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OBORO, Montréal, QC |
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MATERIAL: wood, loud-speaker stands, amplifier cards, mixing cards, loud-speakers, UMp3 players, SD memory cards, accelerometers, polymer lithium batteries and chargers. DIMENSIONS : 124 cm x 64 cm (4 x 2 feet) each Babbling/sounding/noising cubes are objects made of wood, pleasant to the touch, that one holds in ones hands and turns them in all directions to discover their contents.Wood as the choice of material intentionally contrasts the metal and plastic aesthetic typical of electronic devices. Babbling/sounding/noising cubes contain a multitude of sounds — fragments of life and of time-space that can be mixed and combined together. In the course of manipulating the cubes, unexpected and unpredictable sound associations and entanglements are created that one can model as one pleases. In the process, brief and fugitive stories are made and undone, reinvented every time, starting from an object, tactile, visual, and sonorous. The visitor thus lives an experience of exploration and discovery, which reveals multiple points of view and of listening that are unlikely to occur in our every day realities. Each cube contains an electronic device having six independent channels–one channel on each side–of digitally amplified sound memory and an accelerometer that read the position of the cube. The devices are wireless and totally independent. Setting off the diffusion of sound by manipulating the objects, the visitor becomes transmitter through the gesture, but also receiver through listening and through the tactile perception of the sound. Visitors are invited to investigate and explore this environment by manipulating the cubes that are set down here and there in the space. Thus, they create a relation with the object that engages the body. The order or disorder in which the visitor experiments with these sonorous objects and their transformations creates a unique reading of this environment. The ensuing individual/collective, linear/non-linear sonorous journeys enrich each other at every moment. Every cube has its predetermined theme, of which each of its faces comprises one characteristic. For instance, we have recorded different sounds produced by the human body: sigh, respiration, hesitation, mastication, snuffling, cracking of the body, etc. And, different sounds of natural elements: wood fire, rustling of leaves, thunder, rain, wind, flying birds, etc. Or else, noises that crowd our quotidian: railroad traffic, the idling of a motor, a flying plane, the gurgling of water in metal pipes, the clattering of a door, a running bath, multiple sounds of steps, the rustling of clothes, breaking glass, etc. Certain sounds/noises are treated in order to emphasize the experience of the cube, and to move from concrete sound to digitally modulated sound. Thus, it becomes possible to live an experience under constant mutation: collective and subjective when other visitors manipulate the cubes; individual and in soliloquy when we manipulate them by ourselves. As the visitor takes decisions with regards to the presented paths and possibilities, he/she reveals something in the process of manipulation, and hears the impact his/her choice has on the sonorous activity. What transpires is the freedom of interpretation and reflection in its hybrid multiplicity. The cubes with their multiple faces and multiple channels permit different types of spatialization: omnidirectional for those sounds that are simultaneously diffused towards all the loud-speakers, unidirectional for those propagated towards one loud-speaker at a time, or pluridirectional if several sounds are connected to all loud-speakers. The internal micro-controller determines the transmission through digital potentiometers installed on each of the mp3 boards. This device allows us to simulate the sonorous movements unique to the cube. For instance, the sound of a marble that rolls and displaces itself from one face to the other creates a circular movement between loud-speakers. Thus, we feel the sound moving in our hands and have the sensation that it is palpable matter. A wireless object that engages the body and its movements to reveal its content makes the exploration of the cube a truly singular experience. Moreover, since the loud-speakers are placed inside the cube, the spatialization finds itself in the hands of the visitor, and not around him/her as is habitually the case.  |
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GALERIE SANS NOM, Moncton, NB |
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LATITUDE 53, Edmonton, AL |
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MOIS MULTI 8, Québec, QC |
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PRESSE 2008 Redfern, Christine, « Pick up the Cubes -
that's the idea », The Gazette, Montéal, QC, December 6, p. E8 |
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PRESENTATIONS 2009 > Happy New Ears, Courtrai, BE |
COLLABORATORS Phase 1 and 2 > Avatar |
VIDEOS Catherine Béchard |
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FINANCIAL SUPPORTS phase 1 and 2 > Avatar |
IMAGES from top to bottom Denis Farley |