The participation of Sofía Balbontín during the artistic residency of June of 2023, produced by Binaural – Associação Cultural de Nodar (Binaural – Cultural Association of Nodar), consisted on a deeply appreciation of the existing empty spaces inhabiting the area of Viseu, with a particular fascination for those lost infrastructures of productive systems that became obsolete, thus alternating the local economy and consequently giving birth to several cases of emigration of a population in search of more and better opportunities. These empty spaces become a part of the place, of those activities that once gave life to the surrounding villages of yesterday, which when abandoned caused the previously mentioned emigration cases.

The artpiece TUNGSTENO consists of a temporary occupation of the Queiriga Mine, which was previously exploited for the extraction of Wolfram, a mineral used to produce Tungsten, a highly resistant metal mostly used during warfare. The mine was then abandoned after Tungsten mining became economically uncompetitive in Portugal.

The project consists of an exploration of the sounds of the mine. Those sounds we re used in order of creating a composition which highlights the acoustic characteristics of the place. In this process the artist used “Polyphono”, a sound system of 10 sound extremities that were dispersed throughout the mine, creating a multichannel system of sound spatialization that dialogues with the different nooks and crannies of the place, stimulating the acoustic differences that the mine holds, exploring the total magnitude of the cave, while being the space itself is the one that modulates the sound. The final result consists of a live performance inside  the mine, which uses synthesizers, electromagnetic waves and field recordings of the tunnels of the mine, which are launched into space and modulated by it, forming a dialogue with the mine’sacoustics.

Sofía Balbontín (Santiago, 1985) is a Chilean architect and sound artist based in Lisbon, co-director of the Resonant Spaces project and member of NLC Nucleo de Lenguaje y Creación UDLA. Her work is mainly focused on the interaction between sound and space, developing from this starting point experimental proposals around music, video, performance and installation. Sofía is a lecturer at the school of architecture Universidad de las Américas, Chile and she is currently doing a PhD in Performative Arts at the University of Lisbon.