Niccolò Moronato

OBBEDISCO

Moronato got acquainted with the crew of the “Obbedisco” in Fall ‘21, after relocating to their family’s place of origin - a house on Riva San Domenico, the canal where the Chioggia fleet is docked and the fishing community lives. Day and night, from the apartment’s balconies looking right into the boats, they would see the fleet come and go, in endless cycles that define the rhythm of the whole island. After establishing a relationship of friendship and proximity with the crew through several 24 or 48-hours fishing trips, Moronato invited Mir-Valette into this world to playfully explore together and go beneath the surface of its sounds, images, and contrasts.

Although their instinctive connection with the sea dates back generations, present-day Chioggia fishermen are always mediated by digital instruments like radars, route trackers, eco-scans or security cameras that guide them and orient their relationship with fish, currents, routes, and the market.

This is FURUNO, Obbedisco’s ecoscan. The blue and yellow shapes are fish, the red stripes at the top and bottom are the ship’s keel and the ocean floor.
Moronato and Mir-Valette will turn it into a drawing and music tool to be used first in Chioggia, then in Marseille and the rest of the world.

Together, they are working on a way to convert FURUNO data into sounds, to be able to restitute and compose an open musical language matching underwater environments with soundscapes, using the quantity, scales and colors of the recorded data to both listen to the sea and communicate with it.

Throughout Winter 2021 and Fall 2022 Moronato also recorded numerous sounds and moments onboard “Obbedisco” through a 360 degrees, ambisonics recorder.
This resulted in recordings that evidence the boat’s own musicality, defined by the different steps in the fishing process, from field work to repairs, rest, play, and even protest.
Together with FURUNO sound, they shall constitute the main elements of the sound compositions of the project.

Mir-Valette and Moronato envision this step of production as a milestone to establish a pan-Mediteranean collaboration project that shall ultimately create a live audiovisual and musical performance.
The AV performance, collaborating with FURUNO engineers, shall also try to establish a live connection between the venue and the ecoscan + onboard instruments of “Obbedisco” as it goes out at sea for its usual 24 hours fishing trip. The data will be translated live into sound, while different performative or choreographed moments take place in the venue, loosely following the almost “jetlagged” circadian rhythms of rest and work that characterize life on board.