Over the past 10 years, Italian composer Caterina Barbieri has created transcendent musical experiences, combining modular synthesis with vocals and other forms of instrumentation to create a distinctively emotive musical signature, most notably on her albums Patterns of Consciousness and Ecstatic Computation.

For Barbieri, music is the meeting point of the material and the immaterial. “I like to think of sound as a spiral that connects the physical world with the metaphysical world,” she tells Fact in our new film exploring her performance and practice. “In that sense sound really brings you outside of your ego and your physical boundaries.”

Following the isolation of the pandemic, Barbieri found herself craving shared artistic experiences. She launched a new platform and live concept called light-years and released an album, Spirit Exit, all of which had musical collaboration at their heart.

In this film, shot by Fact as Barbieri returned to live performance and debuted the light-years concept around Europe, the artist shares her innermost thoughts on music, sound, composition and collaboration amidst exclusive live footage shot at Berlin’s Metabolic Rift, London’s Southbank Centre, Italy’s Nextones Festival and the volcanic environment of Mount Etna in Sicily.

Credits:

Directed and produced by Pedro S. Küster

Filmed by
Sven Gutjahr
Laima Leyton
Sofia Kuster

Live Sound Engineering by
Bridget Ferrill

Sound by
Pedro S. Küster

Music:

'Fantas Variation for Voices' a rework by Evelyn Saylor of Caterina Barbieri's composition 'Fantas'. Performed by Evelyn Saylor, Sara Persico, Michelle Cheung, Lydia Saylor at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London.

'Magma' (working title) written and performed by Caterina Barbieri and Bendik Giske at Metabolic Rift, Berlin Kraftwerk and Nextones, Val D'Ossola.

'At your Gamut' written and performed by Caterina Barbieri at Mount Etna, Sicily.

'Arrows of Time' written by Caterina Barbieri. Performed by Caterina Barbieri, UCC Harlo, Evelyn Saylor at Metabolic Rift, Berlin Kraftwerk.

'Perennial Fantas' written and performed by Caterina Barbieri Metabolic Rift, Berlin Kraftwerk.

Light design by MFO.

Thanks to Bendik Giske, Nkisi, MFO, Evelyn Saylor, Michelle Cheung, Sara Persico, Lydia Saylor for their participation to the light-years shows.