LISTENING ROOM IN 2162, ENAPOLIS MUSEUM

Printemps Silencieux (Silent Spring) takes us to the year 2162 in the city of Enapolis, where the inhabitants are walled in and have never known or even felt the presence of the ‘outside’. Upon entering a room of the city museum, the visitor can read the following label:

‘The Enapolis Museum regularly excavates our basements. We find a number of objects, mostly damaged, obsolete or unknown. Among them, a device that could finally be restored and explored. It appears to have belonged to Gaëtan Gromer, a 21st-century sound artist who lived on the Enapolis construction site. It is likely that, throughout his life, the artist collected a considerable database of field recordings recorded by himself or by collaborators. According to what we have discovered about this device, the practice of field recording consisted in particular of recording, in the open air, sounds produced by human activities and/or by the natural environment.

This exceptional document from the beginning of the 21st century allows us to give you the opportunity to listen to these astonishing ‘soundscapes’ composed of typical sounds of the environment of this distant time and which have probably all disappeared in 2162.

The title was inspired by an unfinished work by the artist referring to a prophetic text written in 1962, exactly two centuries ago, by an author named Rachel Carson.

NB: This work is part of the cycle Demain c’est loin, it can be exhibited with the four other creations: Scintillements, Unedo, Sans faire de Vagues…, Enapolis

Created for the 2022 Ososphere festival – Strasbourg

SOUND INSTALLATION – SCULPTURE

A tree appears to be covered in concrete. A deep, gravelly sound is emitted every time the world’s forests permanently lose, due to massive deforestation and the relentless artificialisation of the world, the equivalent of the total area of the city block* you are currently in. This process makes it possible to give substance to this staggering statistic: currently, one hectare of forest disappears from the surface of the globe every 1.11 seconds. 

But from this sinister tree springs a small branch from a small living shrub: a strawberry tree (arbutus unedo). A pyrophilous plant, the dormancy of the seeds of the arbutus is lifted by contact with fire, allowing it to conquer areas devastated by fire.

NB: This work is part of the cycle Demain c’est loin, it can be exhibited with the four other creations: Printemps Silencieux, Scintillements, Sans faire de Vagues…, Enapolis

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Credits :

Artistic director, conception : Gaëtan Gromer

Manufacturing : Gaëtan Gromer, Nicolas Schneider

Electronics : Benoît Jester

Production : Les Ensembles 2.2

Many thanks to Claude Peter

With support from the city of Sélestat

Photos : ©Gaëtan Gromer

Sharks are massively affected by the lucrative finning trade. Since the 10th century, a number of miraculous virtues have been attributed to them. However, it has been widely demonstrated that this is a myth and that, on the contrary, they are bioaccumulators and therefore carriers of high concentrations of heavy metals. Ironically, they have no taste.

The work consists of three life-size shark sculptures (white, hammerhead and thresher) with their fins removed. Every time it makes a sound, somewhere in the world, a shark is thrown back into the sea, mutilated, doomed to several days of agony. The finning trade is so huge that the overall shark population has declined by more than 90% in exploited areas. The disappearance of the largest predator in our oceans would, however, cause major imbalances in the marine ecosystems that provide most of our oxygen. 

Gaëtan Gromer, in an artistic approach that questions the use we make of figures today, brings us face to face with an unknown reality. Using the astonishing power of suggestion of sound, coupled here with a visual representation that leaves no room for misinterpretation, the artist questions this very strange fish market.

NB: This work is part of the cycle Demain c’est loin, it can be exhibited with the four other creations: Printemps Silencieux, Scintillements, Unedo, Enapolis

With the support of our sponsor, DQE Software.

DQE Software – a software company specialising in the optimisation of customer data quality – and the artist, Gaëtan Gromer, use data in their work and believe in a smarter use of technology to improve our methods, increase our efficiency and limit our footprint on this world.

TUTTI is an interactive installation by Zahra Poonawala, where movements generate musical modifications, appearances or disappearances of instrumental parts. The loudspeakers, mounted on motors, follow the movements of the visitors.

‘This piece tends to prolong a reflection started several years ago, which questions the sound and visual relationships between a part and a whole, between production and perception of sound. While previous works offered a static presentation, this one places the spectator in the position of explorer for the first time. Drawing on the precedent of ‘acousmoniums’ or loudspeaker orchestras, the work aims to materialise a more dynamic experience of listening based on movement.

The space occupied by the installation is given, but it can be perceived in different ways. It is first marked by a fixed marker, that of the wall of loudspeakers which forms the background, both visually and audibly. Its characters each have a different volume, register and character. In front of this background, soloists stand out, isolated loudspeakers that are endowed with mobility, since they react to the movements of the spectator, who is encouraged to move to make them react. The different sound planes redouble this spatial organisation. From a complex fundamental chord that forms a base, the reaction to the spectator’s movements determines changes in intensity, launching solos that stand out from the sound mass. To come closer is to listen, it is also to elicit a differentiated sound response.

The recorded music, born from the proposals of Zahra Poonawala, was written by Gaëtan Gromer for a chamber music ensemble. Influenced by works such as that of Giacinto Scelsi, it is heard as a complex chord in which the spectator, like a speleologist, will direct the lamp of their attention to such a desk, such a part of the orchestra, traveling inside the sound as through the space circumscribed by the installation. »

_Stéphane Valdenaire.

Credits

Sound installation by Zahra Poonawala

Composition: Gaëtan Gromer

Production: Le Fresnoy 2012

Flutes: Ayako Okubo

Clarinets: Adam Starkie

Violin: Marie Osswald

Viola: Antoine Spindler

Cello: Anne-Catherine Dupraz

Double bass: Elodie Peaudepièce

Computer music: Benoît Jester, Gaëtan Gromer

Robotic computing: Antoine Rousseau

Computer detection: David Lemarchal

Construction: Jean-Marc Delannoy

In partnership with Métalu