MOLTO OHM

Molto Ohm is a sonic and visual exploration of the fragmentation and alienation of modern life. Within this conceptual framework, the project explores various interrelated themes, including the manipulating and relentless stimuli of advertising, decision fatigue stemming from an abundance of choices, the desperate pursuit of affect regulation through the wellness industrial complex—popularized by meditation apps, yoga, clean foods, oils, candles, and the like—the anxiety surrounding personal finance, the incessant societal pressure to be more productive and aesthetically appealing, thereby instigating cravings for material possessions, travel, experiences, and a desired lifestyle.

Over the past five decades, the tradition of social safety nets has increasingly given way to an ethos of personal responsibility. The onus is now on individuals to care for themselves, with any failure to achieve a balanced life being seen as their own fault, perpetuating a cycle of stress, anxiety, and alienation. As Mark Fisher aptly argues, “the ‘mental health plague’ in capitalist societies would suggest that, instead of being the only social system that works, capitalism is inherently dysfunctional, and the cost of it appearing it to work is very high.”

Moreover, technology, and especially smartphones, perpetuate those ideas in an infinite loop of ludocapital dystopia, packaging them in candy-colored, endlessly addicting stimuli.

By amplifying and playing with the hallucinations and dark corners of life in a corporate, hyper-paced, and materialistic society, Molto Ohm complicates our reaction and response to those themes in fresh and often uncomfortable ways.

Molto Ohm takes the current trend of big-scale immersive experiences being presented in major cities around the world and flips it on its head. Most of those experiences are safe spaces within which the audience can get lost and wander; they are often also put on by corporations and brands, smoothly lulling the audience into a state of comfort within the slick walls of the “experience.” Molto Ohm’s immersive experience, however, is meant to make you uncomfortable; it invokes wonder and laughter along with anxiety and fear.

Molto Ohm live presentation is, at its core, an audiovisual experience consisting of high-definition footage projected on a vertical screen with live music performed by Liberatore using electronic instruments. Even though it was born as a solo project, collaborations have become key to the ever-evolving performances. Molto Ohm devises them taking into account the collaborators’ artistic practices and aesthetics, molding the project's themes and preoccupations in fresh ways while staying true to the core of the work, demonstrating how porous and layered the presentation can be.

The first collaborations, in 2023, featured artists such as Tanners, whose infectious psych-pop sound and commanding stage presence were set against audio-visual paranoias of consumerism and tech society, and Alyse Lamb of Parlor Walls, who expanded on themes of surveillance, voyeurism, and phone addiction through a mesmerizing performance that incorporated a second projector, creative lighting, and costumes.

Moreover, collaborations with experimental musicians Lester St. Louis, Brian Wenner and More Eaze further explored the more experimental, “fever dream” side of the project, in which all the musical elements characteristic of the work were dipped into a magma of swirly and detuned synths, accompanied by a stream-of-consciousness video featuring more abstract narratives and existential themes. 

This led to the collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and composer Taja Cheek of L’Rain. Molto Ohm providing speaker-shaking rhythms, sampled voices and noise-laden synths, while Taja’s vocal layers morphed, bent and soared, representing the only humanity left against a “human-less” video feed of motorcycle rides, car rides, plane travel, quotes from anthropological books and history at large.  

Another notable collaboration in 2024 was with performer and sound artists Ka Baird, whose vigorous, ritualistic performance of extended voice, microphone techniques and woodwinds interacted with the Molto Ohm’s sound world and vertical screen images as though they were alive. The physicality of Ka’s performance allowed Liberatore to elevate the visual intensity, integrating flashing lights and more explicit political messaging. 

Also in 2024, a new version of the show was created, called Molto Ohm: Bliss, in which speakers are absent. Each audience member listens through individual headphones with volume control. It’s a collective-experience-in-isolation, which deftly mimics much of our everyday life. Present with our bodies, surrounded by other bodies, but irresistibly pulled away by digital forces over which our ancestral brains have little power. The audience is virtually motionless, watching the video, while a mayhem of sound unfolds in the headphones. Moreover, a voice over artist impersonates what at first appears to be a wellness worker, which then morphs into a dystopian entity asking the audience existential questions and eventually revealing its corporate sponsorship. The reading is done live, straight into the audience’s synapses, along with the structurally improvised music. The work was heavily influenced by research on ludocapitalism, addiction to slot machines, behaviors in casinos, and how product designers exploit flow and trance-like states in order to glue us to our screens.

Molto Ohm originated from a moment of insight experienced by Liberatore during a film shoot. He works from time to time as a freelance sound recordist, and the audio content he has captured over the years spans an enormous array of subjects, locations, and individuals, including bankers, celebrities, puppeteers, athletes, models, chefs, architects, artists, and countless others.

One interview in particular caught Liberatore's attention. The bank executive's scripted speech, filled with vacuous corporate jargon and hypnotically shallow language, intrigued him. Recognizing its musical potential, Liberatore began experimenting with slicing and integrating the audio into a fast-paced beatThis was a breakthrough for Liberatore, as it allowed him to intertwine his non-musical interests into his music-making, and moreover to unify his different musical facets into a unifying project/approach. Inspired by his epiphany, he delved into his archives, searching for more inspiring audio interviews.

To avoid potential NDA issues, Liberatore replaced the original interview audio clips with reenactments recorded in his studio with the help of his friends, and more recently utilizing AI voices. This decision added layers of control and an uncanny fiction to the project, elements that are very much at home in the world of advertising.

Approaching the creation of music from this unconventional angle enabled him to shape tracks in unique ways while drawing upon the aesthetics and strategies he had been developing throughout his years of experimental and improvised music-making.

Whether Liberatore is producing tracks or bending them for live performances, the main elements of the music are:

-Song fragments: Molto Ohm doesn’t shy away from melody and beauty, but they are understood and contextualized within a larger picture of corporate commodification and environmental soundscapes. Liberatore loves to alter the tracks, especially during live performances. The songs are all original and his manipulations feel cold and exacting, akin to the digital slowing down of a YouTube track, a phone connection issue, or hearing a song in the background at a cafe, surrounded by chattering, dishes clashing, or water running. One hears a melodic beauty that is trapped in ice, digital bits washed over by waves of dislocating sounds and corporate voices.

-Voiceover and reenactments: Molto Ohm often features an assortment of voices that address the many facets of our commodified society. Liberatore takes inspiration from everyday experiences, such as scam calls, voicemails, phone swiping, dating app browsing, motivational speeches, and more. These sound bites are overlayed, looped, pitch-shifted, “vocoderized”, chopped and reassembled to create layers of discomfort and absurdism along with the music.

-Beats and synthesized sounds: Liberatore’s electronic beats could all be described, sound-wise, as having a strong prominence in the mix. The escapist sonic traits of EDM are explored. Dance music as liberation, but also as a commodified tool in the hands of profit-making actors seeking to exploit people’s desire to zone out and feel better. First and foremost, however, the use of electronic beats comes from Liberatore’s love of dance music sounds and attitudes, drawing from and reviving memories of dancing in nightclubs as a teenager in Italy.

-Environmental noise: sounds from “real” life, like ocean waves, park sounds, city traffic, people chattering are heavily present in Molto Ohm, not so much to explore their inner properties and colors, but rather to create moods or scenes in the way a movie would.

The main aspect of audio manipulation in Molto Ohm is detuning and filtering. Liberatore is interested in detuning because of its capacity to alter the tone of the human voice and consequently the emotion that is being conveyed. For example, slowed down motivational speech feels menacing, and sped-up corporate jargon becomes idiotic and humorous. By dramatically altering speed, Liberatore can also achieve the Cageian effect of removing word meaning and reducing the voice to a wordless instrument made of only sound, an effect he often exploits.

Filtering is another powerful tool in Molto Ohm’s arsenal, its main objective being the removal of the music from the immediate field of vision. Evoking the feeling of a car passing by, thumping electronic music, or a neighbor jamming in their room, it evokes the awareness of separate realities occurring simultaneously. This spatial removal is particularly effective in the use of filtering out high frequencies in the way a DJ would before a big drop. Molto Ohm, however, often allows the filtered track to remain, pushing it away into the recesses of our mind, where it becomes the possibility of a reality that may or may never resurface, but which is always present. It can also evoke the feeling of being trapped while the world moves away, the echo of the thumping of the drumbeat suggesting a world full of energy, life and possibilities from which we are increasingly cut off.

Overall, the music sounds like, to quote an audience member, “a modern soundtrack to what it feels like to exist in 2023 in a state of constant advertisement, surveillance and over-stimulation.”

Molto Ohm's artistic expression breaks traditions and challenges the conventions of cinema in several ways. One notable aspect is the deliberate utilization of a vertical screen, which serves as a dual reference to the advertising screens commonly found in subway stations, train cars, and bus stops, as well as the interface of smartphones. These screens either serve commercial purposes or facilitate virtual interactions through apps and the internet on devices like smartphones and tablets. When Molto Ohm repurposes them for artistic endeavors, it engenders a sense of dislocation and familiarity all at once.

What distinguishes Molto Ohm's videos from the scrolling experience on platforms like TikTok is their close association with cinema, achieved through thoughtful editing techniques, extended time formats, and the cinematic scale of the screens.

Since these videos lack a traditional narrative structure, their reliance on creative editing becomes evident and paramount. Through the intricate weaving of seemingly disconnected clips, Molto Ohm adeptly constructs cohesive stories that transcend the constraints of narrative and temporal linearity. The Kuleshov effect, match cuts, cross-cutting, and montage breathe life into footage that might otherwise appear meaningless or banal.

The addition of music and, at times, textual elements plays a pivotal role in establishing the backdrop against which these clips come to life. As such, these videos can be aptly described as affective mood pieces in which layered significations and connections can be unearthed.

Molto Ohm's visual repertoire consists of diverse footage, encompassing stock footage, 360 camera videos, screen recordings, and iPhone camera recordings.

• The utilization of high-quality stock footage deftly emulates the aesthetics of much of the mainstream late capitalist societies. These meticulously polished yet often banal clips depict generic scenes that lack inherent meaning until arranged through the process of editing. Reminiscent of traversing a shopping mall, an airport, or a newly developed complex, they exude an air of politeness, harmlessness, and commerciality.

• In stark contrast, 360 footage provides a contrasting perspective. Through the distorted lens, reality undergoes a transformation, and Molto Ohm exploits these deformations in poetic and hallucinatory ways. Times Square or St. Patrick's Cathedral do not appear to the naked eye as they do through the 360 lens, but they certainly feel that way.

• Screen recordings of text conversations, advertisements, YouTube videos, browsing sessions, and note-taking introduce an intimate and, at times, claustrophobic dimension to the videos. These recordings offer glimpses into our lives, revealing our vulnerabilities, shortcomings, and emotions, all projected on a magnified scale.

• iPhone recordings frequently employ the screen recording technique, capturing the video interface graphic, notably the red record button, within the frame itself. This deliberate inclusion creates an illusion that a person is present behind the camera, poised to capture the unfolding scenes.

In Molto Ohm's work, the video element assumes a substantial role within the overall conceptual and physical experience, positioned adjacent to the performer or even alone on stage. Drawing inspiration from corporate and commercial buzzwords such as "experiential" and "immersive," Molto Ohm recontextualizes and exploits these dynamics.

By utilizing an ultra-sharp, high-quality projector, Molto Ohm accentuates the irresistible allure of digital screens, making it arduous to avert one's gaze or disengage from the visual stimuli.