds in-between sounds, small sounds, details away from the surface. Treating the magnetic tape as a substrate for rough, derby and indefinite sound surfaces that evolve through time, he creates the conditions that allow and accelerate this process. In a project related to memory and emptiness, tapes were buried for months in different environmental conditions, degrading the ferromagnetic material and plastic support in unpredictable and irreversible ways. These tapes are then recycled and used to develop each performance, used to collect sounds and static from the performance space, its environment and the equipment itself.

This performance will see Lami threading tape loops across the OTO Project Space. Using two Nagra (IV-S /SJ) recorders and microphones, he will tend to the sounds like one tends to plants in a garden, allowing them to grow and envelop the space.

http://www.giovannilami.com/