“To Communicate” is a composition for radio transmissions, feedback and live electronics by Andrea Gava created in collaboration with Sante Gava.

“To Communicate” is a site-specific performance that begins with the installation of an antenna designed by my father Sante Gava, radio amateur ‘till the late 70s with the name India Zulu Three Charlie India Xray (IZ3CIX), at the performance site, alongside with a radio. The signals captured with it is then processed in real time and combined with live electronics.

My dad has been a radioamatuer since his twenties. He is still very passionate about it. He builds is own antennas and in the past he also used to make them for other people. Probably, in a subconsciuos way, my interest in sounds, noise, electronic instruments and diy comes from this activity as a radioamateur I was exposed to since birth. A few years ago in my musical research process with aleatoric sound sources, soundscapes and improvisation, I started thinking about radio signals and how to incorporate them in my music. I asked my dad if I could listen to some of his sessions. With my adult ears, the ones of a musician and composer with a passion for Pauline Oliveros, John Cage and Murray Schaffer, I discovered some amazing things simply listening to him surfing the radio waves.

There is such a vibrant soundscape hidden in that background noise and the wonder of the research and discovery for someone (or something) out there is so exciting and inspiring. The fact that noise is also a big part of this sonic landscape is pretty important for me: it is a perfect representation of the fact that noise is everywhere, it is the space where we move, the time that we live, it is a sea where we swim, a sound that contains all of the sounds and it is no single one of them.

“To Communicate” cannot exist without my dad. He is an essential part of this composition not only for the technical side of it but also in the final concerts as an active sound element.

I’ve never talked that much with my dad. He is quite descreet and silent about his inner world, his emotions. We haven’t had many conversations during our lifetime about our feelings. Nonetheless we really love and support each other in every situation, both good and bad. But this lack of communication has always bothered me, more and more during the last years. I know that I’m responsible for this too so I decided to make a change: now that we are becoming older I want to try to create a new bridge between us, a way to communicate.

Music and sound. A creative process that involves one of his passions, the radio, specifically conceived to supply this basic human need for connections and communication seemed the perfect way to do it. A way to make things together, to be creative, to talk and to listen, to connect deeply with each other. “To communicate” for me has a personal and emotional value beside its universal meaning.

Of course this is just a little step. It’s an attempt to communicate, in a rudimentary way maybe, and failure is part of the process too. Communication doesn’t work everytime. It is full of compromises, misunderstandings, conflicts, distance. But it is important to try. Again and again. In these dark and violent times where borders and wars are part of our everyday lives to communicate is more necessary than ever. We need to do it. I want to do it. And I will.

“To Communicate” has been performed twice: the first time in May 2025 during “Closer” (https://www.borgodicolleameno.it/portfolio/closer/), a contemporary art exhibition at Villa Davia, Borgo di Colle Ameno, Sasso Marconi, Italy, dedicated to the 150th birthday of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio, in the same places where he made his first experiments at the end of the nineteenth century. It was played on an acousmounium called Organo Motore, built by Nicola Facchini and Giuseppe de Benedittis (www.organomotore.com). For this performance, I connected via radio with Sante, who transmitted from his home hundreds of kilometers from the concert site.

The second performance took place in February 2026 during “Radia. Mini-festival di radioascolto” (https://radiafestival.com/), at the Memoriale Veneto della grande guerra, Villa Correr Pisani, Montebelluna, Italy. The festival is dedicated to collective radio listening practices: podcasts, contemporary music, sound poetry, listening parties. During this second concert, Sante joined me on stage and performed a radio amateur session. I collected his audio and manipulated it in real time with live electronics, no input mixers and feedback.

Andrea Gava (1990, Italy) is a musician, composer and sound designer.

His work focuses on electroacoustic music and improvisation techniques. He explores the topics of the unexpected, the musical value of broken instruments, of the relationship between man and machine, between presence and absence, of the soundscape as a real space and an imaginary one. His research in the field of electronic music has developed around no-input techniques and the use of audio feedback as the core of his aesthetics.
He plays concerts and records albums both on his own as Andreij Rublev and together with others.
He created soundtracks for theatre, short films, silent movies and contemporary dance performances. He collaborates with cultural institutions, galleries, schools and universities, associations and people from all over the world. He creates online informative content on contemporary music, connecting artists and audience through talks, listening sessions, radio broadcasts and much more.