Epilogue
Given the understandable circumstances that, in general, many people have little interest in understanding the underlying acoustic principles generating these unusual sounds, it is a fact proven by the history of Baschet public participative sound sculpture exhibitions that many people, millions over the span of decades, can nonetheless enjoy them. Even without having a clue as to what is going on exactly, and because there are no hidden wires or technologies, these unpredictable sounds are experiences as simply available to be freely played and enjoyed.
This exposition has focused on a very specific portion of the Baschet and derivative après-Baschet work we are doing. We would like to remind the reader and the listener that the Baschet work has many dimensions, and even in present times – where we face issues of conservation, preservation, restoration, etc, dealing with the restrictions and concerns inherent to the institutions and people involved – we should never stop pushing for the desired accessibility to public participation.
During Martí Ruiz’s Ph.D studies of the Baschet work and acoustic system, we indexed – with the support of both Baschet brothers, their teams and friends, and particularly that of François’ step-daughter Ana Sanchez Bonet – more than 500 different sound pieces. The richness of that corpus is amazing; there are so many permutations of elements, creating different sounds and opportunities to play with sound. The Ph.D work and 300 sound files can be downloaded for free at tesi.tallerbaschet.cat. It is written in Catalan (Martí’s native language), because he wanted to express himself in the most accurate way.57
We also reissued François’ most important book, The Soundsculptures of Bernard and François Baschet, in a bilingual (English and Spanish) edition that can now be accessed in paper or ebook all over the planet. We hope this can help other people to learn from the Baschets’ experiences. There is a fabulous sense of community growing amongst many of us who have found inspiration in the Baschets’ ideas and achievements, and we are now collaborating internationally, from México to Japan, with friends joining and contributing to the après-Baschet adventure. The teamwork – actually more than that – formed with Daniel Schmidt and Sudhu Tewari since Martí’s project at the San Francisco’s Center for New Music in 2018 deserves a special mention.58 Despite the distance between California and Catalonia, these stimulating international relationships are a source of hope, particularly in these times.
We would like you to consider the richness of the Baschet work in its whole. Here we have only discussed one type of the oscillating systems developed, but do not forget that the family of odontophones is just one of the many systems that the Baschets explored. There is so much more to know about their work and many more new acoustic phenomena to be discovered and offered for people’s enjoyment. So, these last words are actually an invitation for artists, musicians, curators, scientists, scholars of any possible discipline, to join our project of learning more from the Baschet and to move forward toward a sonic future with the human experience as its most precious value in the center.
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