“Handle with Care” is an interactive sound sculpture installation that explores the acoustics and psychoacoustics of haptic feedback. The focal point of the installation is Haptique : Boîtes à Musique. This series is composed of three gently vibrating sculptures. When touched, the pitch and tone of each sculpture changes depending on where and how pressure is applied. Audience members are invited to interact with the sculptures by using their hands to change the sound, blurring the line between performance and audience, between sculpture and musical instrument, and between sound and vibration.
The installation was open at the United States Foundation in Paris from June 7-30, 2023.
Videos
Haptique : Boîtes à Musique
In musical terms, each sculpture is an idiophone; that is, it creates sound not by oscillating a string or an air column, but rather by vibrating with its entire mass, much like a bell does. Inside of each box are simple electronic components (two small contact microphones and two to four small speakers) that create a feedback loop. That loop is being constantly filtered through the material of the sculpture. When something new comes into contact with the surface of the material, such as a hand, it redirects some of the kinetic energy through itself, changing the pitch and tone of the sound. In this way, through touch, audience members are able to literally connect themselves to the sounds and the sculptures.
Music cognition researchers are only beginning to uncover the psychology of haptics—not just hearing vibrations, but feeling them, too. This research has wide-ranging implications for technology, accessibility, and art. According to this research, physically feeling musical vibrations on the skin strengthens the connections between audiences and artists. In addition to strengthening the psychological connection between the public and the art, the goal of this project is to challenge the distinctions between sculpture and musical instrument design and between sound and vibration.
Small box: Amplifier, two speakers, two contact microphones, stereo speaker wire, cardboard, craft paper
Medium box: Amplifier, four speakers, subwoofer, two contact microphones, stereo speaker wire, cardboard, craft paper
Large box: Amplifier, four speakers, two contact microphones, stereo speaker wire, cardboard, craft paper
Wind Chimes (I and II)
Wood, cotton string. Please touch.
Don’t Touch
AC motor, paintbrush, guitar. Please do not touch.
Bas Relief
Duration: 12’30”
Sound by Tom Gurin
Video projection by Owen Moran
“Bas Relief” is an interactive sound art piece for mixed media. It reflects on the silenced bells of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral.
Instructions
The piece consists of ten tracks, each of which represents an individual bell from the cathedral. Each audience member is asked to scan one of the QR codes using their smartphone. (Please check that notifications and ringtones are turned off, but that the media volume is turned up.) Each QR code has a different HTML target that points to one of the tracks. For example, scanning the “Emmanuel” QR code will allow you to play the lowest bell of the cathedral, which is named “Emmanuel”. There is also the option to scan the “Random” QR code, whose HTML target randomly redirects to one of the bells.
Once the sound file of your chosen bell has loaded, press the play button and turn up the volume. Feel free to stand still or to walk around the space with your device in hand. (Please double check that notifications remain silenced.)
About the Piece
Individually, each track in “Bas Relief” 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 sounds become spatialized based on the audience’s movements, giving new life to the silenced bells while reimagining their voices through sound and vibration.
I was inspired to create this piece after working with Virginie Bassetti, the artist who sculpted the outside of each new bell in 2013 and who will re-sculpt the bells that were damaged during the 2019 fire. The title comes from the sculpture technique that she uses. In addition to regular meetings at her studio in Normandie, we also met once in the Netherlands to sculpt two large bells together. I carefully observed her techniques, including layering each bell with thin circular tracings using the bas-relief technique, followed by a chemical process for the pre-patination of select portions of bronze for variation in color. At that time, more than two years after the Notre-Dame fire, she was still unsure whether the cathedral’s bells had been damaged. Even so, she expressed her awareness that all bells’ physical appearances are bound to change. Once they ascend into the tower, she said, their near invisibility is a part of them; it is our collective memory of their images that survives. Bronze bells are more than just musical instruments; they exist at the intersection of architecture, sculpture, and sound.
During the nineteenth century, French bells were at the center of a debate over modernization, as well as a struggle for power between church and state. As historian Alain Corbin points out, in French villages, bells were real tools for controlling territory and time. During the nineteenth century, bellringing was a practical method for dividing the hours of daylight, depending on the sun’s changing patterns throughout the year. Many people were skeptical when those bells became governed by mechanized clockworks, whose “implacable régularité conduit insidieusement à la désacralisation des jours” (Corbin). In this way, bells became a sonic reminder of technological advancements while also literally marking the passage of time. This technological tension is very present in “Bas Relief”, which is a “digital relief” of analog silence.
The bells of Notre-Dame cathedral are scheduled to begin ringing again in 2024, following five years of silence.