“Bas-Relief” is an interactive sound art performance for mixed media with sound by Tom Gurin. Watch and listen to a version of it (ten channels rendered to stereo) below. Headphones or high-quality speakers are recommended:
“Bas-Relief” is an interactive sound art piece for mixed media. It reflects on the silenced bells of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The piece consists of eleven tracks that become spatialized based on the audience’s movements. Each audience member is asked to scan a QR code whose HTML target randomly redirects to one of the tracks. Individually, each track is unrecognizable as a bell. However, collectively, they fit together like a sonic jigsaw puzzle to reveal a processed field recording of the full ten-bell plenum of Notre-Dame de Paris.
The title comes from the sculpture technique used by French artist Virginie Bassetti to decorate the outside of each bell.
The first presentation of “Bas-Relief” took place in Paris on Mar 6, 2022.
Instructions
By scanning this QR code, each audience member is randomly assigned an audio track that represents one of the bells of Notre Dame de Paris.
Alternatively, they can simply navigate to https://tomgurin.com/basrelief/.
Once loaded, this page is written to randomly redirect to one of the following eight other pages, each of which contains one audio file:
- https://tomgurin.com/jean-marie/
- https://tomgurin.com/maurice/
- https://tomgurin.com/benoit-joseph/
- https://tomgurin.com/etienne/
- https://tomgurin.com/marcel/
- https://tomgurin.com/denis/
- https://tomgurin.com/anne-genevieve/
- https://tomgurin.com/gabriel/
Each electronically manipulated file represents one (currently silent) bell inside the north tower of Notre Dame de Paris and, more importantly, a part for that audience member to play in the performance of “Bas-Relief”. The two bells in the south tower, Emmanuel and Marie, are not offered to the audience due to their low pitch content, requiring larger speakers than are typically built into smartphones. These, along with the original field recording, are played using installed speakers in the performance space.
Projection
The projection was designed and performed using Jitter. Its form is a digital screen relief in two dimensions that reflects the innovative, linear sculptures (in three-dimensional bas-relief) by Virginie Bassetti displayed on the outside of each bell.