Auditum – Semana de la escucha – Medellin, Colombia

France Jobin will be travelling to Medellin, Colombia in July and September 2018, to take part in an international residency organized by Éter Lab and Museo de Arte Moderno  Medellin..

The first half of the residency will take place July 12th -26th 2018 during Auditum Festival – Semana de la Escucha.

July 18th 2018 – 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
She will be teaching her Masterclass Intro-specciòn Medellín – un taller de arte sonore at Museo de Arte Moderno  Medellin. – LAB 3
Cra. 44 #19a-100, Medellín, Antioquia

In spanish only:

Escuchando desde adentro – La arquitectura del sonido y nuestras expectativas.

La instalación, la música y elementos visuales inspirados por la arquitectura y el manejo del espacio, convergen en el trabajo de France Jobin, artista sonora, compositora y curadora de Canadá. Es reconocida por sus “esculturas sonoras” en tiempo real que revelan una aproximación minimalista a paisajes sonoros complejos, mezclando influencias digitales y analógicas.

En este taller, la artista introducirá su práctica, específicamente los aspectos alusivos al sonido y los espacios; las relaciones de estos sonidos con la música tradicional, el cine y otras características de la experiencia de la percepción sonora en su sentido abierto a las diferentes formas de la escucha.

“La sinestesia que se produce en los espacios arquitectónicos es la la fuerza que me impulsa a explorar el sonido. Mientras un arquitecto hace diseños pensados para ocupar un espacio, yo me intereso por elaborar esculturas de sonido que encajan en la fluidez del tiempo y la percepción. El entorno, por ejemplo, le da forma y un carácter arquitectónico a mis piezas y a su sonoridad. Por otro lado, cuando hago instalaciones y conciertos tiendo a ubicar parlantes en lugares específicos que tienen correlación con la arquitectura del espacio. De esta manera logro esculturas sonoras que no son necesariamente objetuales”.

July 20th 2018
She will also present Inter/sperse* at Domo del Planetario as part of the program Micro-estruendos en el domo.

Artistas: Carmen Gil Vrojlik (COL) · France Jobin (CAN) · Merino (COL)

In spanish only:

Un vuelo por el espacio fulldome, microsonido y ambient en el Domo del Planetario, hoy espacio de tradición en nuestra celebración anual. Concierto de cierre de la Semana de la Escucha 2018, una exploración abierta de la escucha en la inmersión y la quietud.

  • La Quinta del Lobo (Carmen Gil Vrojlik y Camilo Giraldo) · HYBRIS Fulldome

Esta propuesta para el formato fulldome parte como un vuelo por el espacio, por la representación en diferentes culturas de constelaciones como dioses y seres híbridos que a su vez se unen con los humanos y crean otros seres, que se aparean con bestias y crean otras bestias, que a su vez arrasan con su entorno. ¿Qué pasa con el híbrido que se cruza con otro híbrido?

  • Merino · Ambient DJ Set · Acostumbra un techno hipnótico, un ritmo telúrico que ha sabido ubicarse en la pista de baile pero esta vez se ubica en una postura acusmática, explorando el ambient desde el arte de la mezcla y la escucha atenta de un espacio normalmente ocupado por el beat.
  • France Jobin · Inter/sperse · Concierto nacido como adaptación de la instalación creada por la artista para sitio específico en el territorio y alrededores del Museolaboratorio (Città Sant’Angelo, Pescara) en Italia, con el apoyo del programa de residencias LUX, Museolaboratorio, 901 editions y el Conseil des Arts du Canada.

 “Ser afectado por la sinestesia en una forma positiva con respecto a los espacios arquitectónicos, es la fuerza que me impulsa a crear exploraciones con sonido. Un arquitecto diseña trabajos que ocupan un espacio; Yo diría que me encargo de construir esculturas sonoras que encajan con el flujo del tiempo y la percepción. Para mi, el entorno arquitectónicamente moldea las piezas y cómo deberán ser escuchadas.” – France Jobin

A very special thanks to Miguel Isaza!

with the kind support of:
Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des Arts du Canada


Éter-Lab, Museo de Arte Moderno Medellin

*Inter/sperse is a concert adapted from an in-situ sound installation that addressed the territory and surroundings of Museolaboratorio (Città Sant’Angelo, Pescara) which was supported by the LUX residency program, Museolaboratorio, 901 editions, Conseil des Arts du Canada.

ESCUCHAS – MOMA Medellin

Final postcard

P Orbital released on LINE (Valence, LINE_054) will be part of the first multichannel sound art exhibit ESCUCHAS at the Museum of Modern Art  in Medellin, Columbia starting, December 2nd 2015.

ESCUCHAS (Listenings) is a new sound art exhibition curated by Miguel Isaza.

In the contemporary context, sound art arises as a space that welcomes sound and the act of listening to it; also serving as a critical device aimed at the dominant tendency to see, think and touch. In this type of artistic process, sound is the central element and method of aesthetic, sensory, material and conceptual analysis. Elusive to closed definitions, it finds its own niche in practice, especially in the listening act and in artistic manifestations such as sculpture, installation, performance and composition.

Sound is a fundamental element of our vital experience, although often ignored in regards to the attention and thoughtfulness we put into it. As an artistic medium, technique, process and focus, sound has been present in the music discourse for millennia, but it is just recently when, hand-in-hand with technological exploration,it finds new directions and vindicates itself as a creation space on its own right.  Even if sound art is produced by and incorporated into non-electronic media like sculpture and installation, it is in fact through the processes of environmental sound recording and digital manipulation of sounds, objects and spaces, where the possibilities to work turn to be rich, taking on, often, a path that goes back and forth from the act of listening.

To listen is, within this context, silence and stillness. It is paying attention to the shapes that sounds might take, and from there, opening up to new dimensions. The act of listening is silent and invisible; it implies a method of being closer to sound but also an attitude of meditation, imagination and creation of realities that come from the experience of sound itself and its relations, thus playing a role that transcends the audible in order to relate to other aspects of human activity, such as language, perception, time and space, matter, affects, emotion, heritage, culture, politics, economy, and ecology.

Escuchas (listenings) is an exhibition on par with the aforementioned plurality of processes and manifestations of sound artistic processes. It is a selection of audio works, twelve in total, created as multi-channel pieces, and specially adapted by each artist for being presented in LAB3, played continuously all day long. The works directly reflect upon the incidence of sound in the aesthetic values of visual arts such as space, form, surface, texture, body, matter, concept, which are directly questioned from sonic aspects such as transience, ubiquity, invisibility, vibration, and listening.

The selection of works aims to explore sound as an independent artistic dimension, valid in its own right, hence providing a space for immersion in the act of listening where stillness, silence and meditation are welcome. The LAB3 presents itself as a place that is not experienced in a single visit, but as an intimate space for an ongoing dialogue, where consciousness expands thanks to the outside-inside sounds, where the visitor is incited to enter and reenter over and over again.

ecos.eter-lab

Artists on display

Alejandro Cornejo (Peru) | sonodoc.org/alejandro-cornejo-montibeller

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (India) | budhaditya.org

David Velez (Colombia) | davidvelezr.tumblr.com

Edu Comelles (Spain) | educomelles.com

Perletta Fabio (Italy) | fabioperletta.it

France Jobin (Canada) | francejobin.com

John Grzinich (United States) | maaheli.ee

Manrico Montero (Mexico) | manricomontero.com

Robert Curgenven (Australia) | recordedfields.net

Simon Whetham (UK) | simonwhetham.co.uk

Yann Novak (United States) | yannnovak.com

Yannick Dauby (France) | yannickdauby.com

Opening: December 2 / 6:30 pm

 

Infinite Grain – From instinct to creation

infinite_grain

France was asked to write a short essay about creativity by Miguel Isaza,

you can read “From insticnt to creativity ” here : infinite grain

February 4th, 2014

Childhood

Epiphany I

It is a frigid February afternoon. Yet here I am, nestled in the warmth of my snowsuit, scarf and “tuque”, paralyzed nevertheless by the cold as the temperature hovers around -20C. Such biting chill and immobility are familiar to me; both bring a stillness in which I find great refuge. I am not here for the car races; what captivates my attention is the sound. Every year, in Quebec City during the winter Carnaval, an annual car race is held on the icy, snowy sinuous roads of the Plains of Abraham. Winter willingly provides both a landscape and sketchpad of packed snow roads, over which the cars speed and skid. The result: a deep, buried, rhythmic sound. I still love the crackling of winter tires rolling over packed snow.

Epiphany II

Across the Plains of Abraham is a swimming club to which I belong. I am enrolled in regular as well as synchronized swimming classes. The pool does not have built-in speakers (1970). Our teacher plays vinyls on an old turntable, tapping the time on the pool ladder with a metal hanger. There, I encountered another form of sound transformation. While running through the various synchronized swimming routines, I would often end up vertically upside down underwater as the music filled the echoed space above me. A new version of Maurice Béjart’s Messe pour un temps nouveau would play out, no longer set in time; it was stretched, it was floating, I loved it!

These two moments, imprinted in my being, were instrumental in shaping the way I relate to sound. They helped me to understand how sound is transformed by its environment. A discovery of new listening approaches. This adventure began at the age of 12.

The Path

These unexpected encounters initiated my lengthy search (20 years) for a form of music that could enable me to best express myself. The quest led me to explore the classical, blues, reggae, and other musical genres. Classical gave me the love of dynamics; blues, a more intuitive sense of dynamics, and reggae, the appreciation of complicated rhythm. It was while playing blues that I learned to program sounds on keyboards and rack mounts. But what blues really gave me was a first-hand experience of how sound behaves in a given room or space — from individual instruments to a full band as well as the balance between all these elements. Touring and playing in different venues every weekend was my “school of sound”. This experience translated into being able to trouble shoot any technical problem very quickly, but, most importantly, it taught me to know instinctively what a room would sound like, what would or would not work. Later, I incorporated this knowledge in my work by treating the room as an instrument, whether for a concert or an installation.

Still unsatisfied, still looking for the right “language” with which to communicate, I discovered electronic music. As I experimented, one thing became obvious to me: it flowed, it was effortless, I had finally found the language. Now, I had to become proficient. It became my new obsession. Taking what I had learned from programming sounds and applying it to my creative approach was my new focus, one that would later become a signature of sorts. Going from noise to drone, ambient to techno and experimental, I became bored. It had become too easy, and I was not achieving what I had set out to do. I realized I was looking at this all-wrong. My approach was influenced by the years spent with traditional music. My instrument, the keyboard, required that I read the following bar while playing the present one. This technique creates a state of knowing exactly what will come next with certain predictability, and I felt this was wrong for me.

The other elements I questioned were the staff and its musical notations. I came to the conclusion that I had learned to read music a certain way. I thought, “what if it’s not the notes that create music, but the spaces between the notes, all those empty spaces?” I applied this idea to my approach to programming sounds, and it led me to minimal sound art, which, in turn, led to a new-found interest in science, quantum physics, the elegant universe, and the tiny world of particle science.

The Process

“Often, my compositions start with a feeling or emotional state. There is a likelihood of finding a certain emotion in a piece, but neither is it guaranteed, nor do I know exactly when or where I will find it. The act of looking for that emotion in of itself will distort the process. Although one might think experimental music allows the artist complete freedom when composing, I feel constrained both by my mental state and the way I build the piece.

“I find an unlikely parallel in quantum theory and composing. The electron that can exist on a different orbital plane can never have its velocity measured or even its exact location known, due to the intimate connection between the particles and waves in the wacky world of subatomic dimensions.” Excerpt from the text on the album Valence LINE_054, February 2012

The focus of my work is replicating as accurately as I can what I hear in my head — an enormous undertaking I thoroughly enjoy that constantly challenges me. As I grew closer to reaching this goal, one problematic issue emerged: the context in which I was presenting my work, be it a live show or an installation. Logically, this new irritant became an ongoing preoccupation, parallel with my work. Concentrating on the context of presentation made it more difficult for me to disseminate my work the way I wanted it be presented in live venues. I also found it difficult to hear artists’ compositions, whose work I love, in contexts that did not do justice to their work.

The Listening Experience, The Context

I imagined a space where a recumbent position would afford greater physical comfort to the audience, freeing them of physical constraints enabling them to open themselves to listening wholly during a sound art event that could be intellectually demanding. The premise can be expressed thus: if people are physically uncomfortable, they are not in a state “to receive” challenging, minimal sound art; if the audiences are comfortable, they will be more receptive. I created immerson.

Although the principle seems limpid and almost self-evident, articulating this awareness was not. immerson emerged only after lengthy reflection on the listening process of audio art disseminated in public presentation venues. Thus immerson: a dedicated listening environment, focusing on the physical comfort of the audience in a specifically designed space. The premise for immerson is to seek out/explore new perceptions and experiences during the listening process by pushing the concept of “immersion” to its possible limits in order to maximize the experience for the public.

“Between notes and sounds lie rests and silence. I have come to regard these as the most fragile parts of music.”From the sound installation, Entre-Deux, part of the new media exhibit Data/Fields, curated by Richard Chartier in the Washington, DC area, along with Ryoji Ikeda, Mark Fell, Caleb Coppock, and Andy Graydon.

Written in 2013 by France Jobin, sound artist founder of immersound, a concert event/philosophy which proposes to create a dedicated listening environment by focusing on the physical comfort of the audience through a specifically designed space. The premise for immersound is to seek out/explore new perceptions and experiences of the listening process by pushing the notion of “immersion” to its possible limits.