Cime in nature and the extrasensory, rumors in the haunting sweetness, ghosts in therapeutic reminiscence. Three types of immersion were offered at Usine C, in the second part of the program.

Florence-Delphine Roux (ca)

Program: Cime (2024) 11’00

Chirps. Scent of the forest. Fluidity of a stream. Distant radio waves. Interference. Oscillating frequencies. Ghostly conversations. Distant aquifers. Electromagnetic fields. Ambient. 

Cime reveals itself gently in the slowness of nature. The imperceptible of the mountainous and mysterious universe of Mont-Saint-Hilaire can be revealed here in this 11-minute work. 

The recorded sounds, partly in the field or from phonographic archives, are finely covered on radio waves where the invisible to our retina becomes audible to our ears. 

Florence-Delphine Roux, a digital and sound artist from Quebec City and based in Tiohtà:ke/Montreal, who holds a master’s degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Villa Arson in Nice, captured the surround soundscape of the Gault Nature Reserve while inserting an analog and granular synthesis into the medium.

This is how the real, the unreal, the extrasensory and the paranormal take on their full meaning in this textured immersive performance. 

Shane Turner (ca)

Program: rumors, approximated (2024) 10’00

Shane Turner’s work, a graduate in electroacoustics at Concordia University, has been released by the Panospria (Notype) netlabel, the CEC, and at various festivals, including Mutek. 

︎Time, height, timbre and intensity have been finely structured to shape an architecture that occupies the space horizontally and vertically. Sine waves, defragmented and powered by algorithmic phenomena, overlapped with the textured work of the envelope and grain of angelic voices. The vocal cords are an instrument in their own right, the very first of the most ancient times. Music production is constantly evolving with new technologies and scientific research. Rumors, Approximated was intended to create a frontal, but ultimately poetic, syncretism between these two sources. 

The piece was soft and haunting with an entrance at the threshold of a door that opens for a minute, then the vocals of Simone Pitot/Delorca were revealed like mythological chimeras. 

The whole thing implied a kind of multisensory cartography where the morphology of the corpus was built in a harmonious discordance through a live electronic installation. 

Far from being in the realm of the approximate, this piece was scrupulously codified. 

Manja Ristić (hr)

Program: ghosts (2024) 20’

Manja Ristić was on stage to give a totally amazing performance! An EMS Synthi 100 modular synthesizer, a violin, a wheelchair wheel, two half-filled vases, mineral materials such as stones, a portable radio, a whistle and effervescent pills: this is the equipment on stage. 

Each object will be manipulated, recorded so that each sound can be transformed into a scenario of undulation, frequency and envelopment of space. 

Through an almost timeless extension, a tablet is immersed in one of the vases equipped with a microphone in a process of releasing gas in order to activate the dissolution. The bubbling is quietly mixed with the very soft synth notes that will almost never stop echoing.

Against a background of bird vocalization, pebbles or pebbles perhaps, are kneaded in the hand of the Hungarian artist as if to image a distant memory of her history…

The antenna of a small radio passes over and over under the microphone to play with the frequencies like the lairs of a ghost. The work on stage was meticulous, slow, calculated. 

In the last third of the scene, high-pitched and uncomfortable piano notes made their entrance to join the sound of the archer tearing the strings of a violin merging with the sound of a creaking wooden door. 

Born in Belgrade in 1979, violinist, sound artist, poet, curator and researcher, graduated from the Belgrade Academy of Music (2001), the Royal College of Music in London, Manja focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to sound and field recording as well as experimental radio arts to create works rich in meaning. 

Here, the historical significance was the remnant of memories of environmental devastation and war in the former Iron Curtain regions, as well as the former Mauthausen-Gusen labor camps.

ghosts, to get out of the hell of the past to sublimate it. A therapeutic work. 

Photo Credits: Caroline Campeau