The Sea in the Living Room is an audio-visual installation that uses media contents coming from the sonic research on sea sounds led by GTSSC between 2013 and 2014.

In specific, sitting down on the pillows and wearing headphones linked to the iPods, it is possible to listen to a playlist of sea sounds (seaweeds and crabs on a rock, the undertow that hits a rock, underwater sounds of sand and shells moved by the waves, the hidden sound under the sand of the shore, some ships on a dock, a metal tube that resonates thanks to the marine breeze, etc.) collected during field recording sessions on Rimini’s harbour and beach. Meanwhile, the little TV shows a silent video work about the same field recording sessions, asking the listener-observer to associate freely sounds and images of the sea.

The installation part, such as the scenography, conveys the semantic opposition between something indefinitely large like the sea and a limited space like a living room, by the fact that different containers of the latter (TV, bowl, headphones, etc.) can retain only some fragments of the first as their content (sea images, sea sounds, some sand). This semantic clash is functional to denounce the fact that nowadays many people have lost their relationship with nature, like sea, settling for a mediated and replaced experience of it.

The installation is composed by: 1 short little table, 1 blue carpet, 10/20 blue pillows, 1 Little TV, 1 DVD player with repeat mode, 2 iPods (with 2 electric cables), 2 headphones (hi-fi quality), 1 multiple socket, 6/7 glass jars with sea sand, 8/10 different shells, 5/7 little branches from seashore, 1 floor lamp.

Audio-visual installation by Emiliano Battistini.

Video and technical support by Luca Mina.

Field recording by Fabio Mina and Emiliano Battistini.

Public presentations:

– Personal temporary exhibition, June 6th-26th 2014, Spazio L’Apebianca, Forlì (IT);

– Malafesta Festival, May 23rd-25th 2014, Santarcangelo di Romagna, Rimini (IT).