//Unheard_Landscapes - listening | resonating | inhabiting 10th FKL/ENP/AAU_CRESSON International Symposium on Soundscape BLOIS | October 27 -30

Unheard landscapes: this metaphor leaves space to imagination, to the un-thought, to the un-known, to past and future, as well as unexplored sound scenarios. It also reaches the field of auditory perception, the acoustic domain. Sound, through auditive qualities, acoustic phenomena, design practices, artistic creations, and listening experiences, offers an inspiring transversal entry onto landscapes and ambiances. Beyond the discussions on “soundscape”, approaching ordinary environments through sounds increases the awareness of our own capacities to feel, while we inhabit and move across different worlds. From an ecological perspective, resonance appears a key word, too. It puts sound and space together. It implies the idea of a plurality of bodies, things and living beings vibrating all together, sharing common contexts of time and space. The act of listening bypasses the passive meaning it usually receives. It contains in itself a completely unexpressed potential, connoted with «project», «pro-action» and «active decision» by individuals. What will be the sounds of the future and the soundscapes in which we will live, or would like to? How can listening practices evolve, how will we listen or how differently could we listen to the world around us, tomorrow? Inhabiting the world brings to us questions about how we want to manage our being in it. How do we want to inhabit the world sonically? How sound and listening do actually affect our way to inhabit it? Have we lost some of our abilities to resonate with the world? What remains to be heard? Where could the practices of listening and attuning take us to?

Michel RISSE | FR |

Paper

Le Son qui vient du Ciel, une tentative de jardinage acoustique du paysage The Sound from the Sky: an attempt of acoustic gardening of the soundscape

Abstract

The Sound from the sky (or: the Cloudspeakers) is an artistic installation weaving closely the existing soundscape (of a city or a neighborhood) with imaginary sounds created on purpose for that environment. The sounds are projected from only one high point (a tower’s roof, for instance) and reflect on the surfaces and objects, so that it is impossible to locate their origins and that they seem to come from multiple points of the environment itself. We all have tastes and aesthetic opinions about the soundscapes in which we live, especially the urban soundscapes. But what if we could really have the instant power to interfere in this soundscape, or to compose from scratch a neighborhood, or even a city, having in mind the project of making a place where it just feels good to listen, what would we do? And then, would we even do it ? Can we technically, and may we legally, morally, ethically, finally have we to interfere with the soundscape? The aim of this paper is not to promote a new creation but to consider it as a researching experiment and examine the new questions it raises and the various reactions it allows to observe, thanks to the many traces of perceptions in situ, including those disseminated through the social networks.

MICHEL RISSE Composer, multi-instrumentalist, electro-acoustician and artistic director of Décor Sonore, Michel Risse thinks the city as an open space for inventing new musical compositions. His main source of inspiration is our everyday surrounding, with its sounds, resonances and harmonies coming from natural or industrial elements. His unique creations offer an unheard-of perception of our environment and renew our relation to music. Michel Risse studied music and percussions at the Strasbourg Conservatory and Paris 8 University, but also with Gnawas and Ahuaches traditional musicians of North African, many rock, jazz and French alternative bands, as well as very different artists such as Moondog, Vince Taylor, Angel Parra, Nicolas Frize or le Grand Orchestre Bekummernis. His experience as a percussionist, composer and improviser soon led him to record numerous stage and film soundtracks. From 1972 he started composing his first « décors sonores » (sound sceneries) – site specific electroacoustic installations for public spaces. He has produced numerous works, many being still on tour today, ranging from very intimate forms to spectacular performances and urban installations for unlimited audiences. Nowadays more and more involved in sound ecology, he considers himself as a kind of “acoustic gardener of the soundscape”.

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