PRINTEMPS SILENCIEUX

2023-03-03T17:10:50+01:00

Printemps Silencieux

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

Credits

Artistic director: Gaëtan Gromer

Recordings : Gaëtan Gromer, Marin Lambert, Marc Namblard

Control room: Valérie Bajsca et Cyrille Siffer

Support : L’Ososphère

Photo : © Yoann Bourreau

UNEDO

2024-10-14T10:22:47+01:00

Unedo

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

_______________________

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

Details

Exposed for the first time parc des remparts de Sélestat – 2021.

Exposed for the 2022 edition of the Ososphère festival.

 

SANS FAIRE DE VAGUES …

2023-03-03T17:09:34+01:00

Sans faire de vagues …

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.

Credits

Art direction, design: Gaëtan Gromer

Manufacturing: Gaëtan Gromer, Nicolas Schneider, Léo Heitz

Electronics: Benoît Jester

Production: Les Ensembles 2.2 Les Ensembles 2.2

Property of DQE Software

Exhibited for the first time at Industrie Magnifique 2021

Permanent exhibition at the Maison de la Pêche et de la Nature in Levallois (92)

ENAPOLIS

2023-03-03T17:09:02+01:00

ENAPOLIS

Enapolis is a piece of work that reports the artist’s critical and worried look at the current evolution of urbanism in the face of climate catastrophes. It is inspired by ‘building worlds’, in which it would be possible to spend an entire life, from the maternity ward to the mortuary, without ever leaving.

The project in brief: 

Enapolis was inspired by the work of geonomist François Terrasson. In the 1980s he sought to answer the question: ‘Why does technological man destroy nature?’ ». His research, supported by dozens of collective experiences, led him to formulate a simple and clear answer to this question: ‘because he fears the wilderness’, a deep and largely unconscious fear. Man therefore logically protects himself from his fear by destroying its source. In Enapolis, we can literally measure the phenomenon. On the floor, the square of light highlights a concrete surface. The music (on headphones) is created from the sounds of jackhammers. With each sound impact, the equivalent of this area is artificially damaged in the world.

At the heart of the installation, two sculptures explore another way of protecting oneself from nature. They are inspired by recent ‘world building’ projects, in which it would be possible to spend a whole life, from the maternity ward to the mortuary, without ever leaving. For the designers, it is a question of perfectly controlling the environment of the inhabitants and envisaging a possible response today to the possible disaster that is coming. The irony of our species is that our fear leads us to make nature more and more threatening and thus to increase our impact and its potential consequences. A feedback loop that could generate others…

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, Sans faire de Vagues…

Credits

Artistic direction: Gaëtan Gromer

Technical director: Benoit Jester

Production : Les Ensembles 2.2

Co-production: L’Ososphère

Financial support : La Région Grand Est, le Centre National Cinématographique (CNC), Le Shadok

SCINTILLEMENTS

2023-03-03T17:08:34+01:00
SCINTILLEMENTS

In the darkness, LEDs flash.

An immersive sound environment lets you hear glaciers cracking and icebergs melting.

Can sound say something about the changing world?

The project in brief:

Scintillements is a sound journey to the heart of glaciers composed from recordings made by the artist at Jökulsarlòn at the foot of the Vatnajökull in Iceland and on various alpine glaciers (Glaciers of Glaciers, Tour and Girose).

The installation, which is also illuminated, causes a flash to appear each time the world’s glaciers permanently lose a volume of ice equivalent to the overall volume of the place in which the work is exhibited. 

The sound composition consists of the thuds produced when the seracs fall, the heavy cracking of the friction between the ice mass and the earth due to the movement of the glaciers, and the fizzing of the air bubbles released into the air under the water as the ice melts.

For this work, Gaëtan Gromer, whose most recent works make use of sonification* (Lorette, Enapolis), uses light this time to evoke the 23.45 million litres that glaciers lose every second.

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

Credits

Artistic direction: Gaëtan Gromer

Technical director: Benoit Jester

Gaëtan Gromer was associate artist of the Espace Django in Strasbourg for the year 2019. The work was created within this framework.

LORETTE

2023-03-03T17:06:08+01:00

LORETTE

The project in brief:

A contemporary reinterpretation of the war memorial, Lorette is a set of sculptures including eleven authentic shell casings from the First World War set in resonance by a system of firing pins. Throughout the exhibition, from 4 October to 23 December 2018, the installation played 18.6 million notes, one for each death in the conflict. Through this process of data sonification, Lorette gives body to mortality data, repeated so many times as to become abstract; so enormous that they exceed our faculties of immediate representations. As a tribute to those who lost their lives, the stele highlights their words through the lyrics of the famous Chanson de Lorette, written and sung by the “poilus” (French World War soldier) since 1915.

Credits

Artistic direction: Gaëtan Gromer

Technical direction: Benoit Jester

Historical advice: Raphaël Georges

Production: Les Ensembles 2.2

Special thanks to : Marc Schmitt

Lorette has obtained the official label of the Mission du Centenaire

STILL PROCESSING…

2023-11-06T17:05:51+01:00

STILL PROCESSING…

The project in brief:

Still processing… is a multimedia installation that questions mortality statistics in current armed conflicts around the world. It thus plays on the purely statistical representations disseminated and repeated by the mass media and reveals to our sensibility what the simple repeated data ends up hiding: the unbearable reality of the number of victims. The incessant flow of data delivered by the different media causes an astonishing form of abstraction, a protocol to which we hardly pay attention anymore. Conversely, Still processing… opens a parenthesis of time to try to apprehend the fact of war through the singular, but essential, prism of the human cost and offers us a tangible way to realise this.

Credits

Artistic direction: Gaëtan Gromer

Technical direction : Benoit Jester

Motion design : Henri Gander

Production : Les Ensembles 2.2

TUTTI

2023-03-03T16:59:46+01:00

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

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