Submersion, the new TACT creation at La Seine Musicale
As part of SeineLab, a laboratory for experimentation with sound and digital technology at La Seine Musicale, IRCAM and the Département des Hauts-de-Seine present the interactive device TACT, designed by Zoé Aegerter and Romain Barthélémy.
TACT is a visual and sonic piece conceived by artist collectives, which invites visitors to become both painters and composers during a virtual journey through the surrounding landscape. By touching the screen—alone or with others—the players trigger a visual and sound transformation of the device and improvise an open score specially designed for the place where the device is installed.
TACT Project at SeineLab
Submersion, an educational creation
The sound artist Méryll Ampe and the visual artist Mona Hackel led a series of educational workshops on the links between image and sound from November 2022 to January 2023 at La Seine Musicale. By questioning the students from the Collège de Sèvres on how they listen to music, by focusing on what it generates in their bodies and their relationships with others, the students translated the effect of sounds through abstraction and figuration.
What emotions run through us when we listen to music? How do we share them? What happens during a collective listening experience?
In the first session, discussions focused on the different types of music venues, giving students the opportunity to share their tastes and the role that music plays in their lives. Mona Hackel and Méryll Ampe shared their musical and/or graphical worlds by sharing their work and a number of references. Throughout the workshop, students were invited to present a musical track to the class individually, explaining the reasons for their choice and presenting the background of the chosen piece.
A second session focused on two graphical approaches to visually translate music and sounds. Through figuration (representation of the crowd, musicians, collective dance scene), then abstraction (play of textures, animated films that synchronize graphic forms with noisy music, etc.) Mona Hackel made the students aware of the multiple ways to represent music through drawing. She shared her multidisciplinary artistic vision with them, sharing music videos, animated shorts, paintings and fanzines.
During the third and fourth workshop sessions, the students produced graphical forms themselves. First figurative (through the drawing of characters), then abstract (by trying to illustrate sounds from listening to sound clips). These drawings were then laid out and collected in a group publication entitled "Écouter avec les yeux".
The last workshop session was an opportunity for the students to assemble their fanzine and to keep a souvenir of it by leaving with one copy each.
Highlighting the student's imagination
Some of the graphic elements (characters and textures) and sound elements created by the students were incorporated by Méryll Ampe and Mona Hackel into their co-creation entitled Submersion, commissioned between Département des Hauts-de Seine and IRCAM Centre-Pompidou. This title refers to both the act of submerging and the act of being submerged. The audio-graphical creation Submersion is a direct echo of the familiar expression, sub, which designates subwoofers, these loudspeakers intended to reproduce the lowest frequencies of the audio spectrum. One of the challenges of this co-creation was to create a sound and visual environment capable of immersing visitors in the world of the free and inclusive party.
April 13-September 30at the Seinelab de la Seine musicale
Free entry, noon-7pm, or 8pm on performance evenings
