SOUND PERFORMANCES | POINT D’OUÏE #3

Opening reception : Saturday, April 6, 2024 ‑ 7 p.m.

« POINT D’OUÏE #3 » : SOUND IMMERSION PROGRAM

As part of the festivities celebrating the 50th anniversary of the center, Sporobole and La Fabrique culturelle present three events marking 10 years of experimentation, residencies, production, and sound infiltration in public space!

“Point d’ouïe” brings together the work of artists with whom we have developed deep ties through creative collaboration, and who have marked or transformed our ways of doing things, our sensitivity, and our understanding of the potential for this type of creation. The ensemble of works selected by Éric Desmarais—our executive director and curator for the occasion—offers a panorama of contemporary sound practices while honoring Quebec and international artists who have contributed to making Sporobole an important venue for research in sound art.

Through our sound window and creation residencies in our immersive sound studio, through various performative evenings held as part of the Espace [IM] Média festival, or through numerous collaborations with partners such as the Faculty of Music at Université de Montréal or the Canadian League of Composers (CLC), we have honed our expertise in sound art to carve ourselves a special place in this artistic field, both in Canada and abroad.

Estelle Schorpp

Maryanne inside my ears, algorithmic music performance, 25 min, 2024.

Maryanne inside my ears is a tribute to the work of American composer and sound artist Maryanne Amacher. The piece highlights several aspects of her work: amplitude dynamics, sound-walk-inspired temporal structure and, above all, the musical exploration of distortion product otoacoustic emissions*. The piece encourages the creation of “perceptual geographies”, to use Amacher’s terms, by making space, body and ear resonate at the same time. Thus, by alternating scales of perception within the temporality of an unfolding landscape, Maryanne inside my ears is a sound experience that is both delicate and visceral, essentially physical.

Caution: Some parts of the performance are very loud to amplify distortion phenomena.

*Distortion product otoacoustic emissions are sounds emitted by the inner ear when it is stimulated by two pure tones of close frequencies, generally between 1000 hz and 4000 hz at a certain amplitude. In response, the inner ear produces harmonic artefacts, resulting in a buzzing effect in the auditory canal.

Photo : Maryanne, courtesy of the artist

Nicola Giannini

Rebonds, 2021, 15 min 21 sec

Rebonds is a playful piece that explores the boundaries between rhythm, pitch, texture and space. The work is inspired by the rhythmic figure of the rebound, a recurrent motif in electroacoustics, characterized by the repetition of an element at increasing speed. It was composed for Sporobole’s Sound window, a linear installation of speakers integrated directly into the building’s exterior wall.

Giannini had already begun composing Rebonds at Université de Montréal, but when he arrived at Sporobole, he realized that it would not fit in with the existing soundscape. For two days, he wandered around the center, listening and recording, until birds and an electrical generator caught his attention. He composed from these elements, without using recordings, letting the sounds guide him in shaping the synthesized materials—the aim was to create a mixed reality that would overlay the existing soundscape with the composed sound world. Finally, he reintegrated the previously prepared material, consisting of recordings of ping-pong ball bounces.

The resulting sound choreographies exploit the spatialization possibilities of the Sound window by imagining a dialogue between birds, generators and ping-pong balls, which act as auditory memories of summers spent with a paddle in hand. By changing the speed of a bounce, the artist shifts a rhythmic texture to a recognizably pitched sound. These changes have been mapped to the speeds of spatial trajectories.

A concert version of Rebonds was created for 3D loudspeaker configurations to transport the sonic context evoked by the piece into other spaces.

The artist residency, which took place at the end of May 2021, coincided with the relaxation of pandemic-related restrictions. For this reason, Giannini felt the need to create something extremely joyful and playful.

Photo : 3D view, courtesy of the artist

Philippe-Aubert Gauthier

Asynchrone, deux temps, de 18 à 22 minutes

– Français seulement –

Ça débute avec une petite chose sonore improbable pour un centre d’artiste, pas très fort pour l’oreille, hors contexte. Et arrive la lutherie électronique principale par étape. Ça dissipe la petite chose à écouter, mais elle est toujours là. Et cette lutherie principale, c’est un duo intergénérationnel : machine historique d’un côté, elle sera peut-être même défectueuse, et machine du 21e siècle, toute jeune. Les deux machines interagissent et discutent par l’entremise de signaux de contrôle redevenus intemporels : les voltages de contrôle, les impulsions électroniques. Elles se comprennent malgré leur écart de 40 ans. Puis ça crée des boucles de rétroaction de contrôle, peut-être que ça tourne en rond entre deux époques musicales synchrones ou asynchrones : des fondements originaux de la bass culture jusqu’au renouveau modulaire. Une brève ode à l’histoire, pour célébrer l’histoire et l’héritage de Sporobole.

Photo: collage, Tanya Saint-Pierre