Oneiro Hiraeth - An Audiovisual Project by Maya Rain and Olívia Mamberti | INTERFACE 2.0 WINNER
ONEIRO HIRAETH | Olívia Mamberti & Maya Rain | Interface 2.0. Winner - 2021
Sound Installation at Signals Festival | 15-16 Oct 2021
Oneiro-Hiraeth; dreaming of a home that never was.
/// Description
An audio-visual experience exploring the dichotomy between Utopia Vs Dystopia. The installation follows an immersive storyline, featuring Olívia's stunning vocals and Maya's sheer range of music production and sound design experience, while being perfectly complemented with colourful and dynamic visual experiences.
Oneiro-Hiraeth is the winner of this year's Interface competition, where students from Catalyst Berlin are paired with students from Spirit Studios in Manchester, UK, to produce a unique creative project entirely remotely.
/// Our Process
“The project that I worked on with Maya for this year’s Interface edition was inspired by our intent to originate an art piece that would depict the dichotomy between utopia and dystopia, which are the themes for Signals Festival this year,” Olívia explains. “The summer months we spent working together completely remotely on Oneiro-Hiraeth consisted of a lot of meetings and sending material back and forth to each other. I’d go to the studios one day and record short ideas with improvised vocal harmonies and melodies and then Maya would develop them into longer songs with sampling and vocal processing, which were essential to evoke the whole audio identity of our project.
/// Meaning Behind The Name
The name is a combination of the Greek word Oneiro (meaning “relating to dreams or dreaming”) and the Welsh word Hiraeth (meaning “homesickness for a home which you can’t return to or never was”). Therefore, putting those words together it translates to Oneiro Hiraeth: “Dreaming of a home that never was,” which is the main nostalgic feeling we wanted to encapsulate with the installation.
/// The Visuals
Regarding the visuals, I got my younger brother, Joaquim Mamberti, involved in the project to do the graphic design, illustration and visual character development for the videos we did for each chapter of the narrative, which then were used by me to be animated and distorted through experimental video editing, syncopated with the music for each chapter of the story.
Winning Interface 2.0. means a lot for both of us and having the opportunity to present our work on Signals made all the effort and hard work we both put into it feel beyond worth it.”