In situ device for acoustic activation of an architecture
Low frequency loudspeakers, stereolythographed percussors, amplifiers, cables, computer, sound card
Each space in which the device is installed enters into a dialogue with its sound potential, it becomes a gigantic percussion instrument resonating on the scale of a building.
T.O.C is an installation that questions current sound production techniques by attempting to bypass their usual modalities.
In 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell announced the possibility of reproducing sound by electric waves, this enigmatic relationship between sound and matter was at a decisive turning point that marked the passage to modernity. What remains to be explored after this great musical revolution of the 20th century?
One proposal could be that of John Cage and his prepared piano: to do the same with loudspeakers. Here, the preparation is no longer done to enrich the timbre but rather in a dystopian logic: Thus the loudspeakers are disemboweled so as not to reproduce the entire audio spectrum, a stereolythographic percussionist is added so that the movements usually allowing to generate low frequencies will hit the materials and thus transform them into percussion. It is a return to a low-tech archaism in its conception and almost ancestral in what we can hear, between paleo-techno and avant-garde electroacoustic music.
This device by its conception with materials of recovery often gleaned or found, tries to free itself from a form of technological commercial tyranny of high tech consumption.
Delegated production
GMEM - Centre national de création musicale
With the participation
du DICRéAM - CNC
Creation presented as part of the GMEM REEVOX-NH festival on December 14, 2018 at the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
Sound artist born in 1981, Lucien Gaudion lives and works in Marseille since 2010.
His career path leads him to focus on strategies of transformation of auditory perception. He creates listening contexts, electroacoustic compositions, installations or performances that use or divert complex technological processes with a clear will to free himself from their tyranny. Dismembered loudspeakers, sonorized neons, speaker arches are part of the non-chromatic range of Lucien Gaudion.
"What interests me is the tinkering with techniques" - portrait, Radio Grenouille
To know more
Lucien Gaudion
composer
Pierre Fleurence
musical assistant and developer