Vidéodrones et Harmonichaos

This composer’s sound installations integrate material, spatial and visual problematics that take account of the site in which they happen. Out of a configuration of a flow of energy, these installations produce live music, and are conceived so as to reveal the musical potential of all kinds of material (everyday objects, texts, machines, living creatures, natural phenomena …) that the artist subtracts from their habitual function or usual context. These are not pre-established compositions but installations that depend on the site in which they can be seen and heard.

Le Grand Café presents Vidéodrones, a process whereby images and sounds invest the exhibition space. Cameras placed outside the art centre film the street from different angles. The images obtained are then retransmitted, live, inside the space. The videos are connected to a system that transforms every movement into sound, and the sound variations are due to the stream of objects that prevent light from reaching the camera lenses. The multiplicity and the enlargement of the projected images prevents an exhaustive reading, and plunges the visitor into an appropriate reality for listening.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s music is therefore the result of a transformation. While this exhibition constitutes a new stage in the artist’s research and in the evolution of her project, she is also inviting spectators to envisage their environment in an altogether other way. How can we believe that this relaxing music could be engendered by the tumult of the street? The disconnect might be destabilising or reassuring, but it cannot leave us indifferent.