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.
REVIEWS — CRITICAL TEXTS
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 2, p.4
2008 Redfern,
Christine, « Pick up the
Cubes -
that's the idea », The Gazette, Montéal, QC, December 6, p.E8
2008 Mavrikakis, Nicolas, « Résonance artistique
», Voir, Montreal, QC, September 4, p.62
2008 Charron, Marie-Éve, « Provocations,
redéfinitions et autres fortes évocations
», Le Devoir, Montréal, QC, August 23, p.E
26
2008 Mousseau, Sylvie, « Des cubes sonores qui excitent les
sens
», Acadie nouvelle, Moncton, NB, May 24, p.5
2008 Dawn Christie, Amanda, « The sounds of Moncton
»,
Here Moncton, NB, May 15, issue 20, p.20
2008 Fung, Amy « Sonic Cubes », Prairie Artsters,
Edmonton, AB, January 14
2008 Bouchard, Gilbert « Magical cubes engage the senses
», The Edmonton Journal, AB, January 18, p.10
2008 Jones, Susan « Boxes engage exhibit visitors »,
St.
Albert Gazette, AB, January 12, p.19
2007 Côté, Nathalie « Queen size
», Le Soleil, Québec, February 24, p. A24
2007 Caux, Patrick « Zéro gravité
», Le Devoir, Montréal, QC, February 23,
p.B1
2007 Ouellet, Patrick « Avatar au Mois Multi »,
Voir,
Québec, February 22, p.6
2007 Bouchard, Geneviève « Les grandes rencontres
», Le Soleil, Québec, February 9
2007 Houle, Nicolas « L’union fait la force
»,
Le Soleil, Québec, January 18, p.A2
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