Client: KIKK Festival

Overview

How to transpose architecture into music?

Portée/ is a collective multi-sensorial experience. Through a poetic wandering visitors of the church are invited to explore the spacial & interactive qualities of music. When they touch and trigger vibrations of luminous threads tensed inside the church, the notes associated to each thread are played on an electro-mecanic grand piano.

Goals

Portée/ is the interactive unfold of a musical score in space and a collective multi-sensory experience.

16 independent electroluminescent wires are deployed in a monumental asymmetric weave of light. Visitors are invited to explore the spacial & interactive qualities of music, through a poetic setting. When they touch and trigger vibrations of the luminous threads, the notes associated to each thread are played on an electro-mecanic grand piano. The melodies are triggered by the visitor but their intrinsic configuration remains out of his control.

Referencing the work of Iannis Xenakis, greek composer architect and engineer (1922-2001), the monumental lines evoke a continuous dialogue between mathematics, architecture and music.

Process

The proportions of the piece gives way to the gathering of multiple point of views that generate different geometrical outcomes: dynamic, ascending and singular. Each of them offer different ranges of interaction, conditioning simultaneously the intimate experience and global state of the space.

The melodies created by french musician Chapelier Fou (Louis Warynski) evolve over time. They blur the frontier between manual and procedural music-score creation and force the visitor to question the origin of the music he’s hearing and his control over it.

Additional Information

Lumen Prize, Performance Award, Wales, GBR