Babbling/Sounding/Noising Cubes — 2006/2008

Material: wood, loud-speaker stands, amplifier cards, mixing cards, loud-speakers, UMp3 players, SD memory cards, accelerometers, polymer lithium batteries, chargers.

Dimensions : each cube with their base > 124 cm x 64 cm

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.s

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Presentations

2010 Temps D'Images, Montréal (Québec)
2009 Séquence, Chicoutimi (Québec)
2008 OBORO, Montréal (Québec)
2008 Galerie sans nom, Moncton (Nouveau-Brunswick)
2008 Latitude 53, Edmonton (Alberta)
2007 Mois Multi 8, Québec (Québec)

Collaborators

Phase 1 and 2 > Avatar
Phase 3 and 4 > Roger Haché > electronic engineer
Gilles Haché > programmer
Phase 4 > Alexandre Burton > programmer
Patrice Coulombe > programmer
Roger Haché > electronic engineer
Marc Juneau > ielectronic engineer et programmer

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Text

Catherine Béchard

Translation

Kathryn Casault

Financial suports

Avatar
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Commande d'oeuvre d'OBORO, 
avec l'appui du Programme de commande d'oeuvres d'arts médiatiques du Conseil des arts du Canada et du Cirque du soleil

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Video

Catherine Béchard & Sabin Hudon

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Periodicals

2009 « Pedigree », Art le Sabord, Trois-Rivière, no 83, pp.4-8
2009 Beaucage, Réjean, « Au coeur de l’intime », ETC, Montréal, no 86, pp.42-43
2009 Caron, Jean-François, « Grabuge à Séquence », Voir, Chicoutimi, April 2nd, p.4
2008 Redfern, Christine, « Pick up the Cubes - that's the idea », The Gazette, Montéal, QC, December 6th, p.E8
2008 Mavrikakis, Nicolas, « Résonance artistique », Voir, Montreal, QC, September 4th, p.62
2008 Charron, Marie-Éve, « Provocations, redéfinitions et autres fortes évocations », Le Devoir, Montréal, QC, August 23rd, p.E 26
2008 Mousseau, Sylvie, « Des cubes sonores qui excitent les sens », Acadie nouvelle, Moncton, NB, May 24th, p.5
2008 Dawn Christie, Amanda, « The sounds of Moncton », Here Moncton, NB, 15 mai, issue 20, p.20
2008 Fung, Amy « Sonic Cubes », Prairie Artsters, Edmonton, AB, January 14th
2008 Bouchard, Gilbert « Magical cubes engage the senses », The Edmonton Journal, AB, January 18th, p.10
2008 Jones, Susan « Boxes engage exhibit visitors », St. Albert Gazette, AB, January 12th, p.19
2007 Côté, Nathalie « Queen size », Le Soleil, Québec,February 24th, p. A24
2007 Caux, Patrick « Zéro gravité », Le Devoir, Montréal, QC, February 23rd, p.B1
2007 Ouellet, Patrick « Avatar au Mois Multi », Voir, Québec, February 22nd, p.6
2007 Bouchard, Geneviève « Les grandes rencontres », Le Soleil, Québec, February 9th
2007 Houle, Nicolas « L’union fait la force », Le Soleil, Québec, January 18th, p.A2