Urban Plantarium
Urban Plantarium is a research by Michela Filzi at the intersection between ecology and dance, combining foraging; the practice of collecting wild plants for culinary purposes, with somatic dance; focused on the attunement to the environment.
I had the great honour to work with Michela and to create the musical score for this amazing project.
In a similar matter to the foraging of eatable plants, we were collecting sounds and materials from the forest, to build a musical vocabulary for our performance. All the percussive elements of the music were recorded from the shakers, I built out if acorn cupules and birch bark.
After two performances at Ufer Studios Berlin in Juli 2023, we released the music on all major streaming platforms.
Translating movement to sound
The choreographic research by Michela Filzi resulted into 7 specific plant related movement improvisations, which were guided by the association of the plant with a specific part of the body (energetic centres or chakras), a quality of movement and an energetic pattern.
With the use of motion depth cameras we were capturing the movement and altering the sounds and recordings we were foraging in the Parks of Berlin, trying to capture the character of each plant and translate it into musical idea. The results from this sessions became the fundamentals for the musical score.
