DANIELA AMADO
Daniela is a Panamanian performer, musician, music director, and writer based in Reykjavik, whose work is centered around breath, listening, and the voice. The video on top is an excerpt from her first single "Escarcha" from the project Aquella.
Above
Aquella (2021 - ) is a pop-electronic project
Writing, Composition, Performance - Daniela Amado
Music Production - Pablo Governatori
Below
Embody, Mind, Voice (2024)
Embody, Mind, Voice is a master’s project comprising a thesis and a concert, developed through two years of research on vocal recovery and its transformative potential. This concert delves into the interplay between air and sound, phonation and non-phonation, and music and noise, embodying the process of healing the voice and allowing the voice to heal. Integrating live and recorded voice, looping, electronics, choir, and live instruments, the performance immerses the audience in an organic soundscape, posing the questions, “How do I heal my voice?” and “How can my voice heal me?”
The concert unfolds in two connected parts: “Body” and “Mind.” The first half, “Body,” is experimental and sensory, featuring vocal and electronic explorations.
Select pieces: "All Voice is Breath", "Glitching", and "Re-cover-y".
Concept, Production, Composition, Performance - Daniela Amado
EYRNASÍA
Sound Art Piece
"Eyrnasía"
As the opening piece of Embody, Mind, Voice, “Eyrnasía”reflects on Daniela's experience of losing her voice and the silence that accompanies the absence of one’s most accessible soundmaker. Audience members are each given ear plugs and are non-verbally guided to insert them, performing activation and inward listening exercises with their bodies. Dramaturgically, “Eyrnasía” sets apart the concert space from the noise of daily life, challenging the conventional one-way flow of sound from stage to audience. By asking the audience to vocalize through straws while wearing ear plugs, the piece distorts the way they hear their own voices resonate through their bones, subduing their natural vocal resonators and outward listening. In this shared yet isolated experience, each person is surrounded by others but hears only their own vocal cords. As an embodied listening sound art piece, “Eyrnasía” introduces the concert’s primary method—embodied practice—inviting the audience to become both the source and receiver of sound as they access internal soundscapes like breaths, heartbeats, and footsteps. The piece culminates with the removal of the ear plugs, allowing the audience to hear conventionally as a disembodied voice emerges, reciting the line “all voice is breath,” which transitions into the second piece. Here, the artist’s body moves, her voice remains silent, and her recorded thoughts run independently, detached from her physical presence.
"Waterflow" (2022): Participatory Performance
Human and planetary bodies alike maintain a cyclical connection to water; the abundance or lack thereof informs movements and stillness, rest, and momentum. ”Waterflow” emphasizes our relationship and dependence on water, which we can neither hoard nor forego, but must allow to flow through us. This piece connects deeply to Daniela's personal journey of vocal recovery on three levels: its non-phonatory nature, its focus on hydration, and its process of allowing. Guided by non-verbal cues, participants engage in a series of movements (or non-movements) that flow through and between each stage, with differing levels of intensity or stillness, during which an inward focus is encouraged.
In collaboration with Vala Yates