Works

Instrumentation (detailed)

Percussion	Percussion
Keyboards	Piano
Electronic / Electroacoustic	Electroacoustics

Performer(s)

Communication 16.7 Hertz is a work for percussion, piano and electronics, based on field recordings made at Zurich HB (Zurich's main railway station).
During the process of listening to and analysing these field recordings, I noticed that there was a constant frequency of 16.7 Hertz. I couldn't hear this frequency on site, but it was clearly visible through spectral analysis programmes.
Then I noticed that on 16 October 1995, at 12 noon, the German, Austrian and Swiss traction current networks changed the target frequency to 16.7 Hertz. You could say that the railway lines in these countries communicate via this frequency.
This was the motto for the piece Communication 16.7 Hertz, where the aim is not to represent, but to mediate sounds and run the risk of subjectivity, proposing metaphorical sonic figures for sound events that coexist in the Zurich HB. In this piece, the mediation of sounds can become, and to quote Alvin Lucier from "Memory Space", "(...) an impression, sometimes surprisingly clear, sometimes lost in a fog (...)".
Like a photograph, sound is captured from an existing reality and is above all an intimate experience of immediacy.

Hugo Vasco Reis

Work	Type	Date	Organization/Event	Venue	Town	Country	Performers	Notes	Inv Row
Communication 16.7 Hertz (Experiment)	Premiere	2024/Feb/03	Nada Contra · Duo Francisco Cipriano – Mrika Sefa	O’culto da Ajuda	Lisbon	Portugal	Francisco Cipriano (percussion) Mrika Sefa (piano)	Notes