Paysage Sonore
Voices: Michelle, Frédérique, Raffaël, Lisa, Isabelle and Patrick. The first time I walked through the landscape of the Plateau de Millevaches I was struck by the wind movements of the place and how changeable and unpredictable they were. Time and space were palpable: while around me everything was dead silent, I noticed some trees about 50 metres away that had started to sway vigorously. This was something that might last for no more than a few seconds. Huub Nollen of La Pommerie had asked me to come up with a work based on the landscape, and I proposed to make a sound installation, using the voices of people describing their experience of the wind. I asked 6 people from the area to take notes of the wind movements for exactly one hour, based on sight, sound and the senses. Having selected a spot in an area of some 500 square metres, the participants were placed at the greatest possible distance from each other. They were each given a clock and a chart on which the minutes and seconds of the hour were set out. Commencing at the same time, they were asked to jot down their contemporaneous notes to the exact second on the chart. Each person then read out their notes aloud from beginning to end, following precisely their charted time pattern, and this was consequently recorded on CD. The 6 CDs were played simultaneously and broadcast over 6 loudspeakers that had been arranged at different spots around a house in the district. This created a sound sculpture which encapsulated literally and in terms of sound the essence of the wind landscape, with the six different recordings forming the score. Since the jotting down process takes more time than the actual reading of the notes, long pauses arose, and the voices tended to overlap or not in a rather random manner. And since each participant observes, records, and vocalises in their own individual way, the sculpture also formed a landscape of different personalities.
year | 1999 |
location | La Pommerie, Plateau de Millevaches, FR |
performed by | four residents from the area. |
curator | Huub Nollen |
photography | Toine Horvers |