adriana  sá   
trans-disciplinary  music          

Adriana Sá is a trans-disciplinary artist, performer composer-improviser.
Designing and building her instrumentation is part of the creative process.

Her philosophical principle of a musical plasticity connected with light, movement, architecture, weather, etc., finds expression both through digital and analogue, and often architecturally-scaled instrumentation. Her  work relates to specific contexts.

Her graphical scores choreograph texture, density, dominance and sequence variations rather than clock-time or note arrangements. Working with sound provocatively, Sá proposes immersive situations while playing with the transitions between different psychic-physic states. Challenged by the accumulation of multiple variables and the precision of organic timings, Sá is specially interested in the subjective effect provoked by simultaneous and contrasting stimuli.

Adriana Sá has been developing and presenting her work around Europe, USA and Japan. Her residencies, installations and performances frequently unfold within non-conventional contexts (such as a codfish-drying factory, a textile mill or a chapple), as well as within international festivals (including LEM, Ultrasound, Atlantic Waves, Luzboa Biennal, xxxxx, Sonorities and NIME - New Interfaces for Musical Expression amongst others), and also theatres, galleries and museums (including Casa Serralves, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, PS1/ MoMa, Arteleku, ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, ACAC - Aomori Contemporary Art Center amongst others). Sa´s mode of work has been made possible through diverse grants, funding supports and commissions. Her practice is furthered by workshops, publications and audio-releases.

Within the last decade, Sá has consistently developed works in series dedicated to specific artistic investigations, such as ‘Sensations Laboratories’, ‘Interchange Formats’, ‘This Is Just To Do’, ‘Parallax’, ‘Metaparallax’, ‘Portablellax’, ‘Moment In Movement’ and ‘Thresholds’. In these and other contexts, she has collaborated with hundreds of international artists.

Through her trans-disciplinary strategy, Adriana Sá expanded fluidly her formal background in music (Mendelsohn Hochshule fuer Musik. Leipzig, GDR), visual arts (Atelier Livre, António Arroio School, Fine Arts University, Lisbon, Portugal) and hypermedia design (Teacher Formation Course in Graphic Design for Hypermedia Systems, CNS, Lisboa).

HOMEPAGE INSTRUMENTATION AUDIO MENU DETAILED  CV

WINDOWMATTER
is a on-going project-series by Adriana Sá & John Klima. The setup includes zither (adriana), Portuguese guitar (john) and their in-development software 'audiographics', extended with gamepads, press/ light sensors and foot-switches. The real-time sound-spectrum produced by the analogue instrumentation drives two camera-movements within a 3-D world while simultaneously producing audio-graphical paths. The two software versions can also be networked.
adriana does the world design & john does the code; each makes their audio samples, mapping and processing.
In performance, two moving paintings are beamed side-to-side over the artists and their setup: two moving window perspectives over a 3D world.The set-up specificities provide a whole new territory for compositional exploration. With floating tonal centers, music unfolds through multiple sound layers interlacing modes and sensibilities.

Click here for more

META(LOCAL)MORFOSE
was a sounding-light installation: an island of ocean in the middle of the city; made for the Luzboa Biennale, Lisbon. There was also a performance in this habitat of maritime sounds, with: David Maranha (dobro), Manuel Mota (guitar), Sei Miguel (pocket trompet), Fala Mariam (trombone), Pedro Lourenço (light tunning); adriana played zither, modular synth and light percussion upon her pre-programmed sounding light instrument.

Click here for more

3 x (META)LOCAL VS. WET BEHIND THE EARS
was an installation hosting performances: an unfolding exchange within Yvette Poorter's This Neck Of The Woods, in Rotterdam - a shed-sculpture to host artistic residency projects. The room Adriana slept&lived in turned a musical instrument itself. Her instrumentation was: bodiless instrument, sounding light instrument, press and turn sensors, light percussion; Yvette projected disaster slides onto the light sensors.

Click here for more

LIFE OR LIFE - LIFE HEARD
was a performance-installation in Lisbon; Adriana played sounding light instrument, bodiless instrument, light percussion, modular synth, press and turn sensors, sitar. LixoLuxo Poético collaborated on musical level with his instruments built upon urban trash: milk and soda, insidefluxos, balança.

Click here for more

ELASTIC RETURN
was an installation within a deactivated codfish factory; developed with LixoLuxo Póetico during a residency commissioned by the Circular festival, Vila do Conde. Most instrumentation was built upon materials gathered on-site...

Click here for more

IN BETWEEN PERCEPTION AND THING
is a workshop whose underlying strategies adapt to most diverse circumstances.

Click here to read its guidelines