Accompanied by his recording equipment, Marc Namblard travels through nature in search of the sounds of living beings to feed his artistic projects. He is an audio-naturalist.
Drain thrush, great tit, song thrush, the song of birds and more generally of nature, Marc Namblard records them using his adapted equipment. It’s part of his job as an audio-naturalist. AT 10 years, he was already having fun picking up sounds in the landscape. A few years later, meetings, in particular with a visual artist during his studies at the Beaux-Arts, will make him want to associate his passion with the realization of artistic projects.
“Listen to what’s going on” in nature
On a daily basis, Marc Namblard spends “lots of time in nature”, away from noise pollution. His job is “to listen to what is happening, the sounds that unfold in the landscape and in particular those that are produced by other living beings than humans”. His work is divided into three parts: listening, recording and then using sounds.in the artistic sphere”. “It can be for films, exhibitions, work with musicians… It’s very, very varied”.
By choosing “the nature of proximity”, the audio-naturalist immerses himself in his workplace, in constant search of new sounds and subjects to discover. birdsong, exchanges between different speciesambient sounds related to natural elements, the audio-naturalist encapsulates different noises. Back home, Marc Namblard explores his recordings, always with this quest for proximity: “This is often how we work on documentaries”. It sometimes takes the audio-naturalist years to find a sound that matches the audio perfectly.
“The possibility of escaping, of finding myself all alone”
Throughers his job where he is in union with nature, Marc Namblard devotes himself fully to what is happening around him. “It’s invaluable to be able to live these moments, I would have a hard time without them”. For his projects, he travels little. “I can’t, for the sake of consistency, spend my time railing against planes and then on the other hand spend my time on planes to go pick up sounds on the other side of the planet”. Since he has been recording, the audio-naturalist has also deplored a marked increase in all these sounds, from air traffic to motorized noise.