Posted on

Empac – residency October 5th – 16th 2015, concert etc

ESTO_AaronEsto_50

Residency – October 5th – October 16th 2015
Concert – October 15th 2015 – 8pm Concert Hall
In conversation :  Mark Fell and France Jobin – October 7th 2015 – 7pm

Concert

The electronic music of composer France Jobin can be described as “sound-sculpture,” revealing a minimalist approach to complex sound environments where analog and digital methods intersect. While her music often makes use of restraint and limit, she isn’t one to shy away from extremes. Her skillful interplay between highs and lows, louds and softs, creates an intricate narrative, which stretches the listener’s perception and continually refocuses attention.

Using an array of specifically placed loudspeakers numbering in the dozens, Jobin will present a new work built for the EMPAC Concert Hall.

France Jobin is a sound/installation artist, composer, and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her installations express a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces. Her works can be “experienced” in various music venues and new-technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe and Japan.

CURATOR: 

ARGEO ASCANI

In conversation : Mark Fell and France Jobin

Often, the mark of excellence in electronic music and sound art is the ability of the composer to hide their identity and virtuosity behind an inscrutable bank of machinery or within the ambient acoustics of the space in which the piece is performed. Whether or not this obfuscation is willful, it results in a genre of music that is vastly diverse in both its effects and technical configurations. In this conversation between Mark Fell and France Jobin, two masters of their understated craft will step forward to engage in dialogue and answer questions about the aesthetics, techniques, and politics of their work.

Fell has been in residence at EMPAC to develop Recursive Frame Analysis, a new work for sound, light, and dance; meanwhile, Jobin has been working on the premiere of a multi-channel sound piece for the Concert Hall.

Mark Fell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield, UK. He is widely known for combining popular music styles such as electronica and techno with more academic approaches to computer-based composition, with a particular emphasis on algorithmic and mathematical systems. As well as recorded works, he produces installation pieces, often using multiple speaker systems. He started his career in the ’90s house and techno scene as one half of electronic duo SND and released The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making earlier this year on label The Death of Rave.

France Jobin is a sound/installation artist, composer, and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her installations express a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces. Her works can be “experienced” in various music venues and new-technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe and Japan.

 

 

Posted on

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

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

 

Posted on

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

Posted on

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

Posted on

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

Posted on

Call & Response in collaboration with LINE – A listening experience

cr_logo2

LINE

 

Call & Response presents:
a LINE listening experience

Call & Response are pleased to host a listening experience featuring artists from the LINE imprint.
 
Since 2000 the LINE imprint, curated and art directed by Richard Chartier, has continued to publish documents of compositional and installation work by international sound artists and composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism as limited edition Compact Discs and DVDs.
 
As a part of our collaboration with LINE, Call & Response will feature works from the following artists in 3D sound at our space in South London’s Enclave:
 
Richard Chartier – Recurrence
France Jobin – P Orbital
Simon Whetham – El Parque Está Situado En Su Propia Casa
Yann Novak – Relocation.Vacant
Stephan Mathieu – Seventh Dream

 
www.lineimprint.com
www.enclaveprojects.com
www.callandresponse.org.uk/line
 
Friday May 29th 6.30pm–till late
Saturday May 30th 2pm-6pm
Sunday May 31st 2pm-6pm
Friday July 31st 6:30pm-till late

 
C&R space
Enclave, Unit 9
50 Resolution Way
London
SE8 4NT

Posted on

immerson 7

Immerson7_oboro_wp

Nicolas Bernier, John Duncan, Herman Kolgen, Mika Vainio

Curator : France Jobin

Thursday, June 4 and Friday, June 5, 2015 at 6 pm

Tickets on sale at OBORO ($10)
as of May 26, 2015. *Maximum of 2 tickets per person*
From Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 5 pm.
You can also call 514 844-3250 (credit card only).
Limited seats. No ticket reservation.

The Artists:

Nicolas Bernier creates sound performances, installations, musique concrète, live electronics, post-rock, noise improv and video art while also working with dance, theatre, moving images and within interdisciplinary contexts. In the midst of this eclecticism, his artistic concerns remain constant: the balance between the cerebral and the sensual, and between organic sound sources and digital processing. Awardee of the prestigious Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2013 (Austria), his work have been presented in major events and venues like SONAR (Spain), Mutek (Canada), DotMov Festival (Japan), ZKM (Germany), Transmediale (Germany) and LABoral (Spain) to name a few. His sound compositions are widely published on electronic music labels: Crónica (Portugal), LINE (US), leerraum (Switzerland), Entr’acte (UK) and empreintes DIGITALes (Québec). He holds a PhD in sonic arts from the University of Huddersfield (UK). He his a member of Perte de signal, a media arts research and development centre based in Montreal. He his teaching in the Digital Music program of the Université de Montréal.

www.nicolasbernier.com

John Duncan was born in the United States, currently lives and works in Bologna. Duncan portrays his work as a catalyst, inciting a transmission of energy through which he seeks to compel the audience to actively participate in the process of investigation and self-discovery. His lengthy career of electroacoustic intensity and confrontational performance art events is the result of rigorous investigations into a number of arcane, metaphysical, and at times transgressive themes. Duncan is a rare artist who is totally immersed in existential research.
– Jim Haynes, The Wire (UK). His audio releases THE CRACKLING (1996 with Max Springer), PALACE of MIND (2001 with Giuliana Stefani), FRESH (2002 with Zeitkratzer), THE KEENING TOWERS (2003), PHANTOM BROADCAST (2004), NINE SUGGESTIONS (2005 with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen), THE NAZCA TRANSMISSIONS (2009) to name a few, are all considered by critics and composers alike to be benchmarks in the field of experimental sound and contemporary music.

www.johnduncan.org

Recognized for his multimedia creations for over twenty years, Herman Kolgen is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Montreal. A true audiocinetic sculptor, he draws his primary material from the intimate relationship between sound and image. Kolgen works to create objects that assume the form of installations, video and film works, performances and sound sculptures. Constantly exploring, he works at the junctures of different media, as well as elaborating a new technical language and singular aesthetic. Herman Kolgen creations have been presented at renowned festivals and events, such as: Berlin Transmediale, isea, Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, Sonic Acts, Centre Georges Pompidou, Cimatics, Dissonanze, elektra, Mutek, Sonar, Tapei Digital Art, Shanghai eARTS. Herman Kolgen is the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes, including Qwartz, Ars Electronica, Best Experimental Film Award of the Independant Film Festival of New York and Los Angeles, and the Award of Conseil Général du Festival International du Court Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand.

www.kolgen.net

Mika Vainio, editions Mego, sähkö, blast first, raster-noton, touch / finland
Mika Vainio, currently based in Berlin, was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland (the other was Ilpo Väisänen), whose brand of quirky, lo-fi minimalism transformed them into one of the most popular exports from the Northern European techno underground. Before starting Pan Sonic in beginning of the 90s, Mika Vainio played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, tend more toward the ambient and experimental, blending sparse machine noises with shifting rhythms, stubbornly unmusical sonic textures, assorted channel separation weirdness and known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or minimal avant techno, Vainio is always creating unique, physical sounds. He has released on labels like editions Mego, Touch, Wavetrap and Sähkö.

www.mikavainio.com

About immerson:

immerson 7 is pleased to continue its exploration of new perceptions and experiences regarding the listening process, and this year will be an exceptional edition. For some time, I had been hoping to welcome the artists John Duncan and Mika Vainio for an evening of concerts and voilà! In addition, immerson 7 will also present Montreal artists Nicolas Bernier and Herman Kolgen. An evening charged with creativity in an intimate setting. [France Jobin]

immerson is a concert event and philosophy initiated by France Jobin that proposes creating an environment dedicated to an enhanced listening experience through the physical comfort of the audience by means of a specifically designed space.

Jobin initiated immerson in February 2011, in partnership with OBORO and in close collaboration with Stéphane Claude.

France Jobin is an audio / installation artist, composer and curator. Her audio art, qualified as “sound sculpture”, distinguishes itself in a minimalist approach of complex sound environments at the intersection of analog and digital. She participates in festivals, as well as presents installations and events internationally. Jobin has produced numerous solo albums with renowned labels such as ROOM40 (AU), LINE (US), popmuzik records and ATAK (JP).  France Jobin was a Sonic Arts Awards 2014 finalist in the category Sonic Research.

francejobin.com

This event is part of the Montreal Digital Spring 2015
In collaboration with BIAS – International Art Biennial by ELEKTRA

immerson_logoLOGO_ELEKTRA_02_2013_NOIR

France Jobin acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.

CCFA_RGB_black_e

CALQ2c

Posted on

review – mirror neurons (DER) – Igloo Magazine – USA

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

The lithe, almost see-through ambient of Québecoise France Jobin combines with Fabio Perletta’s fly-eyed dot matrix view of the world. The conceit of Mirror Neutrons, a term borrowed from neuroscience that boils down to the phenomena of reaction, cogitation, imitation, and above all empathy, is tested by the artists listening to and crafting each other’s sounds as they are traded between Canada and Italy. The album is part of a larger proposition including video by xx-xy visuals.

“Parallel” clicks into earshot with a slow rosary-bead count. Says nothing, almost nothing, for a bit. An electronic device warms up, its beeps as slowly as the rosary beads did. Then it begins to percolate as a thin, smooth organ-drone unfurls and puts on weight. “Reflection” begins where “Parallel” left off, with a diaphanous, quavering drone gaining heft before going silent halfway through, returning as a much more confident and sacral tone, a blast in such a quiet context. It eventually recedes to its gauzy origin. “Mimesis” is sharp-edged glitch granules hurled at the whole cloth of an attractive hum, causing it to tear. A second movement opens with the richest drone yet, all but befogging the tiniest, intermittent bubble squeak, before unfolding into a great, big smile of a drone and blinking goodbye.

Play loud—there’s really no other choice.

Stephen Fruitman

Posted on

mirror neurons on DER

mirror_neurons_DER

 

Duration 46:15

Format CD + Digital
Edition 500
Release Date April 21, 2015
Cover xx+xy visual

Track Listing
01 Parallel
02 Reflection
03 Mimesis

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

Sinopsis

“Mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology”
— Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist

Mirror neurons represent a distinctive class of cells that fire both when an animal executes an action and when it observes another individual performing the same action. Discovered by Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his team at the University of Parma while doing a research on the neural representation of motor movements in monkeys, the precise function and influence of these neurons has become one of the most important topic in neuroscience. They have been linked to many behaviours and abilities, from empathy to learning by imitation and language acquisition, as well as implicated in conditions such as autism and other brain disorders. These findings suggest that the mirror neuron system plays a key role in our ability to experience empathy.

Initiated by sound artists France Jobin and Fabio Perletta, Mirror Neurons is a media-project investigating the notion of empathy and physical distance. The entire album is the result of extended sound files exchange between Montréal (Canada) and Roseto degli Abruzzi (Italy). Each of the pieces is based on rough sounds and their consequent re-working, listening and reaction, processing and imitation. The ongoing process helped the artists to draw inspiration in terms of stimuli for the act of composing itself in two very distant cities, different climate, time zones and languages.

Like much of Jobin and Perletta’s recent works, Mirror Neurons explores the artists’ interest in intersection between science and art, as well as the infinitely small and invisible. In order to further develop the concept of distance/connectivity, visual artists XX+XY from Rome have been involved in the process. They created a multi-dimensional, generative and ever-changing sound visualization through the use of quiet textures and subtle movements emphasizing the slowed sense of time of the work itself. Thought to be performed live in a big space, the video aims to create an immersive environment and a unique occasion to reflect about the behaviour of our emotions and the importance of human interaction.

Artists Info

https://www.francejobin.com
http://www.fabioperletta.it
ttp://www.xxxyvisuals.com

First review on Igloo Magazine
Listen