Pietro Sammarco, Sound Producer – Vancouver
(photo: Chris Grahauer)
Pietro Sammarco’s creative practice improvises with found sounds to learn about our relationships to place. He recently worked with recordings made by sixty elementary students of creeks descending Burnaby Mountain, creating a soundscape composition installed as part of Edge Effects, the inaugural group exhibition at the new Gibson Art Museum at Simon Fraser University, on the unceded territories of the the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Sel̓íl̓witulh, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm. He also recently joined the Gibson team as the museum’s Curator of Learning. He is currently editing an academic podcast that critically examines Okanagan Tourism by listening to environmental sound, and is sound designing a multichannel video installation about a ghost town in Kitsault, BC.
- Fermentation
A fascinating method for transforming raw ingredients into food! I keep sourdough, kefir, and kombucha, and have made wine and beer, kimchi, and cheese. Fermentation teaches me creativity not as mastery over materials but as responding to the materials and their environment with care. Much like hosting a party, it’s an art of encouraging yeast and bacteria to have a good time.
- Gelo di melone
I used to make it with my mamma, and it was my nonna’s favourite. You pass watermelon through a sieve. Pick jasmine blossoms from bushes around town at the height of summer, and let them relax in the juice for a day. Cook the juice with cornstarch and sugar. Top it with chopped dark chocolate and pistachios to symbolize the seeds. But I can’t find the right jasmine here in Vancouver!
- Karaoke parties in my living room
What makes me feel really alive, without fail, is inviting people over to bare their souls in my house, which has been tidied just enough to show I care. Afterall, karaoke is not about good singing, but about trying, believing in it, and sticking with it to the end of the song.
- Camping with my kid
After Mamma passed, we took my kid camping for the first time. My kid loves camping as much as Mamma did.
- The sewer system
It might be because I grew up watching Ninja Turtles, but sewers are mysterious magical places. As far as waste management infrastructure goes, sewers not only sluice waste out of the house, they actually connect our most intimate spaces inside the privacy of our houses with the very public pile of poop deposited in the ocean at the opposite end of the pipe that extends out from the wastewater treatment plant. There is a fascinating transformation that takes place gradually over the continuous length of tubing from my home to the ocean.