Credit: Michele Spanghero
Michele Spanghero (IT)
A medical machine for pulmonary ventilation plays a musical chord on a few organ pipes, a fragment of music (in reference to Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem) frozen to the constant rhythm of the automatic breath.
The action of this artificial organ raises ethical questions about the will and responsibility involved in this mechanical requiem, a metaphor for a limit that people delegate to technology.
Ad lib., the abbreviation of the Latin ad libitum, literally means “at will” and is generally used to express the freedom of a person to act according to their own judgment in a given context, but it is also a musical caption that gives the performer the discretion of interpretation, allowing certain bars of the score to be repeated at will.
Michele Spanghero: www.michelespanghero.com
