We started the day with an unforeseeable visit from the whole team of Baltazar Dias [Madeira's National Theatre] showing interest in understanding how everything worked. They were also very surprised as they discovered that Sara, for her piece, will paint the floor white and make marks on it, having to then erase everything in the end, for we must return the floor's colour to its usual grey! João Viveiros came in the afternoon. He analysed various fragments and expressly asked about one of them, which had been inspired on Scrabble and functioned according to thermodynamic principles. In the end, he instead worked on another one, more poetic, with three lines drawn with a thin brush. These took him to start powerfully on a blitz-like stormy entry, to then gradually refine the texture, forcing it to go sparse, its particles rarified. During recordings, there too came up to us a man who discovered us on the Cultural Bureau's physical programme and who had until then never heard of PIPINOIR. We were pleased to get him acquainted with the space. Lastly, Tiago Lopes appeared with his rajão, to improvise with that ancient-harp-like sound on a text that speaks of 'Monkeys, Primates heading towards Depression', created using some OULIPO techniques. Tiago became interested in the quest for a certain lack of semantic intention and explained to us that he likes to think about the inevitability of some things, all with incidental proper shapes and features, which happen independently of plans, schemes, structures or forms sustaining them. At the end of the day, we managed to go support Punk D'Amour [the band Mariana and Filipe are part of] at their concert in Santa Cruz. They brought on stage more percussion than usual and were bombarded with an unprompted psychedelic light design. Above all, as always, there were so, so good! Photographs by Sara Rodrigues
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Today was one of those days - almost inexistent now - throughout which we only got one recording done. But nothing is lost, for we had the so awaited participation of Rui Camacho. He had been here with us a couple of days ago, photographing as usual whilst deeply interiorising the sketches one by one. Today, he requested that Rodrigo would explain to him some of those in greater detail and, after some time, he picked up his Adufe [tradutional Iberian hand-percussion instrument] from a bag full of instruments he had brought from Xarabanda [cultural institution Rui is the director of]. After some loose rhythms, he decided to try his flute out. He chose a drawing fragment which displayed several harmonic fields related to grammatical classes and surprised us with these curious melodies, somewhat post-romantic, but with double-phonics, whistle-tones, ghostly harmonics and other contemporary techniques. It is strange to think that we were comfortably expecting a Mourisca [Moorish influenced traditional music genre from Madeira]. Mariana B. Camacho also joined the group at PIPINOIR, having arrived on this morning from Andanças [a world music and dance festival] as she was participating in Ethno Portugal [a traditional music international exchange programme]. Being told about so many enriching life experiences and amazing performances, Rui sighed 'I wished I was there, man!' Photograph by Sara Rodrigues
Today, after some considerations, Rodrigo decided he should only complete one of the sailcloth screens. Beyond the eminence of falling dead had he not chosen to do so, we discovered that all the material accumulated in only one of the screens will suffice to fill up the whole place with sound. Ricardo Correia from the band Fado Funcho knocked on our door when it was late evening already, armed his bass ukulele. A bass ukulele is really what it says it is: a ukulele but fatter than usual and with the 4 strings tuned on the same notes as those of double basses. Ricardo navigated nicely though fragments and ended up basing himself on the relations between concepts of monotony, periodicity, complexity and chaos, promptly pulling up a musical structure which represented the diagram. Finally, Helena B. Camacho shuffled through a number of songs and tongue-twisters, based on the numbers from 1 to 10, having covered from Fernando Pessoa to the best of Madeira's Children's Song Festival. Again, more interested tourists were curiously appearing at PIPINOIR's door. We truly enjoy discovering other's discoveries. Photographs by Rui A. Camacho
We started straight in the earliest we could, with Miguel Rosado, who kicked off the game with a neat presentation about the interest we all should have in exploring common everyday objects as if there were noble percussion instruments. Then, he sniffed around, just to find a large bowl at PIPINOIR, which he lively improvised with. Then, we received Fernanda Martins once more, who had already been to the improvisation workshop. She was the first one using voice in a musical way, having chosen a draft drawing, which led her to explore extreme registers, wrapping up with some repetitive minimalism along a thread of high and low notes. In the afternoon, Nuno Filipe and Cristina Vieira popped up. Cristina offered us a performance, which, although built on the spot, became something rather complete, with choreography and everything. Nuno, who avoided watching the first performance, so not to become influenced by it, clung to this syntactical matrix and discoursed about the state of things in the Funchal's music sphere. Before leaving us, we still managed to speak about how advanced was the work for the premiere of 'Fáça-se Luz!' [Lights up!] on Saturday the 26th of August. (Everyone is invited) We were surprised with these four accountants who prompted us with an unexpected visit. Attracted by the term 'taxonomy' on our facade's A0 poster, they decided to penetrate the space, with much interest. After a conversation about the project, they affirmed that more provocative culture is in lack in Funchal. According to them, a more consistent cultural offer should be supported as an exemplary counterpart to other Portuguese cities. In the evening, Mr Miranda filled the space with his emotionally loaded voice, singing songs spanning from Fado to the Madeiran traditional genres of Charamba and Bailinho and even through to those of political intervention. Along the day, we received unexpected visits from some strangers, a German woman connected to music somehow and two ladies from Serbia, who praised our persistency at work, for they have seen us working early on that day as they were heading towards the downtown in Funchal and, again, had seen us on way back to the hotel, during night's last hours. Photographs by Sara Rodrigues Photographs by Rui A. Camacho
In the morning there came Lara Carolina to us again, followed by Roberto Moniz. Lara picked up her Rajão [a five-strings traditional chordophone from Madeira Island, which later gave origin to the Ukulele] and, as Rodrigo suggested, challenged herself at reinterpreting two little motifs over and over again, playing them up to the fastest speeds. Roberto, a true verse-improviser, jumped headful into a free-style outburst, only allowing himself to be guided by (simple, but tricky) seven lines of code. Just before the lunch break, both of them still gave out a concert for two German tourists. They had arrived at PIPINOIR with the face of someone who brings bad news, and that was because they had to stay on land due to the ever more uncontrollable winds of Santa Cruz [the windiest part of the island, where the airport is]. Nothing that a highest category private concert, lots of curiosities about traditional chordophones from Madeira and a map of the city designed by Maria João (Sara's friend from Porto) - which took them certainly to Carlos Jorge's luthier workshop - could not get them exiting our door with a huge smile on their faces. In the afternoon we received Paulo and Sophie, who got along in a double act to interpret a graph with some really nice grunting. Luis was the last one to record. He screamed as loud as the loudest we have ever heard. It completely snatched us. Photographs by Rui A. Camacho
Today it was resting day, but with so many drawings to make, Rodrigo continued his arduous work of trying to advance through the sailcloth screen, southwards, step by step. Intuitively accustomed to being in the know of how to manage his own time very well when composing or preparing scores, scripts and performances for his pieces, he now came closer to understand the torment that his friends who are painters go through when they say 'I really need to go home and paint'. We bumped against Alexandra on the road, who told us she had been called at the last minute to play that night in a bar nearby. We could not attend, but it hereby stands our promise of listening to her music live before we leave! Photograph by Rui A. Camacho
The morning started early, for it was the beginning of our first workshop at PIPINOIR. There came along some of those who had already been with us, but some new faces showed up as well, like Fernanda Martins, Roberto Moniz and Lara Carolina. Manuel from PIPINOIR was the first one expanding on the question 'what is improvisation?', promptly concluding that, in fact, such thing does not exist. After passing through many other considerations, and leaving free-jazz aside, we dedicated ourselves to the exploration of sound in its most rudimentary form. Listening, attention and perception - not only of our own actions but also to those of others - took us to improvise with the nature of Rua dos Aranhas [where PIPINOIR is], especially when dialoguing with the pretty insistent bird next door. In the course of a long improvised loop-based cycle, we managed to visit several musical genres, which reminded us of folk as much as of minimalist music, passing through various Madeiran regionalisms, or course. The final exercise ended with an imaginary moldable ball, to which various textures and sonic shapes were attributed, in the pursuit of developing an accessible real-time composition strategy. Photograph by Rui A. Camacho
Today we had the pleasure of being visited not only by Roberto Moritz but also by Carlos Jorge, who came in straight after him. Roberto, who examined the drawings several times without having realised how exactly he would interpret them, ended up having the elegant idea of inviting Carlos for a bit of a cooperation. The Braguinha [a machete-type traditional chordophone from Madeira Island] was the principal instrument, accompanying Carlos' voice sailing through a poem, which Roberto chose. As the first recording was done, the invitation inverted itself around, and Carlos chose another text to suitably read backwards, and asked Roberto if he could accompany him with some 'strange noises'. We happened to have some unplanned visits, including two architects, a retired journalist, an English-Jamaican tourist, and managed to confirm Emmanuel Mejía's participation, who we did not know before, but with whom we settled a good friendship. He well surprised us with an interpretation - in a Venezuelan percussion instrument - of a house's floor plan. He then explained to us that each numbered division would represent a collection of different timbres and ways of playing; pre-composed structures of various technical strikes, which constitute an integral part of the Venezuelan traditional music. At the end of the day, we had some time to dive into Lazaretto's waters, whose rocky beach, unknown to many, hidden just below this enormous abandoned hospital by the austerest of cliffs, is, although practically taken from a horror film, quite inviting (at least to us). Photographs by Sara Rodrigues
Right in the morning, we received Alexandra Barbosa, singer and guitar player, of a strong but sweet punk-rock style, who proposed herself to hover around the diagrams and texts Rodrigo had drawn and to look for one which she identified with the most. The word 'dreams' gained the utmost importance within a scheme of many other written words, which Alexandra interpreted verbally. She also strongly referred to 'body', 'water' and 'mission', in an endeavour to unfold what for her is the most important thing in life. Tonight we can't make it up until very late because there are plenty more participating guests whom we have invited to come here early in tomorrow's morning. If you have not yet booked your participation with us, you can do so with Diogo! We will be expecting all those who want to visit us any day during this month, but for now, we close the night with some music from Brazil's marshlands on the radio. Photograph by Rui A. Camacho
The day began with Rodrigo's first drawings - 'Sweedish Fish', 'Peeps Brand', 'Airheads', 'Red Vines', 'Jolly Rancher' and 'Dots' - referring to American candy brands in which he was inspired to make a piece about shitty food additives. Filipe Ferraz was the first participant. He came to POPINOIR and chose a fragment of 'Taxonomy', which he thought was interesting. To record, he selected a text which did not include candy brands but a relation between Madeira Wine and the declaration of independence of the United States of America. Straight after that, we were happy with Eduardo de Freitas, who paid us a short but concise visit and thought the first signs had been stamped rather than handmade. 'A good start', he said. With Manuel Rodriguez, we spoke a bit further about the work dynamics of the everyday here at PIPINOIR and settled some things about how the workshops should work like (since they are coming up soon). He helped us with an invaluable solution for the installation of the 32 sound cables feeding the multiple loudspeakers, which will start popping around from tomorrow onwards. Now, we all remain in the space, working in a familiar environment. See you Tomorrow! Photograph by Rui A. Camacho
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