Friday, May 10, 2019

Steno at the Venice Biennale

From our amazing Italian steno friend Sillabix, a report about a video art project featuring an Italian stenographer on a Michela keyboard, displayed at this year's Venice Biennale:

hands on a Michela keyboard

Angelica Mesiti's exhibition ASSEMBLY opens with the Michela machine, a 19th century stenographic machine, modeled on a piano keyboard, which is used in the Italian Senate for official parliamentary reporting to ensure transparency within the democratic process. The machine's inventor, Antonio Michela Zucco, was originally inspired by musical notation as a universal language. Mesiti uses this device to code "To Be Written in Another Tongue", a poem by David Malouf, which is then arranged into a musical score by composer Max Lyandvert, and played by an ensemble of musicians, whilst performers, representing the multitude of ancestries that make up cosmopolitan Australia, gather, disassemble, and re-unite.


I was unable to find anything about Plover in particular in the press materials for the event, but Sillabix said "The Venice Biennale Art exhibition started today: thank you Australia for promoting steno (& Plover)," so I'm wondering if the exhibition might have been partially Plover-powered? Extremely cool if so, but even if not, I love seeing what happens whenever steno and art combine.

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