Cenote
in collaboration with Goupile
type: visual & sound installation interactive
materials: wood, sumi paper, video projection
stereo sound broadcast
control device for the spectator X, Y, Z
Goupile is a researcher and musician.
Research conducted in the past at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Institute for Acoustic Music Research IRCAM, and today at the University of East London.
We use the DAVID and ANGUS programs
developed by Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Marco Liuni and their colleagues: CREAM project ( http://cream.ircam.fr/ ; PDS / IRCAM, Paris, France).
This installation explores the perception of sound in the perception of visual material. We color various sounds with human affective acoustic signatures, and invite the viewer to create & immerse themselves in different soundscapes. In this installation, the experience of emotional contagion takes place within an environment in the form of a mimesis of an aquatic & maritime pit. Emotional contagion goes hand in hand with erosion. A pad allows you to modulate the affective colors of the sound by touching the pad and moving your finger from left to right, and up and down, modulating the adequacy between the sound and the projected image.
File on the research-creation process to download:
Sound & video equipment installed:
ghouls and swells, cetaceans, an ethnographic approach
Myths & Archetypes:
These reconstructed sound and visual landscapes, we have chosen them because they are archetypal:
we use sound & visual extracts of species or places which locally have sheltered myths and still arouse multiple or even opposing projections and affects today: like cetacean vocalizations & underwater chasms.
Immersion and loops:
We are working on visual and sound loops: video recordings were made in submerged caves, as well as sound recordings. Traveling shots within these spaces repeat to infinity these passages from light to dark. These tunnels evoke Lovecraft's writings, or near death experiences, emotional cycles.
Cenotes:
Cenotes are natural wells sometimes filled with seawater when they communicate with the oceans, which can reach several tens, or even hundreds, of meters deep. Their name comes from Maya dz'onot meaning "sacred well", via Spanish cenote: some of them were indeed considered by ancient mayas as communicating with the " underworld And they threw offerings to the gods of the Xibalba .
Swells & ghouls: intertidal caves, fairies & faeces
We were interested in the folkloric and ethnographic collections carried out by Paul Sébillot and Françoise Morvan about ghouls and swells (sea caves) in which fairies lived. These ambivalent characters were capable of great kindness as well as of violent cruelty. The intertidal caves therefore shelter around Saint Malo mythical figures both Aeolian and chthonian.
The vocalizations of cetaceans; bottlenose dolphins
We were interested in the sounds produced by bottlenose dolphins. Specifically those present in the Bay of Somme and around. These animals arouse the interest and affection of the general public: perhaps because their anthropomorphism fascinates.
In Europe, traces of their mythification date back to ancient Greece.
An ethnographic collection carried out in Amazonia in 2012 had familiarized us with the myths of the boto, ( or even Inia geoffrensis). The Amazonian pink dolphin is a local mythical figure, a kind of man-fish that breeds hybrid and monstrous creatures.
Scenography: the cenote
In the device, the images are projected and appear on both sides of the cenote, for an impression of transparency.
The stereo sound system is made at 3 points with a SUB placed behind the sound controller.
Sound collections & mixing: techniques used
The sound controller allows you to navigate between vocalizations.
We have collected different types of sounds: whistles, echolocation clicks, bray calls, burst pulses, low frequency sounds that we then reassembled. A hunt has been reconstituted with a "victory squeal". We collected sounds by hydrophones & recovered data stored on the internet or by associations & researchers. We also recorded soundscapes in intertidal caves to perform our soundscapes design.
This sound loop was then processed by DAVID and ANGUS on maxMSP and Ableton live so that the sound tracks were assigned to an X, Y, Z type controller.
We got several tracks: a "neutral" track, an "angry" track, a "sad" track, a "happy" track.
The sound controller allows the user to interact with these sound tracks and to modify the audio gains of the tracks to vary the "sound emotions": specific to human beings.
The maritime universe is modulated according to your desires. The language of dolphins is colored emotionally, by anthropomorphism.
