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WORLD OCEANS DAY 2023 @ UNHQ
On 8 June 2023, the United Nations hosted its annual World Oceans Day celebration featuring the theme, Planet Ocean: Tides are Changing, which highlighted the need to put the ocean first. The hybrid event was hosted by the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs (DOALOS), in partnership with Oceanic Global and supported by Panerai, with contribution by Discover Earth at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City and was broadcasted live on UNWorldOceansDay.org and supporting channels for global accessibility.
Toni Castells was commissioned by Oceanic Global to write the music and soundscapes for the event, music that was subsequently released globally as an EP.
Event highlights:
110 UN member states reached
102k program views
350+ in-person attendees at the UNHQ
28 global speakers and performers
67.5M social media event reach
Liam Hodges LFWM AW19-20 (2019)
Liam Hodges was present at the première of Toni Castells’s Hhumann X and subsequently commissioned the composer to write music for his show for his AW19 new collection “Mutations in the 4th Dimension”.
“Mutations in the 4th Dimension”. is an answer to the nostalgia and the search for perfection that usually operate in the world of fashion. It uses the author and inventor Raymond Kurzweil’s predictions, which presaged that in 2029 computers would be able to pass the Turing test. Hodges uses the graphics that come up from tesseract projections (a four-dimensional cube), stamped shirts that have suffered from incorrect reproduction patterns, and designs that are based on the nineties movie called Hackers and on the Korean artist Lee Bul. References to a future just as it was imagined in the past.
The music featured a reimagined version of Hhumann X featuring Elliott Liu and soprano Honey Rouhani. The music was released as an EP entitled Hhumann X Reimagined.
Artificialis @ Saatchi gallery (2019)
"Artificialis" (2019) is a sound piece for naturalistic sounds and electronics created in collaboration with Saatchi Gallery artists-in-residence Cyril de Commarque. It was presented at the Saatchi Gallery between the 2nd of November 2019 to the 30th of March 2020.
“Artificialis” reflects on the irreversible terrible impact that our remarkable evolution as a species has had on the natural world. Advances in science, technology and design are transforming human civilisation beyond recognition and exponential technologies are accelerating this transformation in radical and unpredictable ways. This, however, is happening at the expense of unprecedented damage to the natural world and its fragile ecosystems.
To reflect such contradictions, “Artificialis” creates an impossible soundscape where birdsong coexists with whale calls, the aerial merging into the aquatic, questioning the continuity of our physical space, Artificial and mechanical sounds are present to symbolise our anthropomorphic presence, together with synthesised voices which blur the boundaries between the human and technologically designed.
Deep low frequencies provide a physical listening experience where the sound is felt in the body as much as heard through our hearing system, reminding us of our physical presence within this imaginary soundscape.
Château Papillon des Arts, St Moritz, Switzerland (2019)
MONDO GALERIA in collaboration with PRIMO PIANO presents for the first time in St. Moritz “Das Magisches Theater” an art exhibition curated by AD.IBIZA studio as a tribute to the novel "Steppenwolf" by the Swiss Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse. This immersive exhibition presented more than 30 artworks by 25 local and international artists from emerging talent to old masters working in different media, from photography and sculpture to video and audio installations. It ran from the 26th to the 30th of December 2019.
"Call Thou Upon My Name Unto Eternity and It Shall Never Fail" (2019) is a composition for naturalistic sounds, electronics, and synthesised voice created by Toni Castells for the event.
Inspired by Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, this composition is a further exploration into the combination of naturalistic with artificial soundscapes, blurring the boundaries between the human and the artificial. The title is extracted from a poem found on a royal sarcophagus believed to belong to Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten. It is believed that it could have been written by Nefertiti herself dedicated to her husband Akhnaten. The composition revolves around an arpeggiated motif that repeats throughout the piece, evoking the timelessness and eternal quality reflected in the poem. The continuous water sound, emphasized in video form as an eternal waterfall watering a dead desert tree, symbolises the eternal life Nefertiti refers to in the poem in contrast to the barren and lifeless landscape.
The poem reads:
"Sesenet neftu nedjem / Per em rek / Peteri nefruk em menet / Ta-i nehet sedj emi / Kheruk nedjem en mehit / Renpu ha-i em ankh / En mertuk / Di-ek eni awik kher ka-ek / Shesepi su ankhi yemef / I ashek reni er heh / Ben hehif em rek"
"I breathe the sweet breath
Which comes forth from Thy mouth.
I behold Thy beauty every day.
It is my desire
That I may hear Thy sweet voice,
Even the north wind,
That my limbs may be rejuvenated
With life through love of Thee.
Give me Thy hands, holding Thy spirit,
That I may receive it and may live by it.
Call Thou upon my name unto eternity,
And it shall never fail."
Translation by J Richardson (1999)