This is a site specific installation originally commissioned for Piazza Angelio but which has since grown into a piece of work involving most of Barga Vecchia. A computer, voice recognition software and a microphone were installed in the Osteria Angelio for one evening. The ambient sounds of people talking , drinking and eating within the Osteria were recorded, translated and printed onto paper sheets. The American voice recognition software had great difficulty coping with the mainly Italian voices, the music and the general ambient background sounds. What was finally printed onto the paper was a series of seemingly unrelated English words but if looked at in a lighter vein could be quite easily read as a kind of mixture between Dada and Haiku poetry. This generated text forms the basis for the sound poem. It was my intention to make an installation which harmonised with its surroundings, therefore not only did I use the actual sounds from these rooms as the basis for the content of the work, but I also used the straw coloured paper used to cover the tables for the form of the work. After working with this paper for a few days it reminded more and more of wrapping paper or paper for parcels. I had already delved into the world of paper and the future of paper for an exhibition in Finland last year "the death of paper". After consulting with the paper manufacture industry one of the points which they often raised was that paper as a packaging material was always going to be used. On a more personal level, I sent my years work, over 150 drawings and paintings to Finland packaged up in 30 paper packages. When they arrived in the gallery in Finland it struck me that the work was marginally more interesting whilst still in its packages. I thought then that in the future it might be interesting to make some work about packages and packets. The "sound poem" was just such an opportunity to experiment with this idea. The word "packet" was originally an early fifteenth century word meaning a small thin parcel, with the advent of computers and information technology, it now has a more modern meaning ; the movement of small fixed amounts of data across electronic communication networks. ( internet for instance could not function without it's packets )
The "sound poem" is not a finished complete work and hopefully should be viewed as a kind of light hearted visual game , an experiment in background music and text , after all , we are here to meet , talk and eat and not look at serious art , right ? ?

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