fixed medium

Premiere: February 27, 2021, Montréal / Nouvelles Musiques 2021: La Grande Nuit 2021 — Au-delà de la notation, Montréal (Québec)

AuXauralités is a joint effort between artists and researchers in acoustics, where each contributes their expertise in a perspective of hybridization, developing prototype works that veer between art and science. This approach finds common ground between scientific research and artistic expression, allowing each to progress by feeding off the other. This collaboration aims to free technologies from the industrial yoke while giving the arts new possibilities of expression. AuXauralités consists of of Ana Dall’Ara-Majek (sound artist), Georges Roussel (post-doctoral researcher), Philippe-Aubert Gauthier (UQAM professor), François Proulx (student), Nicolas Bernier (UdeM professor), and Julien Sylvestre (UdeS professor).

The work is presented as a “modulated” soundscape that retraces the different stages of AuXauralités, a project at the crossroads between acoustic research and sound art, addressing the notion of enhanced listening by exploiting the very particular acoustic properties of meta-materials. The project was designed in three stages: the first consisted of simulating the audio footprint of meta-materials, thanks to model measurements allowing for the obtaining of impulse responses. After selecting objects from the various simulations, the second stage consisted of “materialising” the meta-materials through 3D printing. The third stage was the assembly of a sound sculpture from the printed objects, which were then fitted with microphones to record the reactions. The work is thus divided into three stages: recordings tested with the simulations, 3D printing of the objects, and “live” recording of the sculpture.