An ongoing artistic research by João Ghira & Samuel Gapp

Artigo Indefinível is an ongoing artistic research project by Samuel Gapp and João Ghira, exploring how human perception and subjectivity can be influenced by the effects of movement, sound, materials and space as evolving ecosystems.

The project unfolds through the creation of successive site-responsive works, in which these ecosystems are shaped within an aesthetic framework. The audience plays a crucial role, as their presence, attention and actions directly influence the work’s reality and configuration. This points at situative interaction and thus deals with the emergence of sense and meaning. Focusing on long-term development, each research phase results in a new version, yet closely connected to the works’ whole through the reframing of previous phases.

In this way, Artigo Indefinível aims to highlight openness and relational complexity as critical forces to shape fundamental knowledge.

Project phases:

Residency at OSSO (São Gregório, PT) – February 2026

Residency at Convento São Francisco (Lisbon, PT) – August 2023

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Development at osso (são gregório, pt) – 2026

During the one-week OSSO residency, Artigo Indefinível was developed as a closed research laboratory focused on the internal organisation of the project’s compositional and spatial systems, following an theoretical framework centred on questions of ontology and the emergence of subjectivity in artistic environments. The work concentrated on how sound, material structures and spatial conditions can be articulated as an ecosystem that regulates attention and perception, prior to the presence of performers or an audience.

The residency focused on defining and testing a limited set of operative parameters — proximity and distance, directionality of sound, material and textural qualities, degrees of physical intervention, and modes of transition between states. Through spatial and acoustic experiments, technical drawings and iterative reconfiguration of textile and sound installations, these parameters were used to examine how different configurations stabilise or open the perceptual field of the environment.

A central outcome of the residency was the consolidation of a practical distinction between more regulated and more open configurations of the system, treated as a compositional tool for designing future interaction rules, spatial layouts and performative structures.

Sound was approached as a sculptural medium, shaping spatial orientation and material perception. Textile structures and acoustic installations were conceived as active compositional agents rather than scenographic elements, allowing tactile, visual and auditory layers to operate structurally within a single spatial situation.

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Convento São Francisco (lisbon, PT) – 2023

Portfolio / Descriptive Catalogue

This phase presents the first public, site-specific configuration of Artigo Indefinível, developed and presented in August 2023 at the Convent of São Francisco in Lisbon.

As an immersive and participatory environment, the configuration brought together seven musicians and one dancer, moving almost invisibly within meticulously constructed textile structures installed throughout the architectural spaces of the convent and its medieval cistern.

The idea of this configuration was to create a setting in which the roles of creator, performer and spectator were constantly redefined through mutual interaction. As the audience moved through a labyrinthine route with multiple possible paths, their presence and movement directly influenced the performers’ decisions, who reacted according to a set of interaction rules and, in turn, affected the trajectories and behaviour of visitors.

The materials — stone, fabric, acoustic instruments and human bodies — were composed as sonic, sculptural and pictorial phenomena in motion and constant transformation. Architectural, acoustic and historical features of the site became active compositional forces, shifting attention from visual structures towards sonic and spatial perception.

Conceptually, this configuration drew on discussions around composition, identity and process, and on references to classical notions such as the labyrinth, peripeteia and catharsis. The translucent textile structures functioned as spatial and perceptual thresholds, simultaneously separating and connecting bodies, movements and sound, and emphasising the instability of orientation and perspective within the environment.

Rather than offering a linear narrative or a fixed point of view, the 2023 configuration proposed experience as situated, relational and unstable, inviting visitors to participate in the continuous construction of meaning and perception through their presence and movement within the space.

Credits

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