SOUND ART INSTALLATIONS IN PUBLIC SPACES
MAY 13 TO 19
DOWNTOWN VICTORIAVILLE
FREE ADMISSION - 10 AM TO 8 PM
Guided tour for schools, OBNL or companies:
With the support of
A major collaboration
A collaboration
SOUNDS IN MOTION
“[…] [W]hat strikes me most in this work is neither the rhythm nor the movement; it is the metaphysical beauty of the sound. It’s the breath that animates and generates the motion that the vibratory disturbance of the air produces. This beauty in sound fills us with enthusiasm and invites our participation.”[1]
In his 1959 article on Edgard Varèse, Gilles Tremblay (1932-2017), the great Quebecois eductator and composer, expressed exactly –– by accident or premonition? –– how the works that comprise our circuit of sound art installations function, year after year. Indeed, the poetic object emitting sounds holds an appeal that invites participation. The attendees aren’t attending a concert, they’re immersed in an experience. Artists devise their installations to alter our perception of space and sound.
Sound travels through different media: air, water, steel, and the human body. Each has particular properties that influence the transmission of soundwaves, producing a panoply of acoustic experiences. In air, sound travels as pressure waves, while in media like wood, earth, or steel, sound travels more efficiently due to their greater density. This range of physical environments is exemplary of the complex and varied soundworlds in which we are immersed.
Circuit attendees can explore not only the various facets of sound perception, but also the ingenious strategies artists adopt to infuse them with a touch of magic. They are invited to experience the universe of poetic objects, discover new communicative vistas, participate actively in the creation of a soundworld, be captivated by the relationship between movement and sound, and unearth audio sources and identify their origin. In short, this series of works is an immersive experience in which the audience is invited to engage with the richness and complexity of sound, while exploring their multiple dimensions and implications that these artists propose.
Thus, the metaphysical beauty of sound, as Gilles Tremblay so aptly calls it, maintains its vital role in this year’s Festival!
[1]Tremblay, G. (1959). Les sons en mouvement. Liberté, 1(5), 297–303.
Érick d’Orion, sound art installations curator
PIERRE BOULANGER « Sans titre B »
QUEBEC
WORLD PREMIERE
A forty-foot kinetic sound sculpture crosses the room, a long, motorised wave that is activated at irregular intervals. At each end, when a sphere triggers a sensor, a mallet strikes a glass bell. This behemoth floats in space before the audience...
On the Web
Pierre Boulanger
TIM FEENEY « Nightjar's Nest »
USA
WORLD PREMIERE
From a series of small speakers, we hear the song and wingbeats of the nightjar, a common nocturnal bird of the California desert whose territory ranges as far as Eastern deciduous forests. The timing, volume, and frequency of the sounds each speaker emits are linked to data of wildfire temperature and frequency in locations throughout North America. The listener hears the resulting soundscape, intensifying and fading to silence and floating at faster and slower tempos.
In the span of an hour, the sounds increase and accelerate in proportion to the warming provoked by climate change in recent decades. This cycle repeats throughout the installation’s opening hours, thus creating a temporal and geographic ‘clock map’ through which the audience experiences the effects of climate change both aurally and physically.
On the Web
Tim Feeney
LA QUADRATURE & AUDIOTOPIE « Sédiment narratif »
QUEBEC
WORLD PREMIERE
A collaboration
/ With the support of 
« Sédiment narratif » resides at the intersection of installation, storytelling, and sound art. Visitors are invited to lie down for a kinesthetic experience of the ground. By proposing a reordering of the hierarchy of ecosystems where, otherwise, humans assume their location at the top, « Sédiment narratif » critiques the power relations that we maintain with the environment.
Over time, the work evokes the relentless transformation of ecosystems through the ages, one where humanity is but one new element among many.
On the Web
La Quadrature
Audiotopie
FLO BRISEBOIS « Terres synthétiques »
QUEBEC
WORLD PREMIERE
Avec l'aide de 
« Terres synthétiques » pays homage to physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and his work on audition through a reinterpretation of his use of resonators, a series of spherical instruments that amplify harmonic partials.
The roundness of the installation’s sculpture-speakers serves to filter the sounds they project, changing the listening experience depending on one’s location. They feature recordings of terracotta objects that are processed digitally. With timbres by turns familiar and abstract, the work invites reflection on the complexity of the psychoacoustic cues that make sound recognition possible.
« Terres synthétiques » offers an open musical form of indeterminate duration, the result of chance elements in its algorithmic structure. The order, spatialisation, and transition periods of the recordings are different with each iteration of the composition.
On the Web
Flo Brisebois
PETER VAN HAAFTEN / GARNET WILLIS « Air Prism Nº 1 »
CANADA
WORLD PREMIERE
With the support of 
Peter van Haaften: concept and design, composition, sound, acoustics, electronics, programming, manufacture
Garnet Willis: visual design, concept consultant, engineering and material research, manufacture, acoustics.
A Moulin de l’Imprévu production.
This is an algorithmic sound sculpture that harnesses string vibration under force of wind. Centred around a deconstruction of the classical acoustic æolian harp, the subtle fluctuations of 117 tensile wires suspended in open air are shaped into a continuous live wind-propelled electronic sound performance. “Music is in the air as colours are in the light” (William Jones, 1781).
On the Web
Peter van Haaften
Garnet Willis
ADAM BASANTA « Persistent Teenage Gestures »
CANADA
« Persistent Teenage Gestures » highlights a feeling of hidden narration, an ambiguous and unresolved sensitivity. We are confronted with a strange scenario: a broken guitar, a bowling ball, an amplifier split in two and yet producing feedback. The seemingly disorderly arrangement is drenched in paint, a performative chaos united in a singular gesture.
The work is the accumulation of three destructive acts; some are clean, methodical, almost surgical, while others are brutal, crude, improvised. The installation emits a persistent sound that is continually evolving, an ongoing resonant undulation, an extended solo, an elegy to nothing in particular.
Commissioned by Eastern Bloc (Montreal QC) in 2018.
On the Web
Adam Basanta
PIERRE BOULANGER « Résonance »
QUEBEC
WORLD PREMIERE
A collaboration 
This installation comprises two sound modules suspended from each end of a container. These mechanisms rotate a wheel that functions like a mechanical bow (like a giant hurdy-gurdy). The wheel rubs a resonating glass rod, and vibrations are transferred to a tunable metal rod that emits a drone. Sound travels through a large metal sheet that acts as a passive amplifier. In addition to these two modules, another device, at the centre of the container, consists of a series of porcelain objects that are set to ringing by programmed solenoids.
On the Web
Pierre Boulanger
MÉNARD / ST-AMAND « Projet 3.0 »
QUEBEC
WORLD PREMIERE
With the support of 
“This sound art installation completes a triptych and thereby evokes the different processes used in the previous works. Its three modules serve various roles. The first is an old-fashioned sound oscillator, its bulb offering a visual reference for the amplitude of the sound frequency. The second has a more contemplative role and exposes different elements of electromechanical circuits in the form of a deconstructed circuit. Each component has a pre-recorded sound that is looped when activated. The last module is more playful, a robotic xylophone where seven metal blades are struck by solenoids that are button-activated by the audience. In addition to the sound produced by these percussive events, pre-recorded sounds diversify the sound textures. This metallic timbre echoes a factory soundscape.”
On the Web
Ménard / St-Amand
JEAN-FRANÇOIS LAPORTE « Spirituel »
QUEBEC
WORLD PREMIERE
A collaboration 
This work features twelve mechanical devices composed of stainless-steel bowls, small motorised propellers, lighting, and microphone tripods. With everything in rotation, the work focuses on circular movement. From its circular arrangement to its use of propellers rotating around the bowls, the installation converges on the feeling of the cyclical. It repurposes everyday objects, revealing their aesthetic, even hypnotic, properties.
The result is an immersive space of sound and light through which attendees are free to move, letting their senses guide them. This abstract exploration of spirituality has a broad summoning power. While the work doesn’t refer to a specific religion or spiritual practice, its changing harmonies can evoke church bells or Tibetan singing bowls. Thus, it invites imagination and introspection on the relationship each attendee has with spirituality.
On the Web
Jean-François Laporte
