Residency to install the four pendulums and the control room, program a temporal score for the movement of the four pendulums and develop the quadraphonic sound device for the composition.
Plunged into semi-darkness and almost motionless, four four-meter pendulums swing ever so slightly at human height. Gradually tuning in to their resonant frequency, they create a synchronized mechanical ballet of great amplitude. Attached to dials, the pendulums move off-center, gradually creating ellipses or rotations before becoming desynchronized, revealing an infinite number of cardinal directions for their swinging.
The installation then takes time to reach a climax, before decreasing by the sheer force of inertia, to return to a calm, serene state at the end of each cycle.
These cycles follow one another like periods in a fluid score, offering visitors a dance of bodies in gravity. The role of light is to create a moving space in which visitors can move freely, deciding what to reveal and what to conceal.
A microphone placed in the center of the room picks up the ambience of the space and generates feedback that is spatialized by the moving loudspeakers installed in each pendulum. Their sounds are then reflected on the walls, floor and ceiling, transforming the room into an immersive chamber for the visitor. The raw feedback signal is processed to render this harmonic drone-like feedback loop musically exploitable as a flux, and interactions with the pendulum oscillations and light produce a set of data designed to create, over time, the generative conditions for a hypnotic visual and aural landscape, composed in the moment.
Station MIR/ Festival ]Interstice[1000 & le Millénaire (Caen) ; La Maison de la Tour-Le Cube (Valaurie) ; GMEM (Marseille) ; Un Singe en Hiver (Dijon) ; Espace Gantner (Belfort)
Support
SCAN (fond de soutien à la création des arts numériques) de la Région Rhône-Alpes ; Centre Wallonie Bruxelles de Paris ; la Sacem
Art-science development with
the MAS Platform (music-audio-sound) of the LMA (Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique) of the CNRS, Ecole Centrale de Marseille, Aix-Marseille-Université
Virgile Abela
sound artist and composer
Virgile Abela began his career alongside Lucien Bertolina at the Euphonia studio in Marseille, where he worked for Luc Ferrari, Pierre-Yves Macé, Jon Rose and Pakito Bolino. Since 2009, he has been developing a protean approach to sound, offering a poetic experience of the landscape. He founded the duo Inner Island with Quebecer Jean-François Laporte, and together they composed several pieces that play on the acoustics of places. Seeking a form of immateriality through the generation of vibratory flows from ecosystemic devices in feedback with the living, he integrates an interest in sound ecology into his work.
Associate artist of the MAS platform of the CNRS Mechanics and Acoustics Laboratory, he creates transdisciplinary works at the crossroads of the performing, visual, sound and digital arts. Winner of awards from SCAM, SACD and Phonurgia-Nova, he is also the recipient of numerous calls for projects. His recent works have been presented at international events such as Interstice[, (((Interférence_s))), Horizons-Sancy, the SONICA, EXPERIMENTA and Le Mans Sonore biennials.
He also teaches at the Musicology Master's program at Aix-Marseille-Université, and composes music for numerous shows.
art direction, sound
EtienneGourc
Virgile Abela
robotics
Patrick Sanchez
EtienneGourc
Virgile Abela
Virgile Abela
lighting