Unità di Sonorizzazione is a musical performance simulating an assembly line; it is a re-elaboration of the performance created to make the film “Unità di Produzione Musicale”.

The project is based on the idea of experimentally reformulating a musical genre and the musician’s craft, simulating a means of musical production based on assembly line labour with all its features of mechanical routine.

During the performance 24 musician/workmen divided into teams will produce music, working in pre-arranged shifts: eight will sit at a table and for 7 minutes will write a score based on the video shown on the monitor in front of them. These scores will then be played by eight other performers, seated in front of music stands, to add a soundtrack to the video to be projected for the audience.
Three overseers will dictate the times of the shifts, mixing the various performers between the writing and playing sessions and giving out the scores to the various participants according to a pre-arranged plan.
This shift cycle will continue for an overall time of two hours.

During the shift strict rules will be in place – no smoking, no alcohol, silence among those musicians momentarily not working – and the overseers will ensure these are respected.
A supervisory, quality-control figure will also be present, having the discretion, as the work progresses, to manage and direct the sound-adding processes and orientate the writing sessions. The projections will be coordinated by the two workers responsible who will ensure that projection times coincide with the shift times of the performance.

The authors
Enrico Gabrielli, musician, studied classic and contemporary music but has for many years worked on popular music, especially on the Italian alternative rock scene. He plays in Calibro 35, the band inspired by the sound tracks of Italian detective films of the Seventies, and in Mariposa, the alternative rock group. He has also collaborated as musician and arranger with Italian and foreign artists such as Baustelle, Vinicio Capossela, Morgan, Dente, Marco Parente, Muse, John Parish, Mike Patton and Afterhours. Der Maurer is the name of his current contemporary music project. With Sergio Giusti he created the UPM project – Unità di Produzione Musicale.

Sergio Giusti, the photography and contemporary art scholar, teaches photographic language at the CFP Bauer of Milan. He collaborates on the course of Contemporary Art History and Visual Communications Languages at the Design Faculty of the Milan Politecnico and with the seminar on photography of the University of San Marino/Iuav Venice. He has published papers and articles in Italian and foreign reviews. In 2005 he published the paper ‘La cavernachiara. Fotografia e campo immaginario ai tempi della tecnologia digitale’ published by the Fondazione Museo Fotografia contemporanea – Lupetti editore. With Enrico Gabrielli he created the project UPM – Unità di Produzione Musicale.

ENECEfilm is a group of audio-visual production based in Milan, composed by Pietro De Tilla, Elvio Manuzzi, Tommaso Perfetti, Guglielmo Trupia and Chiara Tognoli. It accomplishes documentary films and experimental films poised between fiction, reality and audiovisual products.
ENECEfilm produced several documentaries such as Atelier Colla, 2011, il Turno, 2012, presented at national and international festivals. In 2015 they completed UPM-Unit Music Production.

Workmen
Paolo Romano (double bass)
Rodrigo D’Erasmo [Afterhours] (violin)
Marco Parente (drums, guitar)
Gianluca Giusti [Mariposa] (keyboard)
Vincenzo “Braccioelettrico” Vasi (vocals, theremin)
Matteo Bennici [Squarcicatrici, Le Luci Della Centrale Elettrica] (cello)
Francesco Bucci [Ottone Pesante] (trombone)
Valerio “Pecori Greg” Canè [Mariposa] (theremin, harmonica, vocals)
Luciano Turella [Delay Lama] (viola, drums)
Andrea “Druga” Franchi (drums, guitar)
Paolo Raineri [Junkfood 4tet] (trumpet)
NicoNote (vocals)
Timothy “Tim” Trevor-Briscoe (sax, clarinet)
Luca Giovanardi [Julie’s Haircut] (guitar, bass guitar)
Paola Mirabella (drums, guitar)
Valeria Sturba [OoopopoiooO] (violin, theremin, vocals)
Francesco Pellegrini [Criminal Jokers] (bassoun)
Stefano Pilia [Massimo Volume, Afterhours] (cello, guitar)
Sebastiano De Gennaro [Esecutori di Metallo su Carta] (drums)
Max Sorrentini [El Gallo Rojo] (drums)
Xabier Iriondo [Afterhours] (guitars)
Laura Agnusdei [Sex With Giallone] (sax)
Andrea “Scarfo” Scarfone [Julie’s Haircut] (bass guitar, guitar)
Giulio Favero [One Dimensional Man, Teatro degli Orrori] (electric bass, percussion)

Supervisors
Lorenzo Brusci/Musst Design (Quality Control)
Gianni Chi (Performance/Balcony)
Michele Orvieti [Mariposa] (Performance/First Floor)
Andrea Poggio [Green Like July] (Writing)

Video authors
Paolo Gioli
Antonio Rezza / Flavia Mastrella
Alessandro Scotti
Micol Roubini
Alessandro Sambini
Luca Ferri
David Legrand
Moira Ricci
Julia Gromskaya
Fabrizio Bellomo
Otolab
Jean-Gabriel Périot
Sylvain George

Technicians
Carlo Zollo (sound)

A Fabbrica Europa and ENECEfilm co-production