Résonance documents a series of live improvisations on laptop. The performances feature field recordings and electronic elements, beats, and digital processing.
Location recordings include resonant spaces that add their own colour to the existing soundscape, sounds of the five elements (TCM, qi gong), natural and environmental sounds, found sounds etc.
The sound design focuses on sculpting the natural resonant frequencies of recorded sounds, as well as textural and gestural qualities.
The work is grounded in electroacoustic tradition and draws from experimental electronic music, with a strong focus on deep listening. Every performance is entirely improvised.
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I have been thinking about this series for a while, and finally decided that it should appear all together in one place. Therefore, to release this on nexTTime seems a good idea. I have been focusing on preparing coherent series such as field recordings as ‘postcards’ and now live EA improvisations, and i think it is nice to have such documents that follow the evolution of this type of work.
Preparing those albums, i realised how much the sound and approach has changed over the years, and yet has kept a clear focus in the use of material such as field recordings, in relation to my research on resonant frequencies of spaces as well as objects. Here, we explore the sounds of key locations and their own character, how the sounds from the environment are sculpted by architecture, and as you know, i am very keen on reverb.
The study of resonant frequency does not stop here, and gradually, while my practice of qi gong and interest in healing modalities took me to look into Chinese Traditional Medicine, the use of field recordings increasingly shifted towards what became the central point of this work: balancing the five elements and finding in each a certain musical quality – textural, gestural, and of course, harmonic. Over the years, i developed a method to sculpt those sounds and this unique quality is represented in my solo performances. Gradually, the sculpting focuses on detail and the samples i produce get more minimal. At times, the work really homes in on beat frequencies and other sound phenomena that occur naturally, but the stripped down processing and the occasional use of sine waves allows such precision to work with specific tones that are natural (non tempered) and also relate to parts of the human anatomy.
On many levels, this work is an invitation to meditate on the natural world and how the elements relate to our own experience, and there is a strong concept thoughout that draws from many different traditions of healing. And yet, at the core, remains a dedication to improvisation and more experimental forms in electronic and electroacoustic practices.
The first series is made of short pieces improvised to artists’ films, or in collaboration with dance improv, and one special event dealing with the resonant frequencies of the theatre space (room harmonics), based on Alvin Lucier ‘sitting in a room’. The latter performance only uses material produced specifically for the event, recorded on site, following the process of room harmonics. To bring out the resonance of the Lantern Theatre, i used hand clapping as source, which seemed appropriate. The results of this recording session was then processed in various ways to provide a range of samples for performance.
nexttime studio 