Everything sounds, vibrating matter

Furniture and musical instruments

I’ve always been attracted by the ethereal in-consistency of sound but at the same time by the restless malleability of pure matter. Naturally I started realising objects at a very young age. Thanks to this predisposition I discovered I am both a designer and a luthier. My passion for music and sound has led me to reflect on its origins: vibration and frequencies. I fell into a serie of linked experiences which are not directly bound to the sound phenomenon, but rather embracing multiple aspects of life. The act of designing and realising both musical instruments and furnitures gives me the opportunity to share signs and contents, substantial elements of my design process. 

Sound, frequencies, universal codes

Matter, in its apparent aggregation, its vibrating stillness, is nothing more than pure frequency, sound. By saying “Music of the Spheres”, or “In the beginning was the Verb”, or even “OHM” we hint to the cosmos vibrations and the primordial frequency. When we say there is ‘resonance’, meaning harmony in the relationship between human beings and Universe, we automatically enter the musical realm.

In Nature we can find tight relationships between numbers, phenomenology and processes, amongst which the golden ratio, the Fibonacci serie, the Pythagorean tuning or codes with universal values. Another side of the nature of numbers is that of the creative potential deriving from certain numerical sequences which are the base of harmony, consonance and sense of proportion. Applying those codes to both human and artistic activities is a substantial principle of ‘sustainability’ between Man and Environment. 

Pro-gettare (To design ahead)

The act of designing is a natural attitude. The unconscious designer, deluded of being able to pro-ject Nature, he is in fact constantly pro-jected himself. By fulfilling the attempt of moulding matter, he perpetuates the need of representing Nature through simulacra, creating prosthesis as if they were limbs to overcome his limits until the final detachment from Nature itself.

I firmly believe that every human activity, every profession or research we decide to challenge must flow from our passions in order to conciliate with our spiritual research.

Pietro Russo 2020 

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Ginko_Guqu - The restless shape

Each matter, precisely because of its ability to evolve, is not able to rest into a finished shape: in the act of re-shaping itself is already processing a way to re-born. In design as in all the arts, content and container are bond together, they are part of a unique ever-changing dynamic process. To accept life directly implies accepting its dissolution too. 

Madera_Guzheng - Rationality - Irrationality - Spirituality

Curiosity is one of the leading aspects to get to knowledge. A process constantly shifting between rational and irrational. Rational is giving us the ability to define phenomena to define a ‘unified theory’, even though just a transitory one. Irrational, on the other hand, has a multi-faceted appearance, both creative and spiritual, which gives us the opportunity to internalise a more universal substance as well as the evolutionary mutation of phenomena. This awareness, this intuition, is a recall to preserve and avoid perverting the delicate cycle of sustainability. 

Paperwall_Kalimbula - Essentialism - Minimalism

Giving a sense to essentialism is not an easy task, especially if you want to avoid an overlap due to a plausibility with minimalism. The latter is a contraction of signs driven by a rational-conceptual process, while essentialism, deriving from an irrational-substantial path, brings us to an expansion rather than a contraction. 

Stria_Laps - Essentialism is love

In Nature the cycle of evolution relies upon the complementarity of the elements, in the constant exchange of resources and energies contained in essential-rational processes. Nature doesn’t need tinsels. Whatever we know as function derives from functional-aesthetic necessities: beauty and harmony are indivisible and substantial to the evolutionary process, because the seducing function is love. 

Tabla_Pho - Awareness of the creative process

The creative-intuitive aspect in the design practice lies within the field of our feelings and passions. When we enter the pro-ject phase we are directly in contact with a divine-spiritual realm. A magical act through which we transfer complex emotions into an artwork. 

Trabea_Elecont - Uniqueness

I truly believe that the uniqueness of an object is coming from awareness. Each one of us is a unique entity and at the same time complementary to the rest of the Universe, for this reason we must reconnect to the sense of spiritual harmony and respect our environment. 

 
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Pietro Russo Design
Via Gian Francesco Pizzi 29 - 20141 Milano

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