und transit @ la vitrine sonore – sporopole

und transit – a 16.5 hours – multichannel sound installation @ Sporobole‘s Vitrine Sonore

11227903_10153258198449037_3922572741823182292_n©France Jobin

On alternate weeks from September 15th 2015 to October 31st 2015 –
Every day – from 8 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.

Week of 09.15.015
Week of 09.29.2015
Week of 10.11.2015
Week of 10.25.2015

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Und transit

We all have a capacity to ignore the space we must use to get to our destination. Like most passage ways, they are a means to an end, and rarely are treated as an end in itself. Upon being introduced to minoritenplatz, I was immediately struck by the loneliness and practicality of this passage way.

Inspired by the solitary and functional aspects of La vitrine sonore’s location, I plan to collect a number of field recordings from in and around its emplacement, in order to create a series of soundscapes based on the sound of emptiness in this space.

France Jobin

und transit – sound installation will be presented in September 2015 at la Vitrine Sonore of Sporobole in Sherbrooke. The result of a 3 week residency in situ, will transform this passageway into a place to stop, listen and meander.

 

La vitrine sonore

Sporobole launches a new annual program that provides a curator the opportunity to gather sound artists around a curatorial approach and concepts about the Sound Window diffusion device. During a three-week residency, each artist will have unlimited access to the sound laboratory and will develop a project which will be broadcast and discussed during a round table that will conclude the year’s program.

The Sound Window is a permanent system for sound projection on the façade of Sporobole, along the sidewalk on Albert Street. Made up of sixteen loudspeakers, it makes it possible to enter into direct contact with passers-by making their way to the above-ground parking garage next door to Sporoble on city’s main street, Wellington. The linear arrangement of the sixteen speakers and their position at the geometrical interface between Sporobole and the thoroughfare make this new outdoor sound gallery a singular platform for sound spatialisation and the projection of works of sound art.

 

review – mirror neurons (DER) – The wire – UK

mirror_neurons_DER

 

Mirror Neurons on DER
CD + Digital – 500

Release Date April 21, 2015
Cover xx+xy visual

Bonus Video

All orders through DER’s Bandcamp will receive an excerpt of Mirror Neurons.
Visuals :  xx+xy visuals 
Sound : France Jobin and Fabio Perletta

A new release from Los Angeles based sound art and drone label Dragon’s Eye, and the debut from this Canadian/Italian duo. The title riffs off the name for the brain neurons involved in observing, understanding and copying others’ actions. There are parallels with the kinds of shared thinking involved in duo playing, though as it’s impossible to tell who’s doing what here, it’s hard to track how that plays out. The three tracks are constructed from the kind of infinitely quiet, dry and pure drones and pulses associated with Richard Chartier. The concept makes more sense applied to the ebb and flow of the record, with each piece having the organic, unfolding structure of Rolf Julius recording. But there’s traces of menace in the occasional higher volume bumps and glitches and the piercingly high, quiet sine tones that thread through “Reflection”.

Dan Barrow

review – mirror neurons (DER) – touching extremes – Italy

mirror_neurons_DER

Mirror Neurons on DER
CD + Digital – 500

Release Date April 21, 2015
Cover xx+xy visual

Bonus Video

All orders through DER’s Bandcamp will receive an excerpt of Mirror Neurons.
Visuals :  xx+xy visuals 
Sound : France Jobin and Fabio Perletta

I have a love/hate relationship with the integration of microsounds and stillness; am highly distrustful when neuroscience is utilized to improve pseudo-intellectual formulas which, most frequently, are nothing but containers of deplorably ignorant esoteric commonplaces, good only to fill one’s mouth in absence of veritable kernels. And, in the last years, I also have reinforced my theory about installations and background soundtracks symbolizing – more often than not – a dense fog hiding out-and-out artistic poverty.

Having said that, my curmudgeonly attitude was successfully fought by Jobin and Perletta’s long-distance collaboration. More to the point, the pair produced an admirable example of psychoacoustic exploration able to generate stimulating suggestions while eliciting the kind of retroactive synthesis performed by the brain in the presence of a given combination of sounds. A somewhat restricted palette of extremely sharp frequencies, digital noise, subsonic pulsation and diverse representations of quietude is finely exploited over the course of three tracks. Each segment is incisive and soothing at once, never falling into the “snug ambient” trap. The Canadian and the Italian have really done their homework (pun unintended).

Had I to give a lone reason to justify this CD’s effectiveness, the answer would probably lie in its blend of surgical precision and reminiscent profoundness. The merging of fixed tones enhanced by computer processing elicits a peculiar magnetism: trance, sure, and “that” inscrutable regret, almost tangible in sections of “Mimesis” and “Parallel”. The central chapter “Reflection” is perceived as a mere reassuring texture at first; then, after a nearly silent transition, organ-like pitches (think of the intro to Pink Floyd’s “Us And Them”, stretched and with less harmonic movement) lull us into a comfort zone inevitably destined to vanish.

Put this one on repeat play: it’s worth hours of implicit analysis, while the mechanisms of internal composure get efficiently lubricated.

Massimo Ricci

review – mirror neurons (DER) – ondarock – Italy

mirror_neurons_DER

 

Mirror Neurons on DER
CD + Digital – 500

Release Date April 21, 2015
Cover xx+xy visual

Bonus Video

All orders through DER’s Bandcamp will receive an excerpt of Mirror Neurons.
Visuals :  xx+xy visuals 
Sound : France Jobin and Fabio Perletta

 

France Jobin e Fabio Perletta hanno due background piuttosto diversi: scienziata e matematica del suono con l’amore per il laptop e gli algoritmi la prima, principale importatore dell’estetica microsoundin Italia il secondo, uniti però dal comune interesse per la riduzione ai minimi termini delle forme sonore. Entrambi catalogabili a fatica nel macrocosmo dell’ambient elettroacustico, entrambi protagonisti di percorsi votati a un’arte squisitamente concettuale, l’intersezione dei loro discorsi artistici non poteva che produrre un lavoro come “Mirror Neurons”. Ovvero un disco dove il suono si mette al servizio del concept e della percezione, uditiva e cerebrale.

Nella sostanza, i due cercano di trasporre in suono l’attività elettrica e fisiologica dei neuroni umani, toccando con mano aspetti strettamente legati alla psicoacustica. Da un lato l’aspetto “interiore”, l’attività cerebrale che si auto-percepisce in quanto tale (si “specchia”, parafrasando il titolo), descritta dalle dilatazioni infinitesime a volume zero di Jobin. Dall’altro quello squisitamente fisico-scientifico, l’attività cerebrale percepita e individuata da un recettore esterno, ma anche come forma essa stessa di percezione sensibile dell’altro: e qui intervengono i datasounds di Perletta, richiami elettronici astratti e appena udibili, esattamente come i flussi di corrente nei neuroni.

Cromaticamente parlando, il colore dominante è un bianco perpetuo, vuoto, accecante, invisibile. In “Parallel” questo è spezzato da atomi di suono, schegge che trascendono il conscio per infilarsi nell’inconscio e costruire lì uno scheletro extra-razionale. Quest’ultimo si prepara poi a ospitare il drone di Jobin, privo di dimensioni fisiche e solo apparentemente fin troppo simile a un qualsiasi flusso ambientale. La sua monocromia, però, lo colloca in una dimensione extra-sensoriale ben lontana dal parnassianismo (diretto alla percezione e alla poesia) degli Illuha. Qui, al contrario, la scienza trascende l’umano e il suono astrae verso una dimensione esclusivamente sua.

Non c’è sentimento, non un briciolo di vita: o se ci sono, l’inquadratura dei due li elimina dalsoundscape per concentrarsi sul processo, mostrandone qualche traccia forse solo nell’evoluzione di “Mimesis”, dove le sfumature sembrano per la prima volta intensificarsi progressivamente. “Reflection” è invece il sunto della dinamica descritta sopra: un drone si protrae per più di un quarto d’ora fungendo da nucleo, mentre tutt’attorno elettroni sonori orbitano perpetuamente, senza uno scopo né una causa. La scena è riflessa allo specchio, ma non c’è soggetto che possa percepire il dualismo.

Ben pochi sono riusciti prima a sintetizzare tutto questo in un’opera sonora: Jobin e Perletta ci riescono in un autentico saggio di arte applicata alla psicoacustica. Dedicato a quei pochi per i quali il suono può davvero significare qualcosa al di là della percezione sensibile. Con rispetto e comprensione verso tutti quelli per i quali, invece, la sola idea rasenta la follia.

Matteo Meda