THE USE OF SOUND

A park, a wasteland, the edge of a river, a landscape can be the theater of these poetic crossings which are based on the acoustic and topological realities of a place. The whole game is to detach oneself from it by subterfuges of unheard of and improbable sound circulations which will make appear what is at a moment T and which the moment after will be no more. They compose from reality, a symphony of insects, roars of water, crescendos of wind and cracks of branches pianissimo. But they go far beyond and make us perceive what we could not hear with our ears alone. It is a microscopic dive into the elements and the surrounding radio waves.

The device

The device is as follows: an acousmonium of 14 loudspeakers, of which a dozen are of reduced size
incorporated in a resin taking the appearance of rocks and providing listening points of proximity. Several microphones are distributed in the space "to be heard" near surrounding sound sources (stream, fountain, wind and birds in the trees, roads, children playing in the surroundings...). These sources are captured, amplified, re-spatialized, they can also be "distorted" using digital or analog sound processing and re-broadcast into the very space from which they originate.

The perception

The result is a confusion of perceptions, of our way of listening. Distorting reality to let it reappear in its most bare poetics
of artifices. Musicians are also present, playing with these materials, imitating them, moving them. An actress quotes Gaston Bachelard, famous
philosopher and epistemologist and tells us what we already perceive
"The imagination finds more reality in what is hidden than in what is shown" because "The value of an image (even if it is sound) is measured by the extent of its imaginary halo".

The extensions

Choreographic artists can be associated with this device, walking around the site and creating funny and incongruous situations. A night version has also been imagined with two light artists who activate and reveal the place with what is and what is not. Thousands of red fireflies appear and run on the ground, a strange light fish illuminates the bottom of a water reservoir ... And again "To imagine is to raise the real of a tone. An interaction with the public
As for the spectator, he composes his own show by wandering in this environment, changing his points of view, of listening. He is also the own actor of this proposal by the very fact of crossing it, producing sound, modifiant the space.

A variable geometry system

The device is variable in geometry according to the places, the desires of each one, if it is diurnal, nocturnal... One can thus envisage the presence of 4 to 25 artists musician, dancer, actor, creator lights, according to the contexts.

Staff:

Benjamin Bondonneau: clarinet / David Chiesa: double bass / Flore Audebeau: texts / Loic Lachaize: sound system / Claude Saubole: guitar
Extended version with Laure Terrier and Lætitia Andrieux: dance / Sébastien Perroud and Julien Lobbedez: lights