ÉMILE MORIN

A project designed and developed in close collaboration with Nicolas Quagebeur and Patrice Masson, researchers at GAUS, the acoustics research group of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke.

This device integrates three active modules; each of which is responsible for a specific mechanism; has an independent module, protocol and control logic; acts on its own sensory scale, that of the visual and sound field, and that of environmental recognition. These three components are closely integrated, if the first two are the active and active components of the system, the third transforms the system they form together into a sensitive and responsive environment. Together they respond to the same central concept based on a dynamic transformation of the visual and acoustic reflection of the space in which the device is installed. In this sense, they are three systems of reflection and resonance of the immediate environment. But in addition, they operate through a complex control architecture that is based on a constant tensioning of the notions of reflection and deflection, correction and distortion, capture and reversal. These are three mirrors, dependent on the same operational logic, but which relate to an autonomous sensitive experience, which intertwine their mode of reflection to form a coherent complex system.

The visual modulus | deflection – distortion

This is the visual device scale. It consists of an active membrane, a dynamic system that borrows from the technological principles of adaptive mirrors of astronomy, by modifying the relief of its reflective surface using a mechanical matrix. But unlike the adaptive mirror of a space telescope, which is defined around its unique function of correcting optical aberrations, with this system, we are interested in
rather to a controlled and evolutionary distortion.

The sound module | the sound field

While its sound mechanics are based on the principles of sound field synthesis, the audio module also incorporates a process used in physics, the time reversal mirror, by which the waves reverse the path of their propagation in space and return exactly to the initial position of their emission.

The detection module | the inverted mirror

This is the hidden module of the device. A system allowing the detection of the physical presence of bodies in front of the membrane, to detect by telemetry the position as well as the shape. In addition, it allows the physical limits of the occupied space to be recognized.