It has already been a month since workers working at the Société des arts technologies (SAT) completed the vast project aimed at reorganizing and renewing the facilities to better accommodate the public and creators, but it is only today that inaugurated its new gallery space. All summer long the Bell Orchestra Sound Housea work located halfway between the exhibition and the interactive installation which allows us to listen again in a different way House Music (2021), the most recent album from the instrumental postrock sextet Bell Orchester. Gallerist tour with the creators of the experience, Caroline Robert and Vincent Morisset.
When entering the SAT, go straight ahead, taking the steps. First landing, turn right: here is the new gallery space, and behind a black curtain, the Sound House. Which rather suggests something like the interior of a small chalet: a round wooden table with faded varnish planted in the center and covered with objects. Dressers, a small kitchen counter, the bathroom sink, a few hanging frames, and, at the far end, three large windows (video screens) overlooking a lake and the sky above that change appearance during the thirty minutes that lasts… what lasts, exactly?
Neither quite an exhibition nor an installation, the Sound House, describes Caroline Robert, “is a musical experience. We offer another way of listening to music, of experiencing it, here in a sensory and kinesthetic way since we move as we wish in the space by moving objects”, all of which recall this imaginary chalet and suggested by the designers using minimalist references, like the decors of Dogville (2003), by director Lars von Trier, evoke Mme Robert and his partner, Vincent Morisset.
By moving objects in space, placing trinkets on the 11 surfaces furnishing the house, the visitor modifies the musical score of the Bell Orchestra album. Each object has its computer chip, each piece of furniture (which hides a speaker), its sensor; the object embodies an instrument from this orchestral rock suite dissected for the purposes of the installation into 11 musical tracks by Pietro Amato, horn player and member of the Orchestra. In short, visitors become the “conductors” of the installation by adding or removing instruments from the “performance”, also modifying the sound spatialization, the work being broadcast over 12 speakers.
“So,” explains Vincent Morisset, “the visitor finds himself in this liminal space between the listening experience at home, the album playing in our headphones, and that of the concert or live performance that is experienced in a community, in a given place. It’s an exhibition and installation where the audience is part of the performance, moving around and changing the sound, but you can also be passive and just listen and observe what’s happening. »
Revisiting digital technologies
“Basically, the Bell Orchestra had recorded this album that they wanted to share with the public, but each member has a busy life”, solo careers and commitments (Richard Reed Parry and Sarah Neufeld are on the Arcade tour Fire) limiting the possibility of going on tour, says Vincent Morisset, co-founder of the AATOAA studio with his partner.
Both directors, artistic directors and creators versed in new technologies (interactive, in particular), they already knew the musicians of the Montreal orchestra, having produced clips for Arcade Fire (and its documentary Black mirror, 2008). For around twenty years, they have been developing immersive artistic projects combining various practices, audio, video, design, sculpture: “Making furniture plans, building furniture, imagining a scenography, this is not new for us, but with each project, we ask ourselves what we can do differently, what new things we can explore,” says Caroline Robert.
There Sound House borrows from various projects designed (or visited) by the couple. A creative residency at the Phi Center gave birth, three years ago, to the installation Composition, in collaboration with the electronic composer Vlooper (Alaclair Ensemble): “On a table were placed wooden cubes which the visitor manipulated; the gestures modified the soundtrack and the projections displayed on the table, describes Morisset. It was the first time that we sought to revisit the vocabulary of digital technologies, but in a more tangible way — without wearing a virtual reality mask, for example. »
Caroline Robert, for her part, reminds Vincent of their visit to the Museum of Innocence, in Istanbul, “which inspired us a lot. This museum is derived from the novel [2008, de l’écrivain Orhan Pamuk]. There are lots of objects there which, when put together, tell a story. That had an impact on us: every object you take, you know that someone else took it before you. Then there is the notion that each of these objects is associated with a memory, musical in terms of Sound House. “We thus enter into a sort of intimacy, with the objects, and with the other people who visit this small space at the same time. »