Simina Oprescu
composer & sound artist
analysing the form of the universe through a grain of sound
Sound of Matter
December 2022
In the archive of Märchises and Staadt Museum in Berlin, exist 15 church bells, dating from the 15th century to the beginning of the 19th. They have all the historical information, including their weight, height, diameter, and material. Most of them are made out of bronze but there are two of them, sitting in front of the museum, that are made out of steel. Each one of the densities of the materials influences the tuning system of the bell and therefore the tone.
After some research, I arrived at the formula of how to calculate the fundamental f of the bell - which in bell language will be translated as Hum, then we will have on the scale the Prime, Tierce, Quint, and the highest Nominal. Each one of them is contained inside the shape of a bell. After I’ve used the formula f = K1t/d2√E/s(1-m2) which includes the K - constant of the material, s - density of the material, t - thickness of bell at the sound bow, diameter, m - Poisson’s Ratio, E - Young's modulus; I was able to apply f into a Max patch and find its partials to re-create the harmonic tone of the bell. Because of the beating effect that is resulting between the different frequencies, I can sense a movement of sound if I move my head and hear the Nominal and Prime tones, that sometimes are more dominant. The sum of all the different frequencies, being overlayed with multiple Hums creates a multi-dimensional movement in its subtlety and cancels out all the echoes from the space.
To be released on the Swiss label Hallow Ground in Spring 2024.
An in-depth research essay will accompany the release and the academic extended version will be published on academia.edu
LUDUS
Video & sound work (2020)
Commissioned work by MOTA Museum in Ljubljana, exhibited at Equrna Galerija inside SONICA festival ‘Paradise Haunted Garden’.
and exhibited at Mestna Galerija in Nova Gorica inside PixxelPoint Festival.
‘LUDUS’ is an experiment that aims to use the game as a mean ofresearch for the ways in which form can change the sound andinitiate the rhythm. Inside the game, the rules play an important role in setting/creatingthe rhythm, thus modulating the form, the invisible shape of sound. The secrecy of the play gives that aleatoric, unpredictable movement of sound in space. In contradiction with its rules which demand andorganise, somehow the beauty of the play lies exactly in its contradictions. If the game would be predictable 100%, there won’t be any stake of winning, the rules trace the territory/ form and thesecret confers content/ substance.
In play/game it’s a duality, the relation between visible and invisible.
“The exceptional and special position of play is most tellingly illustrated by the fact that it loves to surround itself with an air ofsecrecy. Even in early childhood the charm of play is enhanced bymaking a "secret" out of it. This is for us, not for the "others".
What the "others" do "outside" is no concern of ours at the moment.
Inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longercount. We are different and do things differently.
[…] Archaic man was well aware that music was a sacred force capable of rousing the emotions, and a game. Only much later was itappreciated as a significant addition to life and an expression of life,in short, an art in our sense of the word” - Johan Huizinga -
Homo Ludens
Journey For A Form
2022
The labyrinth has a vast symbolism, from Ancient Greek mythology to worldwide semiology. Labrys (Minoan or pre-Greek term) is considered a sign of life, with its diversions and detours, with inevitable traps where humans always try to escape them to the last minute of existence. In Greek mythology, the legendary craftsman Daedalus designed and built an elaborate and confusing structure called the Labyrinth. It was made for King Minos of Crete for the purpose of holding the half-bull, half-man monster called Minotaur.
The myth of the Minotaur is a story of tyranny and avarice. King Minos denied Poseidon a sacrificial bull, so the indignant god punished Minos by making his wife fall in love with a bull. The union spawned the monster, Minotaur. Shamed, King Minos locked him up in this structure. From this angle, feels like I am also the Minotaur, and the world is seen as a labyrinth. It finally arrives at a metaphor of traveling within, seeing the human constructed out of 3 extents: body, soul and spirit. All together walking the dynamic path of perfecting the spirit, conceived as a “road”. Another point of view is the symbol of the supremacy of the Minoan Mother Goddess. The labyrinthine symbol always accompanies women or goddesses, not male gods. Its more profound meaning is connected with the feminine life-giving force, as the centre of the labyrinth is the matrix of the Goddess.
The sculpture is constructed out of steel, playing a conductive part for the piezo mics fixed underneath it. It stands on a tall stander.
Amplifying the movements, the individual can play with the glass or metal ball while seeking the path to the centre. The piezo mics are connected to a mixer where modulating the sound it's possible, transforming the labyrinth into a sound resonating object. The room is dark with one spot on the labyrinth.
The individual hears playing an introduction piece in a quadrophonic environment.
While the sound stops, the individual may approach to the labyrinth.
The sound will start again after approx. 3 minutes of silence. In that time the individual can play, modify and modulate the sound as they please. When the music starts again on loop, the individual can also use it together with it, as a percussive instrument.
Electronic works
https://soundcloud.com/siminaoprescu ︎
https://siminaoprescu.bandcamp.com ︎
Radiophonic works
‘DRIP DROP’ (2018)
http://semisilent.ro/drip-drop/
‘ONE BAG OF ROTTEN TOMATOES ONE BAG OF ROTTEN POTATOES’ (2017)
http://semisilent.ro/o-punga-de-rosii-stricate-si-o-punga-de-cartofi-stricati/
‘IL COLOMBRE’ (2018)
https://soundcloud.com/siminaoprescu/monstrul-colombre ︎
ÖRF MUSIKPROTOKOLL
‘THE HIDDEN ENVIRONMENT, THE FEELING OF THE CAVE’ (2020)
http://www.kunstradio.at/2020B/11_10_20.html?fbclid=IwAR00eSkAEjYSq3nKJSQzMRRjMc9EHk1-teXc6wvodqUnK6s8td-Bz8vu_eQ https://musikprotokoll.orf.at/node/948
Installation works
2022
The Circle ︎
Nonument is defined as architecture, monuments, public spaces, and infrastructure, the meaning of which has changed as a result of social or political changes. Circle was created as part of the Stronger Peripheries: A Southern Coalition proiect, based on the themes of work and happiness. During artist residencies in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and Mondaino, Italy, Neja Tomsic and her group explored public parks as neuralgic points of public life. The starting and focal point of the theme is a specific park, the park of railroad workers in Cluj-Napoca, which has undergone many transformations. Using various recording and research methods, Neja Tomsic explored its history and current state, particularly the remnants of the past that are layered in the earth - material relics, and are also stored in the imagination and memories of people and other living beings.
The Circle is an immersive documentary installation with narration, 60 min
Authors: Neja Tomsic and Nonument Group
Performing: Nonument Group (Neja Tomsic, Martin Bricelj Baraga, Nika Grabar, Milos Kosec)
Sound composition & design: Simina Oprescu
Sound technician: Luka Seliskar
Technical director: Igor Remeta
Technical coordinator: Martin Lovsin
Technical crew: Andrej Petrovcic, Dusko Pusica, Manca Vukelic, Vid Starman
Producers: Alma R. Selimovic, Klara Drnovsek Solina, Ajda Koloini
Public relations: Tamara Bracic Vidmar
Produced by: Bunker, Ljubljana
Co-produced by: Centrul Cultural Clujean, L'Arboreto -
Teatro Dimora di Mondaino
Playsoundground
Simina Oprescu & Vilte Gustyte
Coming from the hide and seek game, popular among countries, we made a map of the field where we hid and marked the spot of the 10 hidden headphones and their mp3's. Audience is invited to participate.
Organised by Klanglandschaften in collaboration with SoundS UdK, Berlin
Part of the "Un-listening/natural landscapes" that invite each audience to explore multifaceted listening methods, modes and situations of a peculiar place in Hobrechtsfelde/ Rieselfelder. With the presented installations, listening sessions and performances, the act of listening becomes forms of questioning and developing perspectives of today and the past.
Artists: Haesoo Eshu Jung, Heather Fae Calla, Jorge Vicario Guille, Juan Pablo de Luca, Merey Senocak, Salome Lubczanski, Samantha Simmons, Selim Elsadek
2020
• Comissioned quatrophonic works by
CYNETART Festival
https://www.cynetart.org/2020/#9
and
SONICA Festival
https://www.sonica.si/artists-projects2020due to Covid-19.
︎RADAR NEW MEDIA ART Festival - ACT LIFT OFF
︎that can be explored next year, at RADAR 2021.
4 weeks, 5 creative teams and over 1200 hours at Romaero. The purpose – to restore a Boeing 737 fuselage (12m long) to its initial shape and turn it into an immersive light (400 sqm of LED) and sound installation. A project developed by 5 creative teams: Mișu Cojocaru, Adrian Adilau Sandulescu, Aural Eye, Ygreq Interactive, Simina Oprescu, Silviu Stroe, Diț
Sound design: Simina Oprescu
https://fb.watch/21MFCn3VkN/
2018
SECONDARY SONIC SPACE
https://secondaryspace.simultan.org
︎ more about published in TURBULENCES VIDEO #101 - FR
Releases
2023
Binaural composition based on the book Green Hermeticism by Wilson, Peter Lamborn. Behind the practice, I chose different citations and quotes from it to give a general sense and meaning to the whole depth of this book that I recommend jumping in. It goes from spoken word to psychoacoustic phenomena following a narrative path, consciousness enabling language, and communication of unconventional belief systems about matter, energy, and spirit. The real takes the place of the symbolic. As Ilya Prigogine deduced, “In equilibrium, the matter is ‘blind’, but in far-from-equilibrium conditions it begins to be able to perceive, to ‘take into account’, in its way of functioning, differences in the external world”. Nature is perceptive.
"On the very first pages Novalis evokes hermetic science quite specifically: Various are the roads of man. He who follows and compares them will see strange figures emerge, figures which seem to belong to that great cipher which we discern written everywhere, in wings, eggshells, clouds and snow, in crystals and in stone formations, on ice-covered waters, on the inside and outside of mountains, of plants, beasts and men, in the lights of heaven, on scored disks of pitch or glass or in iron filings round a magnet, and in strange conjunctures of chance. In them we suspect a key to the magic writing, even a grammar, but our surmise takes on no definite forms and seems unwilling to become a higher key."
"Nature, from this point of view, is consciousness. Consciousness is the seed-cause, the primal causal energy, containing within it source, fruit, and end, the unity of which as we shall see is time as genesis.
Consciousness seeks itself through all its metamorphoses and its path is the path of nature, which is an unvarying rhythm."
"For Hermeticism, nature or creation is a living, spiritual, conscious, fourfold unfolding unity: a "formative metaphysical power." Titus Burckhart confirms this when he writes: "The expression 'nature' has a very precise meaning. It does not simply mean the involuntary becoming of things, but rather a unitary power or cause whose essence may be known by perceiving its all embracing rhythm - a rhythm which rules both the outward and the inward world." "
"V.I.T.R.I.O.L VISITA INTERIORA TERRAE RECTIFICANDO INVENIES
OCCULTUM LAPIDEM (Visit the Interior of the Earth and Rectifying You will Find the Hidden Stone)"
"In the words of a founding mother of Hellenistic alchemy, Maria the Jewess, also called Maria Prophetessa, the legendary sister of Moses: "One becomes two, two becomes three and by means of the third and fourth, realizes unity: thus two are but one."
The unity of four-in-one that Maria invokes in her saying, which was called by Jung the most important in alchemy, is what the ancient Pythagoreans called the holy Tetraktys, which is in a sense none other than the four states of consciousness common to all traditions: the waking state, the dream state, the state of dreamless sleep, and the fourth state.
In other words: in order to "create," One must become Two-it must look at itself. It must divide.
The unique, irreducible, indivisible cause-source
One must become Two."
"Thus the source becomes mineral; the mineral becomes plant; the plant becomes animal; the animal becomes human; the human becomes divine."
Photo cover: Musaeum Hermeticum, Frankfurt edition, 1749
Narrators voice at the beginning: Zach Hart
Recorded, designed and composed by Simina Oprescu
released May 26, 2023
Commisioned for the Library of The Center for Visual Studies, Bucharest and Green Peace Romania
with support from Carturesti Foundation
2022
"The mini-Moog was described in one of their brochures from ‘71: ‘Brutal, caustic, volcanic. Evocative, flirting, caressing. Crisp, powerful, biting. Entrancing, embracing, exhilarating!’ It’s exactly this, although I used a different modular, is a hidden and mathematical instrument that has almost endless possibilities and always surprises. As William Blake addresses the senses: ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite’.
The primary focus was searching for the musicality in harmonic echoing timbres, frequency oscillation, and modulation, and playing with sequencing ambivalent tones, and granularity, aiming for an intrinsic repetition with variation. I can say that a big inspiration was the obsessive amazing opera ‘Einstein On The Beach’ by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical director Robert Wilson.
It is mostly worked with a modular synth and e-guitar loops inside a sonic Imaginarium trying to solve a very dark and isolated time in a cement-grey Berlin after moving from Bucharest. And going a bit into the synthesis baroque of Wendy Carlos. Now the cover photo is made with DALL-E Ai generated, when I wrote “a dark Bauhaus inspired house”, which is what I felt my soul is converting, the house standing for the analogy of course.
The basis was on examining the movement of the sound, space, depths, circular, and spherical, paying attention to my perception when I went outside and psychoacoustic effects. For example, the dizziness of a ‘cocktail party effect’, or the illusions of the Gestalt effect, (and I say Gestalt because sometimes I got psychoacoustic-tricked when I was working, not knowing if it was a bad noise or a noise that was intrinsic, also remaining with a particular echoing tone in my tympani, like an ear-worm) Therefore, it is a search for a ‘geometry of rhythm’ so this is a journey in finding that condition." - Simina Oprescu
Composed, mixed & mastered by Simina Oprescu
Berlin, 2022
2021
HYDROPHITES
The outcome of Nona Inescu and Simina Oprescu collaboration. A very limited artist edition of twenty 10” records (signed and numbered) of the soundtrack composed by yours truly, for her most recent video work “Hydrophites”, featuring the talented vocalist Geo Aghinea.
The sound on each record is unique, a charachteristic of the vinyl lathe cutting process done by Balàsz Kovács. The record was made in the context of Nona Inescu’s exhibition “Waterlily Jaguar” at SpazioA, Italy.
︎ https://curamagazine.com/nona-inescu/?fbclid=IwAR0QTJ5wB6y7SAH2oxlTKDJ0sUzy3vNkvDc9C-KE8W62K1ZrAqtNISjNsfw
︎https://artviewer.org/nona-inescu-at-spazioa-2/?
fbclid=IwAR0Xv8pcFt_Tta2p0nX5s_3ha65B9_ywesaY5s05YXKKdKDc8Dw7NnrMtY4
︎http://www.daily-lazy.com/2021/03/nona-inescu-at-spazioa-pistoia.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR0tgYbQg9lBNlNMDw_vij43ZqgjxpkEyMKLljL4cns6RtvwCrFWI54S6c
︎ https://yyyymmdd.art/2021-WATERLILY-JAGUAR
︎https://www.facebook.com/1532102021/videos/10224666215872777/
︎https://vimeo.com/517467612
2020
‘A new world eats an old one
and forms a schizoid dichotomy.
The alleged spiritual energy within all human beings. According to a certain group of Japanese artists, channelling your Ki will allow you to perform normally impossible tasks, such as shooting a Kamehameha wave from your hands.
Basically, Ki is what souls are made of.
'It is 2056. The air is crammed with a strung-out anticipation and not a moment goes by that does not foreshadow the demise of an eleven-billion-strong species. Environmental warfare spreads by plants; insect-machine hybrids carrying diseases designed to infect specific racial and ethnic groups via targeted DNA sequencing; volatile weather systems; all meld in this ecology of collapse.' - Toby Heys
Change has its manifestation through every form, and the invisible form will have a strong word to say in our subconscious and emotion processing throughout this apocalyptic burn out times. An invisible revolution of the soul. ‘
worked between late2019 - early2020, Bucharest, Romania
released June 30, 2020
https://siminaoprescu.bandcamp.com/album/ki
THE WIRE - Below the Radar
KI 03released - CD compilation SHAPE Artists 2020
https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/btr/below-the-radar-special-edition-shape-platform-2020/13
the ATTIC
KI 02https://theatticmag.com/audio/2398/romanian-contemporary-music-_-part-2.html
︎ MACHINESTIC
track released on Hallucinating Heights released on cassette by Ondes HXCX.
https://ondeshxcx.bandcamp.com/album/hallucinating-heights?fbclid=IwAR2yxiiTImrDZKwEWFfw3XE0oSJPtvoexJJ1VSHJAtZFXwoVklWRiBdhHNU
Awards & Nominations
2020
NIMBOSTRATUS awarded the 3rd place in the compositional contest
'Quoting Beethoven'
on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Organisers – Goethe-Institut, forumul cultural austriac, SĂPTĂMÂNA SUNETULUI, National University of Music, Bucharest.
https://soundcloud.com/siminaoprescu/nimbostratus
The soundtrack of Drăguș - Life in a Romanian Village, together with Image and Sound is nominated for the Découvertes Pierre Schaeffer award at
Phonurgia Nova
‘Phonurgia nova awards selection committee is pleased to unveil the list of nominated authors for the 2020 festival which will take place at BnF on October 2/3 and 4 Out of 305 productions received from 30 countries, 40 creations have been selected from the most amazing of the moment. They are already audible online by the jury who can now read them - and prepare the arguments they will exchange in front of you, during this much-awaited listening feast.’
http://phonurgia.fr/2020/09/03/oreilles-deconfinees/
SHAPE+
Platform for Innovative Music and Audiovisual Art from
Europe
https://shapeplatform.eu/artist/simina-oprescu/
2019
︎ SEMI SILENT Awards - Audience Award for the work 'DRIP DROP composed and recorded during the Sonic Future Residency in 2018.
︎
Grand Prix Nova - Short Forms
with the work 'DRIP DROP' -
Silver Award
︎ http://www.grandprixnova.ro/info/info-index.htm?c=4741&g=7 ︎ https://www.facebook.com/gpnromania/videos/690897831339371/
2018
Inner Sound New Arts Festival - Jury's Award
Part of the laureats at the Innersound New Arts Festival - 100years of Romanian Sounds with the recomposed work Tragic Numberture inspired by the original composition of romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici - Tragic Ouverture.
https://soundcloud.com/innersound_bucharest/simina-oprescu-tragic
LIVE concerts
2023
Map x Territory at Simultan XVIII
Hyper-connected communities, Large Language Models, quantum computer clusters and socio-cultural progress share their time and space with ghosts of the past, geopolitical spasms and expressions of conflict. At a time when we seek new definitions, what constitutes a territory? What does a map show/explain? What are we and what are the boundaries of who we want to be?
Romanian-born, Berlin-based Cosmin Nicolae, Simina Oprescu and Matei Băcanu ask questions of a diasporic tone, in a sonorous and visually resonant quest to chart out concerns and stimulate introspection.
The audio-visual performance weaves original compositions with generative iterations and live electro-acoustics – perpetually unique, never to be repeated.
2022
Sturmundrang #5 at arkaoda, Berlin
Multichannel concert night with artists Simina Oprescu, Max Eilbacher and Mauro Zannoli
Map x Territory at arkaoda, Berlin
Hyper-connected communities, Large Language Models, quantum computer clusters and socio-cultural progress share their time and space with ghosts of the past, geopolitical spasms and expressions of conflict. At a time when we seek new definitions, what constitutes a territory? What does a map show/explain? What are we and what are the boundaries of who we want to be?
Berlin-based Cosmin Nicolae, Simina Oprescu and Michael Tan ask questions of a diasporic tone, in a sonorous and visually resonant quest to chart out concerns and stimulate introspection.
The audio-visual performance weaves original compositions with generative iterations and live electro-acoustics – perpetually unique, never to be repeated. Supported by musikfonds e.V.
2020
SIMULTAN XV Festival
- https://fb.watch/20WBQkl3z4/
Review on Positionen.Berlin
- https://www.positionen.berlin/post/position-simultan-festival?fbclid=IwAR3rU2iN11EolRnzqzBAYW4kw1XEAM52ccS5hAk2UY1gBNN-I2FxiZRka1I
• 45 min live concert “Deep Surroundings with a Splash! of Water” inside Kristin Wenzel’s life-size installation
‘The Near and the Elsewhere’ at Suprainfinit Gallery
- https://www.facebook.com/events/ 147491233106394/
2019
• 40 min live concert at
POCHEN Multimedia Biennale Symposium
in Chemnitz, Germany - https://soundcloud.com/siminaoprescu/deepsurroundings
• 40min live session w/modular synth at Kino Šiška in Ljubljana at
SONICA Festival
in collaboration with
MOTA museum
- https://www.facebook.com/pg/kinosiska.si/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10157413888869876&ref=page_internal
• 50min live concert at Slănic Moldova in the Salt Mine, during the festival IN CONTEXT - https://www.facebook.com/events/1126255644232140/
• 1h30m live set w/ modular synth - RezidențaBRD Scena9 POST MUZICA invites the audience of the BRD Scena9 Residence to a program curated by Mitoș Micleușanu and produced by the Foundation9 dedicated to sound and active artists in the experimental area of contemporary music.Each POST MUSIC edition will include a presentation of the guest artist, a discussion moderated by the curator of the program, Mitoș Micleuşanu, and a performance - live audition.
"Post-music is what remains when we forget everything we know about music, what remains when we no longer try to" delight the eardrums "(or mourn them) harmonically or rhythmically what remains when the sound becomes an intuitive paste. modeled, when we discover in real time how it "escapes" us from the aesthetic, conceptual control, etc. one of the fundamental questions related to post-music: is it possible to make the sound under the "dictatorship" of music? all the more so as including the noises in their diversity, the sound of the city or the forest, they can be considered [a kind of] music. Their spectral structure, the possibilities of transforming an already recorded sound, allow it to be approached or removed from what we understand by music in this case, is it white noise music? if its "granular dissection" allows re-shaping, reassembly of its sonic particles, into a song? the first conclusion would be that: any noise contains "latent music" at the granular level, as in the subatomic physics there is the hypothesis of the elementary particle (quanta) that contains the imprint of the object of which it is part, a kind of memory of the whole subatomic scale."
https://soundcloud.com/post-muzica/editatwav
• 3h30m Hybrid extended set at
Rokolectiv Festival
at Front Control Club
• 60 min, live performance at the Jobless AI series concerts at Club16
• KRAN NYE 2019 live performance 90 min.
2018
• 50 min. perfomance at Contemporary Art National Museum (MNAC) during a session with personal compositions organized by Brizura - A musical series hosting debuts, experiments and the merging of arts in unitarily-diverse spectacular nights.
https://www.facebook.com/events/234829430535136/
• Tripoteca festival, 40 min. live AV performance with the visuals of Mihai Matei.
Bucharest
https://www.facebook.com/Tripoteca/videos/vb.433842349992398/332063717553054/?type=2&theater
• Intersections with the live online project Experiment+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEMKjVPDBzw
• 20 min performance at Sâmbăta Sonoră (Sonorous Saturday) during Săptămâna Sunetului - La Semaine du Son at Apollo111 Theatre
• 45 min performance at the radio Stazione di Topolò organized by Moreno Miorelli in the 24h festival ToBeContinued played from Bruxelles. http://www.stazioneditopolo.it/24h-2018/index.html
2017
• In Mons (Be) , personal compositions presentation during a session organized by the class of acousmatic department.
for Radio
2021
Resonance Fm
https://shapeplatform.eu/2021/hear-our-latest-resonance-fm-show-with-simina-oprescu/
2020
ORF musikprotokoll Kunstradio
https://musikprotokoll.orf.at/en/2020/projekt/hidden-environment
https://radiohoerer.info/the-hidden-environment-the-feeling-of-the-cave-von-simina-oprescu/
Cashmere Radio
https://cashmereradio.com/episode/eastern-daze-14-simina-oprescu/
2019
Red Light Radio
https://www.mixcloud.com/RedLightRadio/simina-oprescu-for-rlr-control-club-bucharest-06-15-2019/?fbclid=IwAR1fdDs0bwDj7MTHn-5uJksaZB7jO9vgg1hgSgCFlnyEAbDs2qswXclAtUc
Noods Radio
https://www.mixcloud.com/NoodsRadio/subterranean-modern-w-simina-oprescu-3rd-july-19/
radioCONA
Cona Zavod/Institute
https://soundcloud.com/cona-zavod-institute/radiocona-podcast-no-5-6-all-about-water-urban-dreamscapes
Workshops &
Residencies
︎
RIVERSSSOUNDS
organised by DZESTRA (Ukraine) in parternship with SEMI SILENT (Romania) (2021) - https://riversssounds.org/mures
︎Charo Calvo (ES, BE) - composer, sound artist - Technics of Sonorous Writing (2017) inside the project Her Voice by SEMI SILENT
︎Philippe Franck (BE) - art historian, designer and cultural critic, producer, sound creator and intermediary, director of Transcultures - Centre of Interdisciplinary Arts of Sonorous & Numeric Culture, Secondary Sonic Space Installation (2018)
Raymond Delepierre (BE) - sound artist and sound engineer, Secondary Sonic Space Installation (2018)
︎Felix Blume (FR, ES ) - sound artist, field recordist and sound engineer, Sonic Future Residency, Asociația Jumătatea Plină (2018)
︎Erwin Stache (DE) - composer, sound artist, mathematician - Sonorous Interventions In The Urban Space (2019) inside Săptămâna Sunetului/ Week of Sound.
Lectures, Interviews & Panel Talks
2019
• Lecture on Sound, Listening and Acousmatic composition inside the Bandwidth Residency supported by Ștefan Câlția Foundation and Posibilă Gallery at Șona.
- review by Daria Nedelcu on Bandwidth Residency and the 3rd edition of
Sounds like a book. - https://revistaarta.ro/en/bandwidth-2/?fbclid=IwAR1x3rI02adwSdjXFJjdLc7CWkSfcELN3jyfAWOoWfXpinbcqFCbvpvr0Co
• Panel Talk on Sound & Capital inside SONICA Festival coordinated by Andrej Tomažin - https://vimeo.com/368630941
• In conversation with Dražen Dragojević - https://vimeo.com/365707125
2020
https://fb.watch/20W-9BOa5F/
Is musicality specific to humans only? Can animals consciously perceive pitches and beats? Do birds get high when they sing? Watch an interesting and entertaining talk between artist Simina Oprescu and music cognition scientist prof. Dr. Henkjan Honing.
He recently published his research
“The evolving animal orchestra” at MIT Press.
A more detailed lecture about his research here: https://bit.ly/2SZihj2
Part of "Probabilities Around the Center".With support from SHAPE platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Co-financed by A.F.C.N. - Administratia Fondului Cultural National.
• Interview Revista Arta - http://revistaarta.ro/en/sound-has-color-anyway/
• 10 day training residency on Acousmatic composition inside Rezidența21 at LETEA IN UNESCO by association MATKA, together with Diana Miron, Sillyconductor (Cătălin Matei) and special guest Laurențiu Coțac - https://www.facebook.com/rezidenta21/
• Interview SHAPE - https://shapeplatform.eu/2020/the-sound-is-the-soul-an-interview-with-simina-oprescu/
for Video & Film
︎
2018
Sound producing & composition for the video work “Vestigial Structures” of the artist Nona Inescu exhibited in the gallery Frac des Pays de la Loire (Fr). -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teYs-L0ssKs -
Exhibited at
CCRMA Stanford at Audiovisual Wall
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/wave/?fbclid=IwAR2uJDNxP-hr85lcwo4d-XNFYYqf4C61ByxhJ7b9HLAKl7J3mbF2SEl99xM - 2020
2020
Drăguș - Life in a Romanian Village
(1929, one of the first sociological and ethnographical documentary films in the world)
silent film, runtime: 48 minutes
music: Simina Oprescu
https://imageandsound.ro
in the frame of Possible Sounds of Early Cinema project, conceived by Image and Sound (Bucharest)
live concert at Rezidența BRD Scena9 for the screening of "Drăguș”
2021
Bucharest Hours (Witold Klimowicz, 1942)
silent film, unedited footage, runtime: 61 minutes
music: Simina Oprescu
https://imageandsound.ro
Only specialized dictionaries still recall the name of Polish documentary filmmaker Witold Klimowicz, who came to Romania seeking shelter from the early horrors of the Second World War. Once employed at the National Office of Cinematography, Klimowicz would collaborate with Paul Călinescu (“How is a Film Piece Made?”, 1940) and oversee the first steps of young filmmaker Victor Iliu.
Commenced in September ’42 and resumed later for technical reasons, “Bucharest Hours” was intended to embody the urban symphony of a supple and chic Bucharest so as to draw attention away from the war. As it stands today, the film is, above all, the shooting journal of a most eager filmmaker. As Klimowicz never managed to carry out his project, the footage stored at the National Film Archive includes shaky frames, retakes, landscapes captured in multiple takes, “duplicates”, as it were, and others. It is by fortune alone that those of us today can witness the film in its unpolished form, partly because it grants us more of its charming images before which we can never deem ourselves satiated. Let him who does not behold longingly the promise of early buildings, the folk loitering around pools, the adornments of the masses on boulevards, the carefree day-to-day spent in cafés, step forward. Every so often, we must all partake in such opium. As this Bucharest never existed in effect, but was edited to appear thus. This is, in part, why we’re fortunate that its retakes and duplicates are on display. Not only are the vistas of the University and the Roman Square anthological, but also, or above all, the boy who stumbles into frame and forces the operator to shield the lens with the palm of his hand. (Călin Boto)
https://imageandsound.ro/en/intermedia/short-sounds-silent-romanian-documentary/bucharest-hours-urban-documentary-1942/
2021 - 2023
Composing for the artist duo
Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán
The Last Particles (2018)
- composed 2021 - premiered at Frac des Pays de la Loire, exhibited at Museum Tinguely, Basel
Blue Ground (2021)
- commissioned by EVA International | Ireland’s Biennial
Rehearsals for Peace (2023)
- commissioned by n.b.k BerlinCATHARSIS
You know everything you need to know. You see everything you want to see. You have the entire world in the palm of your hand closed. Without the disclaimer "To be consumed in moderation," we scatter outside ourselves, for fear of losing something. However, the exterior is also part of you. You have to know, to understand, to confront and then make peace with it. It defines you as much as you define it on him. Embraces it! Assimilates it! And with it, assimilate the subject knowledge that you mediate. Make it part of your definition!
This is how it would sound the prologue for the video-essay (17 min) of Simina Oprescu, the desire to recreate the transformative path of a confused and exhausted subject, in search of restoring the balance. Although the trigger for the self-discovering need remains default, you cannot not perceive it, just because you know it so well. The strong advance of the outside world in the individual consciousness, excessive exposure to the infinite potentialities involved in it, are causing an acute feeling of lack of meaning.
Rebalancing is possible in this case only by shifting the search from outside to inside .The creator takes refuge in a world of symbols in search of a transcendent, unifying effect. By revealing the fact that the personal integration process of the individual is inserted into a global evolution, symbols tie the man to the world and helps suppressing the alienation and confusion.Rebalancing is possible in this case only by shifting the search from outside to inside. Creator takes refuge in a world of symbols in search of a unifying effect, transcendent. By highlighting the fact that the integration process of the individual personally is inserted into a global evolution, symbols tie the man to the world and helps suppress the alienation and confusion.
Another center of interest is built around schizoid dichotomy between subject and object, between signifier and signified, between appearance and essence. Cleavage produced visual psychic level is invoked by dividing the image into two unitary image that runs in parallel. Fluid representations of nature and biological life intertwine occasionally in unified image, embodiments of the biological continuum of the great narratives that encompasses all changes, internal and external and requires constant rebalancing.
The return to nature and to some extent becoming-nature, understanding the human body as a microcosm of the universe and integration, methods of resistance adopted by the artist before the attacks on the subconscious. These trails, indoor-outdoor, exterior-interior, for the artist become a way of being. Questioning continues probing the darkest areas of the mind, constant redefining of reporting real, even self-triggering crises of meaning, become necessary to bring to the surface shreds of truth that resonates in the spectator-generic. In this case, catharsis becomes a creative process in which opposites working together to transform the individual from apathetic observer of his own life, to a participant continuing to be actively involved in his own evolution.
exhibited at Make a Point, Bucharest.
PORTAL
2017
VIDEO & 35MM photography
RO
Trecerea spre interiorul nostru în care se regăsesc și se unifică arderea cu protecța și călăuzirea.Unificarea în interiorul nostru între ceea ce este jos pământesc, în ardere ,trecere, devenire, trecător și ceea ce este sus-divin, stabil, nemuritor reflectat în noi în Sinele fiecăruia dintre noi, călăuza noastră.
ENG
The passage towards our interior, in which we find and unite the burning with protection and guidance. Unification within us between what is below earth, burning, passing, becoming, and ephemeral and what is divine, stable, immortal reflected in us In the Self of each of us, our guidance.
TRACES, REPLACING
The action of moving an object and the consequences on it’s space
2017RO
Urme, Replasare – Delimitarea spațiului deja existent, reorganizararea obiectelor în spațiul găsit. Utilizarea unui ‚found-object’ într-un spațiu public.
MIșcarea este exprimată vizual printr-o acțiune în spațiul deja existent. Prin manipularea directă se schimbă semnificația obiectului, i se găsește un sens anume. Obiectul în sine devine un personaj.
Pornind dintr-o dorință de a personaliza și a-i găsi o utilizare non convențională obiectului neutilizat, în spațiul folosit ca o scenă. Obiectul în sine creează un spațiu menit utilizării.
Abstractizarea obiectului în spațiu, îi creează dinamism prin forma urmei desenate. Se creează nelimitarea în limitat. Spațiul ca descriere este nelimitat dar prin reorganizare și implicarea directă asupra lui, devine limitat. Proiectul dorește sublinierea nelimitării în limitat.
Se face o paralelă printre altele, cu inițiala acțiune de a folosi cretă pentru a desena sau însemna pe asfalt, în copilărie. Dorința infantilă pentru cunoașteres spațiului încojurător și curiozitatea explorării acestuia. Creta în sine este devenită un simbol al însemnării, ba mai mult decât atât, al delimitării. Replasarea obiectului (ex.: taburetul verde) și îngrădirea acestuia. Se lasă urma unei viitoare foste poziții în momentul desenării, se exprimă vizual efemeritatea. Prinderea efemerității într-o linie trasată de jur împrejur, o prindere dinamică. După ieșirea de pe așa-zisa scenă creată, linia rămâne deschisă, conferându-i obiectului șanse de acțiuni nelimitate. Se realizează prin dorința viscerală de explorare și captare a inefabilului. În cazul de față memoria unei acțiuni.
- Simina Oprescu & Andreea Vlăduț.
ENG
The delimitation of already existent space, the reorganizing of objects in the found space. The utilization of a “found-object” in a public space.
Movement is visually expressed through an action in an already existing space. By manipulating an object its purpose is changed, and a new one is found. The object itself becomes a character. The space becomes a stage, starting from the desire of personalizing and finding an unconventional purpose for the unused object. The object itself creates an usable space. The abstraction of the object in the certain space, creates dynamism through the form of the drawn shape. The idea of the unlimited is created inside the limited. Space through its description is unlimited but by reorganizing it, becomes limited. The project wishes to stress the idea of the unlimited inside the limited. A parallel is made, throughout others, with the simple action of chalk drawing on the pavement during childhood. The simple desire of knowing the surrounding space and the curiosity of exploring it. The chalk becomes a symbol of meaning, and furthermore of delimitation. The movement of an object (for example the green stool) and its enclosing. The trail of a future past position is created in the moment of the drawing, and transiency is expressed visually. The caption of transience in a line drawn all around, a dynamic caption. After existing the so called stage, the line remains open offering the object unlimited action possibilities. Its achieved through the visceral exploration desire and the caption of the ineffable. In this case the memory of an action.
Artists: Simina Oprescu & Andreea Vlăduț.
TRACES
REPLACING
