During an early morning floor talk on Saturday, 2 August, Dr Dougal Phillips offered a small crowed of Biennale goers a little insight to the mind and works of the Italian Futurist composer, Luigi Russolo. Dr Phillips was to be accompanied by sound artist, Alex Davies but he was unavailable to attend on the day. In his absence however, the talk generated a discussion about early twentieth century modernism’s foresight into the sound scape of our contemporary era.

Russolo was born in 1885 in Portogruaro, Veneto, Italy. Russolo’s father was director of the Schola Cantorum in Latisana and organist at their local cathedral. After moving to Milan at the age of sixteen, Russolo attended Accademia di Brera (the Academy of Fine Arts, Brera) where he studied drawing and painting. In his early works, Russolo employed a divisionalist, almost pointillist technique to depict the increasingly industrial landscape developing in Italian cities at the time.

The theories of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published in his Futurist Manifesto (1909), encouraged the creation of new cultural phenomena to manifest and predominate over all earlier forms. To Marinetti, social evolution could only be achieved through initiatives of modern man including the destruction of museums, libraries and any institutions that looked to the past. The young painter and musician, Russolo became ensconced by Marinetti’s futurism and in 1913, he published his treaties L’arte dei Rumori (the Art of Noise). Russolo began inventing and constructing Intonarumori (literally, Intoners or Noise Machines), a musical instrument capable of replicating the sounds of every-day modern life. Unlike the orchestral instruments familiar to Russolo, that could only play music which echoed the past and tradition, his noise machines delivered a symphony of the noises of modern, industrialised progress.

Unfortunately for Futurism, its close affiliation with fascism, a friendship forged by Marinetti and Mussolini, dictated its eventual demise. The original Intonarumori created by Russolo did not survive World War Two but from their original designs and photographs, they have been recently reproduced and are exhibited in this Biennale at Pier 2/3.

When viewing these works, it is important to acknowledge how Russolo perceived the changing sound scape of his contemporary world. From Russolo’s perspective, throughout history, man was dominated by his natural world and this form of nature was silent. However, in the nineteenth century, the industrialisation of Europe had witnessed man’s manipulation of nature for progress and the key consequence of this was noise. His new conception of music as noise and Intonarumori attempted to erase the boundary between sounds and noise. Abandoning his formal musical training in favour of the noises he perceived to be progressive, Russolo created sounds of engines and machines.

In the year 2008, Russolo’s ideas and Intonarumori may seem eccentric and almost parochial in terms of their influence on contemporary culture but in the context of a modern city, in which these noises are the public sound scape, Russolo’s speculations may be viewed as intuitive and accurate. If only Russolo could have witnessed our contemporary preoccupation of drowning out these noises with mobile telephones and portable media players, what would he have thought?!

Beyond his contribution to this Biennale, his legacy continues with the Luigi Russolo Prize in Electro-Acoustic Music, a prestigious annual international competition awarded by the Russolo-Pratella Foundation of Varese, Italy.