Ayther

Research developed between Barcelona/Skopje (2023) and the MusaMadre Festival — Sardinia (2025).

Ayther is a performance that translates a rite of archetypal inspiration into the contemporary language of electroacoustic sound, voice, and essential gesture. Created by Alessandro Olla (live electronics) and Ana Beltrán (performer), it takes shape as a post-dramaturgical device that moves through different states of listening—perceptual, emotional, imaginative—generating a shared condition of presence and attention.

The score follows a variable flow, shaped by the acoustic conditions, the audience’s response, and the performer’s improvisational choices. The sonic dramaturgy unfolds through layers, intensities, and rarefactions: sound does not illustrate the action; it activates it. Through an alliance of gesture, voice, body, symbolic objects, and live electronics, the sonic environments are generated entirely live, emerging from actions that resonate with real-time electronic processing.

Ayther develops as a performative research process: each iteration functions as a field test, a shared experiment that probes a central question: what perceptual conditions make a ritual experience possible today? The work does not offer a single answer, but opens a space of inquiry in which the audience is invited to participate through listening and their own presence.

Curatorial Note
Ayther offers an experience based on listening, duration, and presence, aimed at festivals interested in hybrid performative practices, sound research, and formats that prioritize perceptual experience over narrative. The work creates the conditions for a shared time of attention, where sound and space become active agents of the performance.

Performance Development
The performance takes place in an essential, minimal space. The performers work with:
non-narrative voice
resonant objects / amplified supports
microphones and live electronics

The action is guided by a modular score made of thresholds of sonic density, durations, spatial relationships, and rules of interaction. Within this predefined structure, the performers develop an improvisational practice: each moment is both choreographed and generative, following a sequence of sonic states that unfold differently depending on the acoustics of the venue, the audience’s presence, and the interpretative choices in the moment.

Format and Adaptability
Duration: 45–50 minutes
On stage: 1 performer / 1 sound artist
Sound diffusion: quadraphonic (adaptable to stereo)
Setup: minimal
Contexts: theaters, unconventional spaces, exhibition contexts

Stage Requirements
Minimum space: 6×6 m, controllable darkness, relative acoustic silence
Table 140×60 cm for objects/gear; 2 chairs

Backline / Artist Setup
Laptop + multichannel audio interface
Essential MIDI controller
Small resonant objects
Amplified surfaces, cabling