Yann Robin

Symétriades / Extension - Performance - 2017

présentée dans le cadre de l'exposition panorama 19

Performance


Symétriades/Extension takes the form of an audio, visual and performative piece. The poetic universe of this project is borrowed directly from Solaris, a science fiction novel by Stanislas Lem. Solaris is a planet orbiting a pair of suns whose surface is entirely covered by an ocean of protoplasmic matter that constitutes an impenetrable enigma for the scientists who have been studying it for almost a century.
The ocean surface throws up gigantic formations the scientists baptise according to their shape or characteristics: Longus, Mimoids, Agilus, Vertebrids, Symetriads, Asymetriads…
Symétriades/Extension is the fruit of a collaboration between Nicolas Crosse (double bass player), Alain Fleischer (visual artist), and Yann Robin (composer).
Our intention with this work is to give rise to a gigantic, organic, “living” creature whose every component is interdependent and whose nerve centre whose vital organ is constituted by the double bass player and his instrument. The soloist and the double bass will be positioned on a structure placed in the middle of the “playing” space. The instrumentalist’s body, the double bass, as well as the structure, will act as surfaces on which various visual dimensions will come to life.
By extension, this visual entity, whatever its forms, will extend and proliferate in the architectural space hosting the performance. The plan is to produce the project in the large hall at Le Fresnoy.
This space would make an ideal set into which the double bass player, the epicentre of the events, would be thrown as into an arena to be observed from balconies overhanging the “playing” surface.
The sound of the solo instrument will be transformed in real time by algorithms and relayed (spatialised) through an arrangement of loudspeakers and subwoofers laid out around, above and below the audience.
The combined effect of both the visual and the audio will be like plunging the audience into an immersive experience of engulfment. The audiovisuals will be correlated by the soloist’s gestures with his instrument; that is, the reactions of the digital equipment (visual and audio) will depend on the physical action of the double bass player and the energy he transmits through his instrument.
The aim of what is inevitably an interaction, a fusion between the worlds of the seen and the heard, is the invention, the creation of an Unindentified Visiomusical Object rooted solely in perceptual, sensory experience…

Yann Robin


Production


Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing

Partenaires

Ircam - Centre Pompidou — Ensemble Multilatérale