Sound Experiments: Random Fields – Caen

My first activity while here is go to the Institute mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (L’IMEC) where Pierre Schaeffer’s papers are housed. Perhaps just as intriguing as his papers, is the old abbey, L’Abbaye D’Ardennes, that is the site of the archive. After filling in many forms and approvals and making sure I have enough French vocabulary to ask for les dossiers (folders), I’m allowed look at a selection of Schaeffer’s papers.

The first time I read the words “Musique Concrète” in the knowledge that these words were typed by the originator of the term, I am a little — I don’t know — in awe.

I try to take a picture with my eyes — “de la Musique Concrète” 

The capital C is slightly raised on the old typewriter, in fact all the upper case letters are. The dot over the “i” has extra weight as with the accents.

He is writing in 1949, so it is early days and he doesn’t actually talk much about it, preferring to discuss the role of machines in the process.

I will write more about Schaeffer and his papers somewhere, sometime — I’m not sure of the form as yet.

Here I will kick off rather with a sound experiment.

Using sounds recorded in Caen, I decided to trust the machine to determine the order. I feel that sometimes I overwork the field recording — fighting the figure in it while still trying to make it say “something”. Recorded in different places and situations around Caen I let the machine decide the order and the overlaps, creating new scenarios and collisions. Gradually I begin to shift the figurative nature of the sounds, sending them en masse through effects chains, and then the effects chains through the effects chains, until we are in a total feedback loop of effects/affects.

I’m not sure what Schaeffer would think. But I’m not here as disciple, just a 21st century sound artist exploring my tacit influences so they can feedback (and back again) into my practice.