Locus Sonus

Blank Memory and Live Akousma

"One of the systems used here is the sound map developed by Locus Sonus at the Aix-en-Provence art school.

A map of the world is projected simultaneously on the screen, showing the off-site sources selected for the work. The different locations and their sounds include a garden in New York, a sheep pen in Sainte Baume, Provence, and a portion of the Hawaiian seabed.

The sound matrix plays in real time into the space over eight loudspeakers via a Holopad, a tool developed by the GMEM-CNCM in Marseille.

The Holopad makes it possible to transfer the sound or sounds in real time over one to eight loudspeakers. It has the unique feature of recording movements made in the moment. These spatial movements can be played at different speeds and can summon other sources of sound in a synchronistic manner: in addition to the sound map, I use sounds that I produce directly through a variety of sound objects, which vibrate and are amplified via a surface outfitted with microphones.

The sound sources coming from the Internet (in a continuous stream) are sound moments collected at the surface of the earth or under oceans and broadcast over the listening space, thus arbitrarily projecting an elsewhere into that space.

In effect, the acoustic space is transferred to another moving space in real time (spatialization), and different, incongruous sound objects are added, such as the sound of electric lamps with filament bulbs, which I play live.

The audience is thus both an eye- and ear-witness to a changing space that is being reinvented here yet also continues to exist independently in a continuous stream, thus opening up new, incredible sound spaces.

This device also brings together different periods in my work: freestyle improvisation, electroacoustic devices, acousmatic composition and performance. My initial artistic position and constraint was to not use sounds attached to various types of media and equipment, i.e. to not use sound effects such as reverb, delays, saturation, etc.

The challenge was to develop an acousmatic device flexible enough to make it possible to maintain the necessary concentration and the movements of my freestyle improvisation: to be in the time T of improvisation, while being able to disseminate different kinds of sound material in real time and spatialize them." ErikM

last changed: 2017/06/15 16:16