Paroles trouvées (2007)
a spatialised musical, optical and videochoreographic installation
Dominique Besson - conception and music and optical scores
Andrea Davidson - choreography-videography
Olivier Koechlin - scenography-technical supervision
Manuel Braun - mechanical design & construction
Antoine Schmitt - interface design
Anna Ventura - choreographic interpretation
Ivan Solano - musical interpretation
http://tqp.free.fr/Paroles_Trouvees/
The public enters a dark, closed immersive space of sound and images within a circle of 8 speakers and images projected on the floor in the middle of the room through a basin of water suspended from the ceiling. While the score generates musical "objects" that emerge and move spatially from and in all directions, the choreographed images, projected through the basin of water equipped with 8 ventilators and producing an optical movement, create a space for visual contemplation. The audience can either sit or circulate in the exhibition space to experience the work.
Based on the idea that movement acts on our imagination, the work generates a virtual space in which two aspects of space are highlighted and intertwine : an "interior" space linked to memory and an "exterior" space linked to a physical environment. Expressing a new polyphony, the formal structure of the work constructs 3-fold narrative (musical, videochoreographical, optical) in which the intimacy of the inner world and physical body is shown as a permeable membrane to other spaces that circulate, communicate and speak to our imagination and freeing "voices" as suggested by the work’s title.
The installation generates a series of visual and sound "figures" based on rules of musical and visual composition that are programmed. In its first phase, the work is composed of preprogrammed sequences. The instrument used to develop the phases of creating and assembling the musical composition is The Ring, a programme conceived and developped by a team of artist-developpers (see description in annex) that has already been used in performances and installations. To date, the instrument allows for the generation of simple spatial behaviours (fixed, back and forth, circular paths etc.) and combinations of temporal behaviours of looped phrases with or without interruption.
Concept
As an immersive and polyphonic installation, Paroles Trouvées involves three intertwined scores : musical, videochoreographical and hydromechanical (optical). The sound and visual environments, equally present, interact, synthesizing at times, and operate on the spectator’s receptivity in a new way. The third element or "score" is a hydromechanical system that activates the water in the basin. Driven by a computer program, the system controls the functionning and periods of activity of 8 ventilators in the basin that move the water and produce optical effects.
The musical composition, while based on purely abstract sounds, generates a space that is "inhabited": an environment in which movements of air, water, earth and fire are expressed and in which a form of memory lives. The visual composition is based on both choreographic and cinematic modes of composition. Expressing the work’s theme, the visual contents are inspired by the musical composition while also generating elements constituting an immersive space that is ‘inhabited’.
 1.1 |
 1.2 |
 1.3 |
The skin’s surface (1.1), staged and filmed in closeups, denotes a physical environment where textures, forms and lines resonate with our sense of physical space, whereas the choreography, filmed from above and afar (1.2), inscribes the visual space with trajectories as an evolution of an incarnated presence. The visual effects produced by the movement of water in the basin (1.3), being of both a physical and optical nature, are conceived to link the two spaces while inscribing a notion of the passage of time. The visuals, in combination with the sound environment express, without words, a secret « speech » we contain within : memory revealing itself in the essence of being and existing. Those moments of interiority where the frontiers between what is external and what is internal, the past and the présent, harmonize and where our skin, our whole body, becomes a permeable membrane through which spaces circulate, communicate, and orient us towards a future that is as yet barely perceived.