Year Zero: A Sound Sculpture is a tactile sound installation by musician and sound artist Ani Samperi. At its center hangs a hollow steel sphere of nearly two meters in diameter. An internal analog system produces low-frequency mechanical drones derived from transformed industrial sound artifacts.
The steel body functions as a resonant structure. Sound circulates within the sphere, expands into space, and transfers into the listener’s body. Direct contact extends perception beyond airborne sound, where frequencies and vibrations condense into a physically perceptible field. An opening allows for close interaction, where voice and body enter intimate resonance with the object.
The composition is crafted to generate a precise tension: mechanical drones suspend the moment between the Orb and the listener in an infinite loop that shapes an atmosphere of vulnerability and connection. Sound unfolds as a continuous, time-based process in which the sculpture and each listener become one symbiotic entity. This contradiction takes on an unexpectedly fragile beauty, a benevolent entity with endless sonic secrets to behold.
Doubling as an instrument, the Orb will also be activated and performed with on the opening and closing nights, featuring performances by Ani Samperi, Kayla Elrod, and Nico Daleman. Each artist will excite this one-of-a-kind instrument in their own unique way using percussion, vocals, friction, electronic sequencing, and other experimental methods.
Ani Samperi is a musician and sound artist working between installation and performance art. Her research in sonic materialism emphasizes both the rationality and entropy of specialized acoustic systems, re-christening ‘instrument’ or ‘object’ as ‘organism’ to explore notions of symbiosis and mutual care.
Kayla Elrod is a sound artist working with the body as an instrument for sonic inquiry. She activates the Orb with her electro-acoustic fingernails: individual sonic devices worn as a set of fake nails. Played through scratching, tapping and caressing, she translates touch into amplified sound.
Nico Daleman is a sound artist and researcher whose performances are characterized by recursive loops and gestural acts, blurring the boundaries between the digital and the human. He activates the Orb using noise cancelling algorithms in combination with the sculpture’s resonant powers.
