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review – the illusion of infinitesimal – (baskaru) 2014 – AVANT MUSIC NEWS (USA)

KARU27_1440x1440

France Jobin
The Illusion Of Infinitesimal
FRANCE BASKARU KARU:27 CD (2014)

 

 

If you put music to images of cells as seen under a super-resolution microscope (like these), this is what it might sound like. France Jobin (aka i8u) composes the barely seen into the barely heard. The three pieces on The Illusion of Infinitisemal are each petite, graceful, moiré patterns constantly in flux and very, very quiet. Unlike the microscope, you can only amplify so far. Though grouped under three titles, each track is in fact a cluster of ambient narrative miniatures. Revolving slowly, expanding infinitely outward and metastasizing benignly into something entirely unheard-of, as long as you listen closely.

Stephen Fruitman

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review – the illusion of infinitesimal – (baskaru) 2014 – feardrop (FR)

KARU27_1440x1440

France Jobin
The Illusion Of Infinitesimal
FRANCE BASKARU KARU:27 CD (2014)

Je suis prêt à soutenir, aussi paradoxal que cela puisse sembler, que cet album, ou plutôt sa musique, cette expression du fragile aux portes de la perception, cette expérience intime du minimalisme formel et tonal, entretient un rapport serré avec le langage. Je pourrais ne prendre à témoin que la suite numérique qu’offre la liste des trois morceaux : -1/2, 0 et +1. Mais c’est d’autre chose qu’il s’agit. Lorsqu’il est question d’exprimer un sentiment délicat, il arrive que la parole défaille, se fragilise, proche de chuter ou de disparaître. Il convient d’accorder alors son discours à son esprit et plus encore aux rythmes de son corps. Plonger ainsi en soi requiert le don de la microscopie et de la lente navigation. C’est ainsi que vogue France Jobin sur la musique qui est un calme miroitement, sur une surface faiblement fluctuante, soumise à la brise la plus faible. Pourtant, sous l’effet d’un tropisme lunaire, le flux et le jusant guident le retour incessant du motif que l’on ne songe même pas à qualifier de répétitif tant il semble appartenir à la séquence naturelle, bien plus qu’à l’artifice de l’homme. Ce fredonnement de lumière s’éloigne comme le jour au crépuscule, mais, ainsi qu’au pôle pendant certaine période, la nuit ne tombera pas, laissant le couchant s’éterniser. Mer et ciel se fondent en un harmonique unique, un filin légèrement vibrant, une quasi-monochromie. Avec ses fuselages bleutés, ce minimalisme évoque les beaux sons des frères Voigt, Gas et Sturm, sans le rythme. C’est une musique qui laisse au regard, à l’oreille, le soin de la compléter, car elle s’exile aux abords du perceptible sans délaisser la vague mais en la filtrant, sans sacrifier sa densité mais son volume.
On nous prévient d’ailleurs, sur la présentation que le label offre à ce disque, que le volume d’écoute, mais aussi sa modalité (écouteurs ou haut-parleurs) conditionneront l’approche et la réception de la musique, que de nouvelles formes, de nouvelles structures se dévoileront selon le contexte. Je me suis cantonné à un volume toujours assez faible, mais la double expérience des enceintes et des écouteurs offre effectivement des paysages, non différents, mais un panorama infime bénéficiant d’un éclairage, d’une hygrométrie, d’une attention au relief qui varient ainsi sensiblement. Il me semble également qu’avec le casque les épiphanies d’harmoniques s’exacerbent, alors que les enceintes offrent un empan plus large. Pareillement, le casque permet un rendu quasi tactile des minuscules effondrements qui traversent de loin en loin la vague lumineuse, retrouvant alors le panorama car dénonçant telle la vigie la rotondité de l’horizon.
Le langage, lui aussi, ne permet-il pas diverses interprétations selon, que sais-je, l’heure, le temps, la fatigue, l’humeur, la connaissance du lieu, le rappel à un contexte antérieur, le ton… Je parle avant tout d’un langage murmuré, proche du secret que seul peut révéler complètement le retour au non-langage, et l’on sait ce que cela implique. Alors, pour s’approcher, rôdant dans ce domaine flou où les perceptions sont toujours sur le point de trahir, on s’accorde aux respirations, aux teintes changeantes, au frisson sur la peau, à la musique.

feardrop, Denis Boyer, 2014-09-17
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CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT

CONTEXT ( see below for more info)

December 2 -7 | 2014

VIP PREVIEW | December 2

THE DIRECTOR’S PROJECT : CONTEXT-ING / LISTENING AS CONTEXT

CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT creates immersive and intimate situations for listening to the work of sound artists exploring the ontological aspects of sound while also working with various materials, approaches, and techniques.

CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT will be premiered on the VIP opening night in the 2600sq.ft Sound Positions Pavilion – a dedicated space annexed to the main CONTEXT pavilion featuring 12 individual sound stations, making it the most important and largest sound project in an art fair – and continues during fair hours from December 3rd – 7th.

CONTEXT-ing / Listening as CONTEXT Artists include: 

Tania Candiani, Mexico

Richard Chartier, USA

Richard Garet, Uruguay / USA

France Jobin, Canada

Emeka Ogboh, Nigeria

Kristin Oppenheim, USA

Manuel Rocha, Mexico

Steve Roden, USA

Hong-Kai Wang, Taiwan

Hildegard Westerkamp, Germany / Canada

Jana Winderen, Norway

Zimoun, Switzerland

See more at: CONTEXT art Miami

VIP PREVIEW | December 2 
By Invitation Only – VIP Cardholders and Members of the Press

Collectors, curators, artists, art enthusiasts and members of the press are invited to experience an exclusive First View of the highly anticipated Art Miami and CONTEXT fairs for a cocktail reception benefiting the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

This can’t miss event is the first opportunity to acquire the finest works from the emerging, cutting-edge, contemporary and modern art movements prior to the fairs’ opening to the public the following day.

CONTEXT, along with the 25th edition of Art Miami, commences on December 2, 2014, with the sister fair’s highly anticipated Opening Night VIP Preview to benefit the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The 2013 preview attracted 13,600 collectors, curators, artists, connoisseurs and designers, and the fair hosted a total of 72,500 attendees over a six-day period.
This immediately reinforced the CONTEXT fair as a proven destination and serious marketplace for top collectors to acquire important works from the leading international galleries representing emerging and mid-career cutting-edge works of art.

The combined exhibition space of CONTEXT and Art Miami will increase the overall roster of galleries to 200 participants and cover 250,000 square feet. Convenient parking is available for both fairs through the use of a four-story parking garage with 2,000 spots, located directly across the street from the CONTEXT and Art Miami Pavilions. A network of complimentary shuttle buses will run round-trip service between Art Miami, CONTEXT, Aqua Art Miami and Art Basel Miami Beach.

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sans repères on popmuzik records

France Jobin
sans repères
popmusikrec_002
LP (180g Heavy Vinyl)
Edition of 300
September 21st 2014

Field recordings in Fukuoka and in Yanagawa during a boat ride in the canals.

Created entirely with actual field recordings gathered while on tour in Japan, sans repères explores the possibilities brought forth in the absence of absolute points of reference.

cover photo: Eri MAKITA (http://www.erimakita.com)
artwork: Keiji TANAKA (http://www.calamariinc.com)

thanks to:
Sachiko, Shuhei, Riku, Tatsuki and Arata Miyagi, Keiichiro Shibuya, Sho Nakao, Yu Fuji, Kenta Inamasu, duenn, “quiet eating machine” (Takahiro Horie & Kennichiro Sakai), Yuki Aida, Emi Aida special thanks to Jun Iijima, who let me record his piano during sound check in Tokyo @ Super Deluxe, which i processed for this album.

BUY

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Mirror Neurons – New AV collaboration – Sound: France Jobin & Fabio Perletta, Visuals: xx+xy visuals

France Jobin + Fabio Perletta with xx+xy visuals
Mirror Neurons

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 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. The piece will make its debut at the 2014 AxS Festival.

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 visuals 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.

view excerpt on vimeo here

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Event Horizon – Sound: France Jobin, Video: Cédrick Eymenier

EVENT HORIZON (v.9) – France Jobin – Cédrick Eymenier

Event Horizon (TRAILER) from Cedrick Eymenier on Vimeo.

EVENT HORIZON is an experimental audio/visual work by France Jobin (audio) and Cédrick Eymenier (visual) developed in the summer of 2009.The title of the piece was drawn from the physics term “event horizon” which is a bizarre boundary in space time which gives a black hole it’s name.  It is the proximity point in which no matter or radiation (ex.light) can escape and thereby affect an outside observer.  It is the black holes effects on its surroundings and the light that doesn’t pass the event horizon that gives physicists their awareness that the black hole exists.

This project involves the observation of a cityscape after nightfall. The minimal light observed over the city at night masks the flurry of activity that is obscured by buildings and darkness.

EVENT HORIZON explores the solitary observations of events transmitted via minimal stimuli and the understanding of the existence of incomprehensibly massive amounts of activity that cannot affect the outside observer other than the knowledge that it exists and it is obscured.

In short, it explores the interaction of the subject with the city and the emotions that come with various sensory stimuli and the contemplation of
what the darkness obscures.

France Jobin | Cédrick Eymenier

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Mirror Neurons – world premiere at A × S / ak-sis / FESTIVAL 2014 | CURIOSITY

Mirror Neurons : France Jobin + Fabio Perletta with xx+xy visuals
will premiere at A × S / ak-sis / FESTIVAL 2014 | CURIOSITY September 25th 2014
as part of Synergetica Screening. (see below)

AxS Festival 2014 | CURIOSITY is presenting the North American premiere of SPHAERAE, a large-scale temporary public artwork by Dutch architect Cocky Eek. SPHAERAE is an inflatable pavilion — a component of an ongoing strand of research by architect Eek into the pneumatology and tactility of inflatables and lightweight spaces. Developed in partnership with Synergetica Lab in Amsterdam and the Artscience Interfaculty program in The Hague, SPHAERAE consists of five semi-transparent bubbles of different sizes, which together form a multi-dome construction designed for immersive, synaesthetic experience.

Eek was inspired to create SPHAERAE by 10,000 Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid, an audiovisual performance work by Netherlands-based artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand. In 10,000 Peacock Feathers, Domnitch and Gelfand use laser light to scan the surfaces of nucleating and dissipating soap bubble clusters.

DOMNITCH GELFANDFeathers_TodaysArt

Unlike ordinary light, the laser’s focused beam is capable of generating a large-scale projection of molecular interactions as well as mind-boggling phenomena of non-linear optics. Sphæræ’sinflatable structure was designed to both serve as a platform for this uniquely spectacular work, as well as create a venue for other artists, scientists, and performers to make 180° works and compositions which explore the phenomena of light, sound and movement within the domes.

AxS Festival 2014 will present Domnitch + Gelfand in a live performance of 10,000 Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid — the work that inspired the creation of the SPHAERAE platform — and Solunaris, a new collaborative work by William Basinski & Richard Chartier commissioned by the Pasadena Arts Council and curated by Domnitch + Gelfand.

SPHAERAE will also feature the premiere of Sol Path, a new interactive music work by composer/cognitive scientist Bruno Louchouarn.A concerto for solo viola/percussion/soundscape, Sol Path features live performance by renowned viola soloist Brett Deubner, and immersive multi-media by Asheville, North Carolina-based designer Adam Larsen.

Sol Path is inspired by the exploratory path that the Rover takes over the course of a Martian day — a Sol — which is collaboratively programmed by a team of Earth-bound explorers. Sol Path was created in part with composer Louchouarn in residency at NASA/JPL. Through his dialogues with the Mars Curiosity team — rover drivers, artificial intelligence designers, the “planetary protection team” and others — actual data from the Curiosity mission will become inputs to Louchoarn’s composition and inform the very shape of the experience.

SPHAERAE will be on view for the duration of AxS Festival 2014 | CURIOSITY and feature projects including work, as a far-ranging program of sound works, video screenings, and talks by artists including Chris Duncan, Jeff Cain,Mattia Casalegno, France Jobin, Favio Perletta, xx+xy visuals, Francisco López, Intimatchine, Lucky Dragons, Mike Harding/Touch, Yann Novak, Eric Parren, Paul Prudence, Steve Roden, Jet Smits, Julie Tolentino, Martijn Van Boven, Bas Van Koolwijk, and Virons.

SYNERGETICA SCREENING

Curated by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, the ArtScience Interfaculty and Synergetica Lab present a series of multi-sensory performances and installations in the context of synthetic biology. Founded in 2006 in The Netherlands, Synergetica is an art-science laboratory, investigating photonics, fluid dynamics, acoustics, quantum chemistry and psychophysics.

Visit the Synergetica website: synergeticalab.com

The North American premiere of SPHAERAE is made possible in part by the Mondriaan Fund and GuestHaus Residency.

 

 

 


 

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UNYAZI 2014 – The listening room

iP orbital from Valence released on LINE will be screened September 11 and run through September 13th in the listening room, part of UNYAZI 2014, the South African electronic music festival. The listening room is curated by Carl Stone.

“When Cameron Harris asked me if I would be interested to help curate the 2014 Unyazi Festival with an emphasis on music from what is sometimes called the Pacific Rim, I was glad to accept, and did so without hesitation. While I knew we would able to bring several wonderful artists to perform at the festival, it was clear that because of the limits of schedule and also budget many interesting artists would not be able to come in person. So I came up with the idea of a listening room, where people could gather and enjoy music in a relaxed setting, and where many pieces from my home base in Japan, as well as  South Africa, Australia,  Canada, China, Hong Kong, Korea, the Phillipines, Rwanda, Singapore, the USA, & Vietnam could be enjoyed. In the end, eight hours of music are being presented, all of them created especially for the medium of the loudspeaker. It has been a lot of fun to put together the program, and I hope those of you who can come by the festival and spend some time listening will enjoy it.”

— Carl Stone, Tokyo

The Listening Room

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review – the illusion of infinitesimal – (baskaru) 2014 – The Sound Projector (UK)

France Jobin
The Illusion Of Infinitesimal
FRANCE BASKARU KARU:27 CD (2014)

One of the more ‘silent type’ sound art selections to cross my path of late; volume’s now up so high so I’ll probably be blasted into next year when I forget to reduce it for the next CD. Though drifting for the most part in a zero-gravity bliss state, these minimalist compositions do distinguish many a frequency between remote rotary rumbling and a fan-like spreading of sine waves that pierce the head bone, bleach neglected skull lining and fill the sterilized space with a waft of hygienic vapour.

France Jobin returns thus inspired from the realm of subatomic particles and their nebulous existential status, engaged this round by the quantum conundrum of angular momentum: as I understand it, the directional attribute possessed by gyroscopes and Frisbees. Particles possess a more limited version of this; a matter quite mysterious given that they have no discernable size. Moreover, their tendency to alternate with the wave state has rendered objective analysis a notoriously tricky business.

The compositional parallel Jobin draws from this involves working from a given emotion while neither pursuing nor exploring said state, just as one keeps an eye floater in view by keeping the eye still (to paraphrase inexpertly). From this point she painstakingly pares sounds down to their ‘unique essence’, from which point she is equipped to ‘communicate intent without influencing its unfolding, a delicate balance between perfection and detachment.’ This definition of ‘intent’ – perhaps less commonly used – can be found in meditation and internal martial arts with specific reference to the manipulation of the opposing forces of yin and yang. It can designate ‘intention’ divorced from ‘desire’: the information the brain sends to a limb for example. This neutrality is well demonstrated across these three unemotional yet involving compositions, which reveal and conceal different attributes with each listen.

The Sound Projector