Indonesian composer Gardika Gigih is at Rimbun Dahan for a two-month residency in 2024.
About the Artist
Gardika Gigih Pradipta is an Indonesian composer, pianist, and soundscape researcher. After studying composition at the Indonesian Institute of Arts, Gardika’s interest in the intersection of music, society, and culture led him to pursue a Masters Degree in Cultural Anthropology. His works span numerous genres, from concerts to contemporary improvisation, film scoring, and sound ethnography. His debut album Nyala (2017), released by Indonesian independent label Sorge Records, received widespread acclaim and was named a top album of the year by The Jakarta Post.
In 2019, Gardika received a fellowship from The Japan Foundation Asia Center to conduct soundscape research as cultural narratives in Southeast Asia and Japan. Published in www.lostinsound.art
From January to June 2023, he lived in New York as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow, to study cultural diversity and multicultural collaboration in the New York music scene. Last May at the British Library, his composition “Mimpi Owa: A Duet with Javanese Gibbons” won the “Sound of the Year Awards” for the Composed with Sound category, initiated by the BBC Radiophonic Institute and the Museum of Sounds.
Gardika is continuing to develop new compositions and electroacoustic works inspired by his global research.
https://www.instagram.com/gardikagigih/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0o6rbDGIxDEw5vzGKyxdcK
About the Residency
Every day at Rimbun Dahan, from the very morning until late at night, I listen to so many sounds from the tropical nature surrounding us. It’s a wonderful experience to feel so many creatures living together in this place, and it makes me listen deeper to the various birds, insects, dogs, winds, etc. to know that they have their own characteristics, timbral, rhythm, texture, and even daily hours. For example, some insects only create sounds between 7pm and 8pm, and some birds mostly sing in the early morning during sunrise. It’s nurturing my ear sensibility.
From this pure listening experience, I want to create “Mikrokosmos 2: Saripati Kehidupan”, a series of compositions with this magical natural soundscape recording, and combine it with music instruments from various cultures, including gambus, guzheng, cello, Balinese gamelan, and piano. This work is a reflection on our current environmental crisis. What can we still do for our shared Earth?
