3 March 2022

Art-science project with Julie Semoroz

Douze mille vingt Exhibitions, Perfomances, Concerts & Workshops

Born from the collaboration with the Flux Laboratory and Prof. Didier Grandjean from CISA – NCCR Evolving Language, DOUZE MILLE VINGT refers to the internal perception of sound and acts on the capacity to feel the internal physiological activity as indicators of emotions, of the body state.

Using recorded sounds – field recordings, human voices and various vocalisations and sounds produced by animals – and manipulated by software/hardware, the artist Julie Semoroz explores an utopian world where inter-species communication would be a reality.

Past representations Montreux Jazz Festival

The NCCR Evolving Language was an organizing partner of a workshop at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 7th, 6.30 pm.

For this workshop, Julie Semoroz worked in collaboration with musicologist Charlotte Graber and Alain Dufaux, operational director at EPFL Metamedia Center. Together they went through MJF’s archives and made a selection of some of the greatest voices that made Montreux vibrate over the years. The public was invited to feel and try and recognise those voices during a sound and vibration blind-test: each participant will receive a transducer (vibrating speaker), with which to feel through various parts of their body the vibrations induced by the music and vocalisations. During the workshop, Prof Didier Grandjean, Pi for the NCCR Evolving Language, introduced his research on bodily vibrations and emotional vocalisations to the public.

EPFL

8 - 13 March, EPFL Pavilions, Pavillon A : 11 am - 6 pm : Xyloscille, sound and visual installation

Xyloscilla
A light hubbub – diffused rattling and buzzing – and a woody scent emanate from the forest of planks standing vertically, against a wall or in a circle. Xyloscilla (from the Greek xylo-, oscillating sound) is an imposing sound installation which engages the whole body. Resting against the large slats, the vibrations produced by the sound waves are transmitted by physical contact, the softness and the sensuality of the surface inviting to touch, to caress the wood. The Arolle du Valais used here exudes a smell with hypotensive properties, capable of calming the heartbeat of someone sleeping. A sort of vertical sound cradle, each plank, unique in its essence as well as through the gesture of the carpenter who shaped it, conducts the sound differently. In return, the more or less languid body makes the sound oscillation vary in intensity. This body vibrating in concert with the wood marks the imprint of a new kind of symbiosis, of inter-species communication, which brings the subject closer to the object, the human closer to the plant, mutually linked by the sound wave that travels through them.
8 - 9 March, Rolex Learning Center : 12am - 1pm : Interspecies communication, performance with Julie Semoroz and Fabio Bergamaschi
10 March, EPFL Pavilions A : 7 pm : Foralgues, concert with Julie Semoroz (voice, machines) and the Ensemble Contrechamps (Martina Brodbeck, cello and Rada Hadjikostova, violin)

Foralgues

Based on the recurrent research of the artist Julie Semoroz, FORALGUES is part of an ongoing process of work on sound frequencies and their field of application. Equipped with a transducer, each participant is invited to a bodily and sensory exploration in order to feel the vibrations induced by the musicians of Contrechamps and the animal and human vocalizations produced by Julie Semoroz on the parts of his/her body. Thus, each participant becomes sound for the duration of an acoustic and vibratory concert.
10 March, EPFL Pavilions A | 7.30 pm : Round table (French) Intéroception et vocalisation animale