LARGO DAS ARTES: DAY 44

I decided to do a bus detour today. Instead of going straight to Largo das Artes I stopped at Santa Luzia road with the intent to visit the Museo Historico National (MHN) and know more about Brazilian History in relation to my project. The Museo's sign was directing toward another direction but I kept going following the city map one. As I was walking I realised that it could have been a little bit risky because I didn't encounter so many people so I decided to enter in a huge colonial public palace to dissipate my fear. It turned out I was inside of a hospital called Santa Casa de Misericordia with a lot of poor and elegant people passing through a long long corridor. I felt I was inside a page of Garcia Marquez's book '100 Year of Solitude'.

When I arrived to the Museu Historico National the gardeners were cleaning the pavement and the guard of the museum had just opened the gate at 10 am.

I had no idea what I was going to find inside. I was amazed by the amount of information, objects, costumes, traditions, history  this Museum had to offer. Starting from the Indios with their craft and traditions.

...through the Age of discoveries and expansion, Portuguese and Francese colonization, Brazilian royal period with the princess Leopoldina and the prince Pedro de Alcantara, Africans habits and costumes, until the Independence.

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Than back diving into the real life of Rio, super vibrant and super confronting. Largo das Artes now has a temporary installation by the street artist I bought the handmade drums from! I have no idea how he became one of Largo das Artes temporary workers after I discovered him in the street and bought from him 5 items!

LargoLab with Felippe Moraes went very well today, I clarify the concepts of my installation, I decided the title, shown the selected variety of spices and herbs, demonstrated the sounds, a big work in progress. While with Frado Monteiro today I felt overwhelmed by his knowledge of acoustic engineering and we progressed very slowly. I started to be very impatient to see the results after two weeks of experiments with sound, but really it takes time. Tomorrow we will start mapping the sounds like as we will be conducting an orchestra; it should be hard work but a lot of fun!