Piezzo Landscape

Some pictures, taken by Pierre-Antoine Delpino, of the sound installation presented during the Rivington Place invigilators' show.

The idea is to make the visitor interacting with a physical object, that is triggering sounds broadcasted into the exhibition space. The visitor becomes part of the installation as an actor and a listener.

In this installation, 80 different samples of sounds can be triggered. They are the result of one year of recording since my father died, the 20th of december 2007, all drawn from my affected sound environment and sound memories. Some of the sound are my father's own recordings, where we can hear him play the tuba and talk.

The visitors can create their own soundscape as a threnody, a journey through a long and confused grief.
Recordings will be taking place on the 11th of december from 6 - 8pm and a copy on CD will be given on demand.

To my dad, the musician and the artist.

Rivington Place invigilators' show

Rivington Place invigilators' Show 2008 is a showcase of selected work by its staff members. We invite you to visit this exciting exhibition including photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, mosaic and sound installation.

Gwenan Elisa Davies, Lorenzo Durantini, Bern Roche Farelly, Christa Holka, Barbara Lambert, Erin O'Connor, Iva Pietrova, Olga Raciborska, Iri Rocha da Cruz, Ryoko Takahashi and Caroline Tobin. Curated by Lora Rempel.

Education Space
Rivington Place
London
EC2A 3BA
www.rivingtonplace.org

Opening times:
5 - 13 December 2008
Wednesday to Saturday 12pm - 6 pm

MANTA RAY

Here is a feeling of my Londonian summer...


During her MA Fine Arts degree show, Eugenia Emets has presented an installation crossing over 3D animation, holographic projection and multi-channel diffusion sound.




This project saw the beginning of a collaboration between Eugenia Emets (photographer, visual artist), Perseus Mandillo (3D artist) and Barbara Lambert (sound artist).

"Darkness is the necessary condition of the holographic effect that can be achieved in this project: the viewer cannot see the screen and the boundaries of the space are vague (due to the fact that the walls, the floor and the ceiling are black). The “object” is literally hanging in space like a hologram across the black background of the space."
Extract from Vesica Piscis script, written by Eugenia Emets.



Picture of the space on the 7th floor of the Central Saint Martins College, before the transparent foil screen was installed.





The sound produced for the video is based on a triangle of composition. The first element is the sound of a tuba that was processed through granulation synthesis; then the recordings of the exhibition space with contact microphones disposed on the noisiest wall of the room and the recordings of Eugenia's breathing.
The idea was to give life to a shape evolving in the dark through the relationship between a specific space -the sound I could get out of it-, a musical instrument -used as a harmonic ground- and human presence -expressed through breathing-.




Manta Ray, 2:36'. Sound by Barbara Lambert

End of year show at LCC

wednesday 11th june
drinks from 6 pm
programme from 7pm

Media School
London College of Communication
Elephant & Castle

LONDON SE1 6SB

The corrupted role of the musician

...The last aspect of this compositional process that really grabbed my attention was the fact that the traditional role of the musician is totally corrupted. The musician has to let the instrument play on its own, still he will act on the shape of the Theremin's sound. Then, becomes a very careful listener when he records the environmental and the instrumental sounds. After, he becomes a technician when he switches on the machines and an explorer when he has to set up this installation in the forest...
Have a look at the installation through this short video composed of raw footages mixed with some birds and wind sounds...

The environment and his compositional role

...The aspect I really appreciated to explore and discover, was the sort of dialectic that built all through the composition between the instrument and its environment. The pitch and the volume of the Theremin changed with the movement of the tree branches. Now, I think that the environment in this piece was an essential motor in the process of composition. My role was only to find a place for the instrument to seat properly on trees, sometimes I changed the shape of the wave or its brightness and of course I was there to listen to every little detail and record the situation simultaneously. Sometimes I was wondering if there was a response from the environment to the presence of the instrument and myself...

Musical artifact in nature

Recordings of the theremin as part as a soundscape composition.

...In the same kind of idea I wanted to introduce a musical instrument in nature and then introduce the notion of artifact in nature. At some point it led me to explore different degrees of paradox -which is a recurrent idea in my work-, illustrated by the electronic sound of the machine opposed to the organic sounds of the wind between the tree leaves or the birds and also the image of the metallic antennas inside the tree branches...

Natural figured bass expressed through a Theremin

The natural figured bass expressed through a Theremin is a project grounded in a very specific cultural frame. It is inspired from the technique of the figured bass, which was used in all genres of music during the Baroque period and consist, shortly, in having a bass part played all through a composition.
Moreover, the fact that improvised organ accompaniments for choral works were common by the late 16th century, let me imagine that I could experiment this technique with any kind of instrument, voice or sounds, as a free personal interpretation. This is why I allowed myself to transpose this 16th-17th century art to our contemporary period.
Then, I have chosen to use a Theremin in this composition and introduce this musical artefact in a natural environment, in the forest. This idea is in relation to the introduction of electronic instruments in the classical orchestra and contemporary music during the first half of the 20th century.

Sound installation

I believe that Sound, in a specific environment, can be highly evocative with many layers of meaning. People become part of the installation and interact with it, triggering sounds in an aleatory fashion.

Those sounds are drawn from different places and represent the interferences between my personal sound environment, the sound of my piano and my sound memories. It is also a metaphore of the paradox between artificial, mecanic and natural world.

Resituating them in an enclosed space suggests something of the internal confusion that people experience in life.
Exhibit 08 till the 30th of May, Arts Gallery, 65 Davies street London.

XHIBIT

The private view is tonight!

Yesterday, with the curator and the technician, we found a nice and cosy place for the sound installation, against the wall, in which we made a big hole for the wires.

The speakers are the result of a great collaboration with Catarina Chaby (also student in sound design at LCC).

Read more about our future collaboration on sound installations later, in summer projects.


The installation in itself is invisible, all the equipment is behind the wall, so we keep a bit of the "Mystere". Visitors have access to the "meringue mics" -they are contact mics sheltered in disguise...- they can touch them, walk over them, crush them down (...) and this is how the interaction happens.

Come to the installation to listen to your composition of sounds...

Sound installation

From the 1st of May, you will be able to see and listen to my sound installation at EXHIBIT 08.

"A fresh fusion of raw talent: Yinka Shonibare selects the art students to watch" ...

World renowned artist Yinka Shonibare has selected 41 of the most controversial and exciting new art and design talents from University of the Arts London for a fresh, eclectic exhibition opening at the Arts Gallery on 2 May.

Joining Turner Prize-nominated artist Yinka Shonibare on the selection panel were leading members of the British art and design scene, including Transition Gallery director Cathy Lomax and Moving Brands co-founder James Bull.

In its eleventh year, XHIBIT is a unique annual exhibition featuring artists in perhaps their most experimental and confrontational creative phase. The selection for XHIBIT 08 brings together sound design, film, ceramics, photography, drawing, illustration, product and graphic design, painting, sculpture, animation, and costume design..."


The exhibition will take place for a month from the 2nd of May at the Arts Gallery & Hub Cafe/Bar, University of the Arts London, 65 Davies Street, London W1K 5DA.

Read more, please see the following links:
http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/event/xhibit_1952_20080530_0800,
http://www.artrabbit.com/events/event/5368/xhibit_08

Under the Cherry Tree

Nature is a source of inspiration that leads me to musical lyricism.
This video celebrates the very fragile but beautiful London spring. Sensations, thoughts and feelings fuse and through a synthesis created and then improvised in our labs at school, I try to express a certain "confusion des sentiments" happening during the re-birth of nature.

video and sound © copyright by Barbara Lambert 2008

Sound Installation

The sound installation I have been trying to work out, is going to be shown at the University of Arts in Davies st, during EXHIBIT 08.

This project is based on the idea of creating an artificial sound environment made from sounds that I would have recorded. I mean artificial, because the sounds would be broadcasted over loudspeakers in a space that might have nothing to do with the place where they were recorded. The idea is also about creating a paradoxal or even impossible (sound wise) situation, by broadcasting specific sounds from an outdoor space in a closed room, or for example, sounds from an urban scene and sounds from the forest overlapped...

Read more about it later...

Hailstorm

Trying to give a meaning, a sonic identity to images.
Expressing through sound the dynamic aspect and the movements suggested by the images of the hailstorm, as well as exploring the paradox of this situation suggested by my position, being simultaneously static, watching the frame and playing, improvising on these images trying to make them speak.

In these sessions of improvisations, looking through the window, looking at an image, or at a screen is a source of inspiration and playing on an instrument simultaneously allows me to communicate, describe a situation, tell a story, create dialogs or a musical language...

video and sound © copyright by Barbara Lambert 2008

Dark Lights

Looking "through the window" is a reference to italian renaissance paintings, where in the background of portraits, a window frame was painted, opening the scene to a landscape, giving depth to the initial work.

As one of my favorite "passe-temps", it is a theme I like to develop in music, staring at the outside world, and apprehending it through a frame, listening and re-imagining a musical landscape, repositioning myself through a certain aesthetic point of view.
The idea of creating a situation from different elements, images and sounds, remains as a dialectic exercise in my work and adding sounds to images gives the same depth as a background landscape in a portrait.
This approach leads me to explore paradoxes, dissonances, curious disharmonies, oxymoronic situations and suggestions.

video and sound © copyright by Barbara Lambert 2008

WELCOME

Welcome, this is a blog under construction, illustrating my work, my inspirations and my thoughts...