Diogo Alvim
Diogo Alvim works between music and sound arts, exploring their interactions with architecture, specific contexts, and other arts. He is interested in expanding the practice of sound composition as a research and transformation device.
He studied architecture and composition in Lisbon. In 2016 he finished a PhD in Composition/ Sonic Arts at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, focused on the relations between music and architecture.
He currently teaches Sound Arts at ESAD Caldas da Rainha, and is an integrated researcher at CESEM, FCSH – NOVA.
He regularly collaborates with visual and sound artists, choreographers and theatre directors, in productions as diverse as installations, video, dance, performance, performative walks, and other hybrids.
His work has been presented in several events, of which: Festival Temps d’Images 2023 (Os Passos em Volta – Alcântara, a performative walk with Joana Braga); Festival Musica Viva 2023 (Jogo Duplo for Sond’Ar-te Trio); Arquitectura dos sons – concert integrated in the commemorations of the centenary of Iannis Xenakis with the piece Posição Relativa (Gulbenkian Foundation 2023); Territórios Nómadas, NOVA-FCSH (with Joana Braga, 2022); Danças na Cidade – RTP/ CNB (2022 for a piece by Tânia Carvalho); Convento São Francisco, Coimbra and Lisboa Soa Festival (Campo Próximo with Matilde Meireles, 2020); National Dance Company, with the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra (Music for S, by Tânia Carvalho, 2018); Festival Musica Viva 2018 and 2013 (Lisbon 2013); Chantiers d’Europe – Theatre de la Ville (artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2018). CNEAI, Pantin, France (for a piece by Ramiro Guerreiro, 2017); Do Liminar#6 (Zaratan Gallery, Lisbon, 2016); Sonorities Festival (with the Royal String Quartet, 2015); Belfast Festival (with Matilde Meireles, 2014); Sounding Cities – Invisible Places (Viseu, 2014), Ibrasotope#60 and MAC-USP (São Paulo, Brazil, 2014); Notation in Contemporary Music Conference at Goldsmiths University (London, 2013); ICMC 2012 (with Unlikely Places, Ljubljana); ISMIR 2012 (Porto); Young Musicians Award 2009 (commissioned by RDP – Antena 2); Festival Synthèse 2009 (Bourges); Festival Música Portuguesa Hoje (Orchestrutopica, 2008); Gulbenkian Orchestra’s composers’ workshop (2008 and 2009).
Supervisors: Pedro Rebelo, Paul Wilson, António Pinho Vargas, and Carlos Caires
He studied architecture and composition in Lisbon. In 2016 he finished a PhD in Composition/ Sonic Arts at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, focused on the relations between music and architecture.
He currently teaches Sound Arts at ESAD Caldas da Rainha, and is an integrated researcher at CESEM, FCSH – NOVA.
He regularly collaborates with visual and sound artists, choreographers and theatre directors, in productions as diverse as installations, video, dance, performance, performative walks, and other hybrids.
His work has been presented in several events, of which: Festival Temps d’Images 2023 (Os Passos em Volta – Alcântara, a performative walk with Joana Braga); Festival Musica Viva 2023 (Jogo Duplo for Sond’Ar-te Trio); Arquitectura dos sons – concert integrated in the commemorations of the centenary of Iannis Xenakis with the piece Posição Relativa (Gulbenkian Foundation 2023); Territórios Nómadas, NOVA-FCSH (with Joana Braga, 2022); Danças na Cidade – RTP/ CNB (2022 for a piece by Tânia Carvalho); Convento São Francisco, Coimbra and Lisboa Soa Festival (Campo Próximo with Matilde Meireles, 2020); National Dance Company, with the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra (Music for S, by Tânia Carvalho, 2018); Festival Musica Viva 2018 and 2013 (Lisbon 2013); Chantiers d’Europe – Theatre de la Ville (artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2018). CNEAI, Pantin, France (for a piece by Ramiro Guerreiro, 2017); Do Liminar#6 (Zaratan Gallery, Lisbon, 2016); Sonorities Festival (with the Royal String Quartet, 2015); Belfast Festival (with Matilde Meireles, 2014); Sounding Cities – Invisible Places (Viseu, 2014), Ibrasotope#60 and MAC-USP (São Paulo, Brazil, 2014); Notation in Contemporary Music Conference at Goldsmiths University (London, 2013); ICMC 2012 (with Unlikely Places, Ljubljana); ISMIR 2012 (Porto); Young Musicians Award 2009 (commissioned by RDP – Antena 2); Festival Synthèse 2009 (Bourges); Festival Música Portuguesa Hoje (Orchestrutopica, 2008); Gulbenkian Orchestra’s composers’ workshop (2008 and 2009).
Supervisors: Pedro Rebelo, Paul Wilson, António Pinho Vargas, and Carlos Caires
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Papers by Diogo Alvim
This practice based PhD research consists of a portfolio of nine works that were developed in a dialectical relation to these ideas. The works are presented in a framework composed of five conceptual tools used to articulate music and architecture. These are Material, Site, Drawing, Programme and Use.
With the notion of Material, I explore how the acoustic behaviour of a performance space, or of a 'performative device' affects the musical work. Architectural materials become musical ones as they are implicated in the listening experience. The discussion about Site brings to music the notions of place, the local, and everyday life, embracing soundscapes so many times excluded from musical discourse. Musical sites are also architectural sites, always related to their present environment, and their everyday contingencies. Drawing is a tool for developing ideas, for thinking (the sketch), but also the main mediator between architect and builder, or composer and performer (notation). When considered in a broad frame of possibilities, from symbolic to graphic systems, it helps to redefine the roles and ultimately to rede9ine the work itself. Programme exposes the constraints and conditions of the creation process, while also revealing the socio-political relations between musicians and audiences, institutions and composers, composers and performers. Programming as framing can be a platform to expand what the work concerns. Through a consideration of Use, the work becomes dispersed in a plurality of agents that converge in a useful event.
Thus composition, as architecture, moves from being about conditioning design to designing conditions where musical events may happen.
This building became the main character of an immersive acoustic experience, where a game of squash was the starting point to explore ideas about architecture and place through sound. The squash courts were subject to acoustic processes extrapolated from two of Alvin Lucier's most important works—"Vespers" and "I am sitting in room". Also the floor markings were manipulated, as a reference to Edward Krasinski's obsession with a never-ending line. These extended beyond the performance space to reveal unexpected connections.