Architecture éphémère, 2023, 6:31
Architecture éphémère is a multichannel fixed-media piece that explores the sonic depth of field, sound image width, and the spatial relationships between sound and listeners. It alternates between proximity and distance, intimacy and immensity relationships. I aim to create a sonic environment where sound trajectories and positions vary between distinctly perceivable and elusively diffuse. Through this work, I aspired to create an immersive musical experience, enabling listeners to be entirely inside and lost in sound.
As such, I used numerous sine tones that slowly rotate through space at different speeds, forming evolving clusters and beats that gently unfold over space and time. Sine tones, chosen for their narrowly focused spectrum, challenge our ability to pinpoint their origins. I also used rich reverberation and extremely low frequencies to invoke a visceral, tangible sensation of sound amongst the audience.
In conceptualizing this aim to create “being inside and lost in sound” experiences, I took inspiration from David Foster Wallace’s citation of Paul Taylor regarding David Lynch’s cinema: “This is something the British critic Paul Taylor seems to get at when he says that Lynch’s movies are “to be experienced rather than explained”” (Wallace 1996). This phrase, encountered years ago, has profoundly resonated with me, influencing how I compose.
Regarding spatialization techniques, I took a hybrid approach, integrating both ambisonic and surround techniques.
Architecture éphémère was composed during the workshop’s series “Composing Fixed-media Multichannel Music on a Hybrid Loudspeaker Array” led by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay from September 2022 to April 2023 at the Multimedia Room (MMR) of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). Other composers also participated in these workshops: Yulin Yan, Kasey Pocius and Philippe Macnab-Séguin.
The work was presented on April 21, 2023, during a live@CIRMMT concert.
Wallace, F. (1996). “David Lynch. Keeps his head” Premiere, September.
