Following in the footsteps of musical cowboy Harry Partch, sound engineer Oliver DiCicco started building his own instruments in the early 1970’s. With an emphasis on sculptural ingenuity and the desire to put new sounds into the world, DiCicco created instruments that marry the formal curiosity of the visual arts with the audio experimentation of the avant-garde. Despite his full schedule of being both owner and chief engineer of Mobius Music, the highly renowned recording studio based in San Francisco, by the late 1980’s DiCicco completed several instruments that were only waiting for more hands to be played together. So DiCicco invited Pamela Winfrey, senior artist and curator of SF’s Exploratorium, fellow instrument builder Peter Whitehead and a few other musical frontiersmen and women to come to his studio and jam. Soon enough a steady group of composers and musicians formed and evolved into Mobius Operandi. “I’m really into collaboration,” states DiCicco, “and I really liked the idea of inviting people down and seeing what would happen. The band formed itself.” Since its inception Mobius Operandi has accompanied theater productions and has released several albums. Continuously experimenting with the possibility of sonic creativity, Mobius Operandi now incorporates both acoustic and electric sounds into its repertoire of pushing visual and audio expectations.
Both artist and recording engineer, Oliver DiCicco has shown at Yerba Buena Center, the Exploratorium, Coyote Point Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Lincoln Center. He has collaborated with Bob Ostertag in Switzerland, been nominated for two Grammy awards for best sound engineer, and has worked with musical innovators, Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Willy Nelson, John Zorn, The Residents, and The Dead Kennedy’s. He is a founding member of Mobius Operandi, a musical ensemble who has performed for the past two decades on DiCicco’s uniquely crafted instruments.
The setting for the players is the Earth Engines exhibition where the agency of the organic takes shape in staged photographs by Barry Underwood and DiCicco's sound sculptures in which technology channels the earth’s electric complexity.