With a work that pushes the boundaries of sonic consumption
and kicked about the notion of communication, Robin
Rimbaud has, for the last ten years, captured fragments
of life and used them to his advantage. In his early
releases, he used elements of telephone conversations
caught on a scanner and injected them in his beat-less
sound constructions, documenting urban landscapes and
modern lives in an almost librarian way. If his work
has developed based on a wider range of sounds since,
his work remains greatly based on the use of common
sonic sources, he has kept the essence of his early
work alive.
Taking the concept of literal sound manipulation a step
further, Rimbaud teamed up with visual art studio Tonne
to produce an interactive performance at London’s
Institute Of Contemporary Arts (ICA) as part of Imaginaria
’99. For the installation, the artists invited
the public to suggest points of sound interest in the
British capital, then recorded and filmed them and processed
the data using software that converts pixels into sound,
‘giving the user the ability to paint with sound
and compose with light’, hence the title of this
project, offering a strangely cinematic view of city
life. After they won the art show, Scanner and Tonne
went on the reproduce this installation in Montreal,
Milan, Munich and Naples, eventually compiling part
of the work collated into this album for French label
Bip-Hop. Arriving in each city a few days before the
performance, Scanner and Tonne recorded sonic and visual
elements which would be used in the same way as in London.
The first track of this record, based on the London
performance, kicks of with the chimes of Big Ben and
streets noises, but soon alien sounds disturb the urban
landscape, contrasting greatly with the human nature
of the original setting. Typical of the electronic experimentations
of the 1960’s, yet also reminiscent in some ways
of the collaborative work of Geir Jenssen’s Biosphere
and Bobby Bird’s Higher
Intelligence Agency on Birmingham
Frequencies, the ICA Installation Mix
is perhaps the most true to life of these recordings.
The constant recycling of chimes seasoned with crowd
noises, tube announcements and nature sounds acts as
a sonic tour of the city. The Montreal Mix,
representing a quick snapshot of the final installation,
is more straightforward and characteristic of Rimbaud’s
early work. Built around a telephone conversation about
banks and financial news, with a cloud of sounds slowly
growing in the background, the three-and-a-half minute
composition seems pretty static, obliterating any external
input to solely focus on this conversation. The New
York and Tokyo mixes reflect the intense
activity of both cities, with New York focusing
greatly on crowd and street noises, while the Tokyo
Mix is also inhabited by communication devices
in the shape of TV and radio recordings. Here again,
the musical elements evolve slowly, as hampered by intense
heat or dense crowds, although the pace is more intense
in the later. The two remaining tracks, Milano Mix
and Tonne Mix denote a slight lighter tone.
The original project won the Imaginaria art show in
London, and the consequent installations were all very
well received in the respective cities. With these snapshots
of city life around the globe, Scanner and Tonne highlight
the similarities in shape and sounds of urban soundscapes,
yet by using intrinsic elements of each society, reveal
their singularity. Creating dense environmental constructions,
with incredible human interaction, Sound Polaroids
is a truly human record.
4.6/5 |
