Listening Room
Sound Art Department
The study of the landscape, in its sonic thickness, constitutes a red thread of the museum's sound art collection. The Listening Room is therefore highlighting, at the end of the year, the productions of the British Tom Fisher, the Spanish Pablo Sanz and the French Vincent Grimaldi, distinguished by the Phonurgia Nova Soundscape Prize, endowed since 2020 by the Réattu museum / City of Arles. Offering a purely audio reading of the landscape, the artists exploit the fact that sound, as well as photography, can represent reality in a subtle and complex way.
November
Tom Fisher, Hoverflies, Reed Pipes, Cockchafers, Bullroarers, 9’04, Réattu Museum Prize / City of Arles 2021.
Sound artist and musician, Tom Fisher designs in situ installations, works designed for listening through headphones, radio pieces and compositions intended for CD listening. Created from recordings made in rural Sufolk, UK, the featured piece unearths the sounds of the marshes and reveals the abundance of life that abounds in the local forests.
December
Pablo Sanz, strange strangers, 37’28, an R{A}DIO{CUSTICA} production, Czech Radio Vltava, (Czech Republic), Réattu Museum Prize / City of Arles 2020.
Living between Spain and Northern Ireland, Pablo Sanz constantly questions the act of listening and emphasizes the limits of perception and attention, encouraging ecological awareness through the senses. The work broadcast, endowed with a great wealth of timbres, frequencies and dynamics, is based on recordings made in the heart of the Amazon. Offering unusual listening perspectives – on the surface, under water, or in the register of ultrasound – it invites us to evolve in a world full of non-human life and otherness.
January
Vincent Grimaldi, Geophana, 11’01’’, special mention of the Prix du musée Réattu / Ville d’Arles 2021.
The sound material gathered for this work includes recordings of insects and natural phenomena captured in the Luberon, Landes, Grisons and Bernese Alps. On these recordings, the artist has superimposed electronic sounds created using a modular synthesizer, exploiting in particular chaotic and feedback phenomena. He thus intends to question the relationship of human activities with the living.
