TAPE WORM
An installation by Alexandre Estrela
to be played by:

Borja Caro – Pete Kember – Darrin Wiener
Miguel Abreu – B Fachada – Mariana Dionísio
Inês Malheiro – Norberto Lobo – Rafael Toral
Inês Condeço – João Artur – Adriana João
Margarida Garcia – Manuel Mota – DJ Marfox

for the 30th anniversary of Galeria Zé dos Bois.

ZDB celebrates its 30th anniversary by bringing together part of its community at the São Luiz Theatre for an event that reflects its creative, experimental and always contemporary spirit. For this occasion, the artist Alexandre Estrela was invited to use his piece TAPE WORM – a sound controller created to manage the sounds of unspoilt nature – as the orchestrator of a musical show.

TAPE WORM is a hybrid object, semi-physical and semi-digital, made up of a projection of a virtual audio tape that runs over a circuit recorded on a metal screen. Coloured segments of the tape of varying sizes – connected to different sound sources – are generated by a computer in real time. The ribbon of light moves in the design of the circuit, creating a sound collage.

During this celebration, three of these objects are installed on stage, dictating the rules of a musical game played by five trios of musicians, specialists in the most varied sounds and improvisation techniques. Each musician will be associated with a colour: yellow, blue or red (there is also black, the colour that corresponds to all three). When the respective coloured segment of the tape passes through a reading point, the sound channel corresponding to the musician is activated. The linear and continuous reading of the different tape segments will create a constantly changing musical cadavre-exquis. It will be up to these objects and their rules to edit what the audience hears, while the musicians play or play in favour of or against the machine’s algorithmic current.

There will be two 18-minute sets per trio, with a 20-minute break between each trio.