EMPLACEMENT/DEPLACEMENT LOCATION/DISLOCATION




				Silophone -Sound -Architecture -Interactive Art -Connected Enviroments -Musique Conrète Architecture is pregnant with sounds, reverberations and echoes derived from our environment. Silophone, by the collective [The User], transforms an emblematic industrial Montréal structure, Silo #5, into an interactive musical instrument. The disaffected silo, located in the Old Port, is part of a cluster of industrial-centric architectures lining the St-Lawrence seaway which are linked to railway networks across the continent. Cavernous - and inscribed within modern urban developments - the silos formerly used to store grain have been closed and empty since 1996. They have also gained notoriety, having been described as a "masterpiece of modern architecture"1 by architect Le Corbusier. The Silophone project acts as mediator between the silo and the public, inviting one to email or telephone in unique sounds (or select from a series of archived digital files) to be played into the belly of the vacant structure. The emanated sounds are thus transformed by the architecture and are rebroadcast to the public via the Web site. Space plays a catalytic role in the production of sound art. As Achim Wollscheid notes, today "...space with its assembly of sound producers, listeners and sound producing objects becomes the INSTRUMENT·"2 Works such as the John Cage's 4'33" (four minutes and thirty three seconds of "silence") heightened our sensitivity to the acoustic environments in which we hear. Silophone, although a collaborative intervention fed by many "players" across the globe, speaks to the acoustic make-up of our surrounding architecture. Reminds us Giancarlo Toniutti "Sound as a phenomenon is thus part of space, since it can only exist in space."3 A project such as this has its roots in the Musique Conrète movement of 1950s-60s Paris. The musicians (or sound artists) of Musique Conrète (Pierre Schaeffer, Michel Chion, Pierre Henry, Bernard Parmegiani and others) focused on the very substance of "concrete" reality such as: soundscape and noise with an emphasis on the frenetic complexities of urban life; and the city street as a place of "ambiance." The composers of Musique Conrète were keenly interested in creating music through the very devices of recording technology of the time (magnetic tape, phonograph records etc.) Notes Brandon LaBelle,"From here, this point of concreteness, musical composition takes shape through a self-reflexive interest in the very materiality of the recording medium. This materiality is never absent from what we hear - it continually surfaces within the compositions."4 An emphasis on collage incorporating environmental sounds, urban noises, machinery, public interaction, studio effects, and vocal/musical fragments is at the crux of these investigations. Similarly, Silophone is a "material" instrument - a vessel for sound manipulations - incorporating a panoply of sound fragments played through the technology of today: the Internet. Creating a bridge between a fading industrial and an evanescent technological revolution - and negotiating between disaffected architectures in the urban core and networked information technologies across the globe - Silophone participates in the revitalization and sensitization of our architectural/sonic environments. Valérie Lamontagne Notes 1. See: www.silophone.net/about 2. Achim Wollscheid, "Does the Song Remain the Same?", (Ed.) Brandon LaBelle & Steve Roden, Site of Sound: of Architecture & the Ear, Errant Bodies Press in association with Smart Art Press, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 8. 3. Giancarlo Toniutti, "Space as a Cultural Substratum", (Ed.) Brandon LaBelle & Steve Roden, Site of Sound: of Architecture & the Ear, Errant Bodies Press in association with Smart Art Press, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 39. 4. Brandon LaBelle, "Architecture of Noise", (Ed.) Brandon LaBelle & Steve Roden, Site of Sound: of Architecture & the Ear, Errant Bodies Press in association with Smart Art Press, Los Angeles, 1999, p. 54. Silophone Sound's ability to travel through space, to circulate and cross distances, creating a space that escapes visual scope, makes it open to the spatial expansion provided by a communications network like the Web. In this respect, as opposed to radio or music sites, the Silophone project takes many more possibilities into account than those of distribution and broadcasting. Using Silo #5 in Montreal as an acoustic space, it invites us to consider how the environment amplifies, distorts, and appropriates sound. And by renewing connections with the world in the context of digital technologies and inviting the participant to likewise, it emphasizes the importance of physical place, of the possible and desired exchanges between it and cyberspace. In his article "Online Sound and Virtual Architecture," Sean Cubitt points out that, "in communicative feedback," particularly significant for some ethnic communities, "the medium of communication is a living part of the message, its materiality evidence of connectedness" - which contrasts with traditional models of communications whose objective is to deliver a message as unaltered as possible and to repudiate the means of transmission. In Silophone, the sound's trajectory - back and forth between the silo and the participant - and its transformation by the silo are brought into the foreground and made manifest. In the time required for this two-way process - the perceptible 40-second delay seems long - the participant remains in a state of expectancy and alertness. Silence, as much as the sound altered by the silo and returned to the spectator, invites the latter to become aware of the spatiotemporal experience he lends himself to: "Silence, in such a moment, is a pressing engagement with where you are. Suddenly, you are where a sound should be. The effort to hear is simultaneously the effort to define a place." The reverberating sound, like an echo, or kind of distorting mirror, offers a reflection of oneself, changed by the environment through which it is transmitted; thus, the significance of the action resides in this reverberation that includes the individual in his environment, virtual and real. Sylvie Parent Notes 1. Sean Cubitt, "Online Sound and Virtual Architecture", Homestudio Audiolab, 1996 2. Sean Cubitt, "Sound Aphorisms", Rhizome, 1996 ------------ Projects ------------