A Whirlpool of Imaginary Sounds

A Whirlpool of Imaginary Sounds is an artistic research project inspired by gorghi d'artificio: ingenious combinatorial wheels designed in order to deconstruct, systematise and re-assemble the world of Mannerist culture (c.1520 – c.1630). The project explores the production of knowledge and meaning through imaginary places, people, artefacts, histories and sound, legitimising falsification, fiction, imagination and forgery in the realm of historically informed practice. Polyphonic madrigals that never were are the result of algorithmic, yet playful, emergent systems aiming to transform our understanding of authorship, distributed agency, truth and the audience-performer relationship. A Whirlpool of Imaginary Sounds aims to advocate the marginalised members of the fictional Accademia degli Incompresi – a daring group of heterodox thinkers from the 16th and early 17th century – by enhancing and recontextualising their visionary work through artistic performance, game design and reenactment of the fruitful convivial environment of the European republics of letters.

This research is conducted in the context of the docARTES PhD programme.