Lia Bosch interview: ‘Sound Constitutes A Field Of Inquiry’
Lia Bosch
Lia Bosch is an Italian artist best described as a multidisciplinary creator. At the end of last year, her album “Polar Code” album was released on Glacial Movements. It was announced as the first production by a woman on the renowned Italian label. But more than anything, the album stands out as one of the darkest works I’ve had the pleasure of discovering on Glacial Movements. “Polar Code” is a fascinating and obscure piece inspired by the enigmatic continent of Antarctica and the even more mysterious experiments said to take place there. Lia Bosch reminds me somewhat of a scientist — her entire approach to this work, and the way she constructed the music around its central theme, feels driven by complex formulas and abstract ideas. Yet, “Polar Code” is, above all, a remarkable piece of Cinematic music.A compelling reason to reach out to the artist — and to introduce her to you in more depth. (Courtesy by Inferno Sound Diaries)
Q: Could you tell us about your artistic background? How did it evolve across various creative disciplines before leading you to music?
Lia: From the earliest stages of my formation, my focus has been on how thought, in its most intimate structure, takes tangible form: image, sound, gesture. My journey has unfolded as a progressive expansion through various expressive territories, all unified by a single impulse — to explore the osmosis between perception, mental construction, and creative intuition.
Writing became the first vehicle for this inquiry, serving as a rigorous tool for observing and tracing invisible connections between mental abstraction and lived experience. Over time, the visual arts extended this investigation, allowing me to spatialize interior dynamics and make visible the ongoing dialogue between inner and outer worlds.
During this period, I also completed formal training in film directing, broadening my expressive horizon and promoting the integration of image, sound, and gesture.
Music emerged as a natural continuation of this process — a language capable of embracing complexity without restricting it to rigid frameworks, offering flexible tools for navigating between rationality and sensoriality.
This path developed as a coherent expansion, with each discipline representing a further step in the same continuum of research aimed at understanding how human beings attempt to order, interpret, and transfigure their relationship with the world through diverse modes of expression. Music now represents a stage in this ever-evolving horizon.
Q: Your debut album, “Polar Code”, is set in an Antarctic base, the scene of mysterious experiments. What is your experiment, and how did you seek to translate it into music?
Lia: The “Polar Code” project originated from an invitation by Glacial Movements to explore, through sound and image, extreme and marginal territories where human experience confronts radical otherness. This stimulus resonated with a need already inscribed in my personal research: to examine the inner transformations that arise from contact with the unknown.
Antarctica presented itself as the ideal environment — a primordial space, still intact in its tension between the knowable and the arcane. I developed a narrative inspired both by “At the Mountains Of Madness” by H. P. Lovecraft and the real-life accounts of polar expeditions, constructing the story of an isolated explorer striving to decipher presences manifested through perceptual anomalies.
Sound became the sensory medium through which the experience is conveyed to the listener. Each sonic element serves as a signal to be interpreted — a vibration capable of progressively altering the perception of time and space.
The composition is founded on unstable stratifications: suspensions, timbral disintegrations, and imperceptible micro-variations that profoundly affect perceptual mechanisms, inducing a slow and steady shift in the state of consciousness. The visual component, structured around the symbol of the lemniscate, reinforces this dynamic tension between knowledge and mystery, evoking the perpetual motion of exploration.
Q: Could you delve into the deeper meaning of your musical universe? How do you perceive your role, and what influences have shaped your approach?
Lia: Sound constitutes a field of inquiry — a living laboratory for observing the interaction between sensory perception, states of consciousness, and deep mnemonic stratifications. Music serves as a space where listening becomes a tool for perceptual evolution.
My compositional approach is grounded in a rigorous study of the effects that frequencies, modulations, and rhythmic tensions exert on the nervous system, integrating contemporary neuroscientific research and ancient therapeutic sound practices.
Within this framework, music assumes the role of a perceptual discipline — an exercise in shifting the ordinary coordinates of time, space, and identity, capable of expanding the boundaries of consciousness.
The influences that have guided my work include radical minimalism, Ambient music as an exploration of perceptual thresholds, and acoustic-scientific studies interpreting sound as a transformative phenomenon within human experience.
Q: So how did “Polar Code” take shape? What were the main stages and challenges you encountered?
Lia: The genesis of “Polar Code” followed an organic dynamic, intertwining conceptualization, sonic exploration, and visual design.
In the initial phase, I developed the conceptual framework: identifying Antarctica as a symbol of a perceptual threshold, I constructed a narrative that would serve as an open-ended map, leaving ample space for the listener’s imagination.
At the same time, every visual aspect of the project — graphics, digipak, and booklet — was carefully designed to enhance the perceptual experience beyond simple illustration.
The sonic research was carried out with meticulous attention: each recording and frequency manipulation underwent careful perceptual observation, evaluating its impact on consciousness before being integrated into the overall composition.
The main challenge was maintaining a delicate balance between the project’s components, ensuring that no single element became dominant or rigid. The entire work was conceived as an open environment, inviting the listener’s internal movement.
The production process required many months of alternating between deep immersion and critical detachment, in a constant effort to refine the work’s internal coherence.
Q: The album’s atmosphere feels suspended and unsettling. Into what sonic and emotional world did you intend to lead the listener, and how did you achieve this result?
Lia: The atmosphere of “Polar Code” derives from exposure to an unfamiliar cognitive field capable of altering the listener’s perceptual structure. The Antarctic environment — essential and devoid of customary reference points — stimulates an interior redefinition. The apparent silence, the absence of familiar signs, and the distance from cultural codes activate adaptive responses.
Faced with a reality difficult to categorize, the mind adopts an alternative configuration. The narrative evolves through an encounter with an alien structure. A form of remote intelligence generates transformative effects, releasing identity from its automatisms and facilitating deeper processing. The unease that emerges is rooted in the gradual dissolution of interpretive certainties.
Within the alien structure, a lemniscate-shaped portal appears. Its geometry, formed by two curves endlessly pursuing one another, belongs to the collective symbolic memory. Civilizations distant in time and space have recognized this figure as a symbol of continuous movement, the balance of opposing forces, and perpetual transformation.
The portal functions as a psychic activator, inducing a reconfiguration of cognitive patterns. The mind, confronted with a symbol that transcends logical understanding, accesses a broader order of meaning. Initial oppositions — known and unknown, human and alien, interior and exterior — are integrated into a complementary structure, altering the perception of reality.
The musical composition mirrors this process. Each element contributes to the creation of a mental environment where perception expands. Frequencies, rhythms, and overlays generate an acoustic space that encourages attentive listening, internal orientation, and a readiness for continuous variation.
The entire journey produces a structural transformation. Immersed in a complex symbolic and experiential environment, consciousness develops new modes of response. Thought becomes more open, and identity reorganizes itself around dynamic equilibrium. This state fosters an inner evolution capable of adapting to realities that surpass immediate data and require intelligence, precision, and perceptual sensitivity.
Q: You are the first woman published by Glacial Movements. Why do you think so few women pursue this genre, and how do you experience this achievement?
Lia: I welcome this achievement with gratitude and a sense of responsibility, fully aware that every recognition represents not only a personal milestone but also the opening of potential pathways for others.
I do not attribute the lower presence of women in this field to a single cause. Over time, cultural, social, and practical conditions have often made it more challenging for many women to establish autonomous research paths, particularly in contexts that demand isolation, time, and inner freedom.
Beyond any explanation, I believe it is essential to focus on the value of the work itself, regardless of any affiliation, and to contribute to creating contexts in which differences do not constitute limitations or categories of judgment.
Q: What are your future projects? In which directions are you currently moving?
Lia: My new album “Ever Expanding” was recently released by Silentes. Created several years ago, it gathers a series of early compositions that emerged from a period of independent experimentation. All tracks incorporate binaural frequencies designed to enrich the listening experience.
I am currently developing an audiovisual composition in which sound, image, and movement are articulated within an essential structure. I am also organizing a series of live performances aligned with the evolution of my work.
This will be a new experience for me, as I am accustomed to working primarily in the studio. Bringing sound into a live context will involve engaging with the living materiality of listening, where every vibration takes form through interaction with the audience.
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