Jean-Pierre Gauthier
Daniel Olson

S:ON
03.01–03.31.2006

1. HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP Cricket Voice (1987) 5 min 30s (extrait)

2. PIERRE-ANDRÉ ARCAND Le cercle des tambours (1999) 4 min 59s

3. JEAN-PIERRE GAUTHIER Commodité et commotion (2001) 3 min 40s

4. MICHAEL SNOW Tapotement (1969-1972) 3 min 4s (extrait)

5. MARTIN TÉTRAULT Citations, de Citations, surfaces, objets (2002) 5 min 45s (extrait)

6. ROBERT RACINE Signatures sonores (1994) 8 min 32s

7. BILL MULLAN Omega sunsets (1999) 3 min 32s

8. HUGH LE CAINE Music for Expo (1967) 2 min 14s

9. KEN GREGORY Under the influence of ether (1995) 6 min 56s (extrait)

10. GEORGES AZZARIA Monopole pièce #13 (2000) 59 seconds

11. DIANE LANDRY les sédentaires clandestins (2001) 4 min 1s (extrait)

12. RITA MCKEOUGH Wave over wave (2001) 4 min 6s (extrait)

13. JEAN ROUTIER Bris (1993) 1 min 4s

14. DANIEL OLSEN Soundtrack (1996) 5 min 9s (extrait)

15. HUGH LE CAINE Mouth cavity oscillator with MKI Touch sensitive organ (1995) 1 min 40s

16. EMMANUEL MADAN Soundwalk through “incredibly soft sounds” (1998) 10 min 52s

17. DANIEL OLSON Soundtrack (1996) 5 min 9s (extrait)

As a compliment to the publication “Sound in Contemporary Canadian Art,” the CD S:ON offers different experiences associated with listening and the juxtaposition of sounds and images. It brings together sound documents stemming from a variety of sources including recordings of public performances and improvisations, documentation on one-person and group exhibitions, works developed in the studio or produced by gathering together objects/instruments designed by the artist, and sound emerging from installations and experiments. This non-chronological tour has been put together using works by Quebec and Canadian artists going back to 1955. Although the publication examines the development of sound-oriented practices beginning in the mid-1980s, it seemed important, in the context of this CD, to recall the crucial contribution and widely acknowledged influence of the composer and inventor Hugh Le Caine in the development of electroacoustic music and composition, as well as the contributions of Michael Snow, a visual artist, filmmaker, thinker and musician. Both of these have carved out a space for exploration and research, guided in this endeavour not only by curiosity and a great measure of inventiveness seasoned with humour, but also by a striking freedom with respect to the media they have explored. To their names we can add those of experienced musicians like Martin Tétreault, Hildegard Westerkamp, Ken Gregory, Pierre-André Arcand; musician and curator Emmanuel Madan; visual artists like Diane Landry, Rober Racine, Rita McKeough, Daniel Olson, Jean Routhier and Bill Mullan, who have demonstrated a fine sensitivity to sound; designers and users of sound objects like Jean-Pierre Gauthier and Georges Azzaria.

If the various contributors to the publication have shown that one can assign words to sounds, music and even silence, the artists featured on the CD introduce us to soundscapes of comparable singularity and fecundity for reflection. They offer listeners diverse materials and textures as well as tonalities that are by turns melodic, abrasive, descriptive and abstract. The artists’ principles of writing and composition, and their preferred modes of arranging and associating sounds, are striking in their variety, as are the sources and tools. The strategies include, among other things, audio walks and the recording of the attendant ambient sounds; the use of repition and tape loops; quotation based on principles of evocation, (mis)appropriation, irony and recycling; the exploration of organic, animal and abstract tonalities; and the creation of sound textures born of friction, rubbing or breaks in continuity. The sources consist of recordings made in day-to-day natural and urban settings – which provide the raw materials that the artists eventually transform – and computer-assisted composition. The preferred tools and instruments include turnables, microphones, speakers, hands, voice, breath, pencils, magnetic tape, sound objects, doctored or pirated objects and curious music boxes.

Sound is always around us, perpetually present. With its capacity to intrude upon us, it permeates our environment. It is capable of charming, hypnotizing and enveloping us. It draws listeners under its spell, in the process of creating images. Some of these have an emotional quality, associated as they are with specific memories or emotions, while others are tied in with physical conditions such as the acoustic properties of a place or broadcast venue, or the specific position or stance of the listener. Space and duration, which constitute the two main orientations of this CD, rely on a fundamental property of sound, namely, its mobility. Listening takes place over – and within – time.

Nicole Gingras

HUGH LE CAINE – Music for Expo

“‘Music for Expo’ uses the serial sound structure generator, an instrument which was displayed at Expo 67 in Montreal. The instrument was designed to serialize several parameters of sound which could then be repeated, expanded, contracted, and altered in pitch and timbre” (Notes from the CD folder, text by Gayle Young.) Timeless yet associated with a period keen on experimentation, this work reveals the specificities of a tool and mode of composition used in the analog age.

KEN GREGORY – under the influence of ether

The acoustic raw material for this piece was provided by a computer-controlled radio transmission device used in an installtion presented at “Send and Receive: A Festival of Sound (002), held in Winnipeg in 1999. The initial source was recorded on November 20, 1999 at Video Pool Inc., also in Winnipeg. “Under the influence of ether,” broadcast around the clock every day for the duration of the exhibition, reveals Gregoryès interest in open works and certain principles of evolutive sound production.

GEORGES AZZARIA – Monopole pièce numero 13

Since the early 1990s, Georges Azzaria has been designing acoustic objects, machines and instruments that generate various sounds, noises, creaks, scratches and melodies. In the process, he has developed his own peculiar tonal range along with humorous percussion pieces and works produced via friction and rubbing. He is not alone in playing these anthropomorphic instruments, since he regularly invites other musicians and artists to sound out his array of acoustic objects, sculptures and inventions. “Monopole pièce numero 13” is elliptical, to say the least. Its duration confers a concrete presence on the sounds one hears.

DIANE LANDRY

Les Sédentaires clandestins

This piece is taken from the CD accompanying the catalogue for Landryès exhibition “Les Sédentaires clandestins,” held in Quebec City in 2001. For this installation and sound sculpture the artist, who is known for her use of ordinary objects, turntables an dother devices of her own making, assembled 24 modified turntables and placed them side by side to form a horizontal plane. Objects were placed on the turntables and made to spin continuously, in the process creating lively sound tableaux. Visitors heard sounds documenting this absurd merry-go-round of objects, in addition to various crackling and rubbing noises.

RITA MCKEOUGH – Wave over Wave

This recording documents an installation presented in 2001 at the “Earful Audio Festival” in Halifax. The venue space was permeated with the sound of 24 wooden sticks (controlled by an electronic device) hitting the floor at regular intervals. Three audio tapes (of womenès voices and sea sounds) were laid over these sounds to generate a sound continuum. The wires connecting the sticks to the machine traved out strange paths on the floor. This work can be seen as a sound environment; a kinetic sculpture or a concert of animated wooden objects.

JEAN ROUTHIER – Bris

Taken from a first compilation of works by Routhier executed between 1990 and 2001, Bris laconically reveals the power of fragments, fracutes and discontinuity. Despite its brevity, the piece brings together various richly textures acoustic materials. The whole of Routhier’s work is imbued with irony and exhibits a certain casualness with respect to musical composition.

HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP – Cricket Voice

“Cricket Voice” began in Mexico, in the desert area known as the “Zone of silence.” The artist transformed the cricket noises she recorded there in such a way to produce a melody composed of several sound layers. This piece exhibits some of the characteristic features of Westerkamp’s work, including attentiveness to ambient and natural sounds, the making of audio recordings during excursions on foot and, more especially, the conversion of source or raw material into acoustic or musical material.

PIERRE-ANDRÉ ARCAND – Le cercle des tambours

Le cercle des tambours grew out of a studio improvisation in which Arcand surrounded himself with such tools of his own making as his “resounding book,” macchina ricordi and microphones employed as musical instruments. The repetitive and frenetic scansion of the same sounds lends the work a quality that is both funny and fiabolical. Arcand succeeds not only in creating images and suggesting a narrative, but also in carving out an entirely new acoustic space.

JEAN-PIERRE GAUTHIER – Commodité et commotion

“Commodité et commotion,” as the author likes to point out, enjoys the status of an “ephemeral object.” The installation, created for the “Angelica International Music Festival held in Bologna, Italy, in May 2001, was put together using materials found on location. Listeners familiar with Gauthier’s work will recognize the tonalities generated here by rubbing and friction as also characteristic of several of his installations and performances.

MICHAEL SNOW – Tap

In this piece, Michael Snow deals with various aspects of sound and its diffusion in space. He tells us that sound moves through space and fills it, that a sound source has no definite outlines, and that its diffusion requires a speaker connected to a wire – the latter tracing a line on the floor that is far from being insignificant. The installation is composed of a framed black and white photograph, a framed typewritten text, a tape recorder, a speaker and a magnetic tape. The sound was produced by Snow’s repeated and regular tapping of a microphone against a tape recorder.

MARTIN TÉTREAULT – Citations, from Citations, surfaces, objets

This is the first section of a three-part improvisation played on January 16, 2002, in the context of the “Volt-AA” event held in Montreal. The piece is based on principles of interruption, discontinuity and rupture, as applied to overlays of sounds, noises and music. Some sounds were literally and intentionally “left hanging.” Tétreault sought to blend atmospheres and evocations generated by the various melodies he assembled during hte improvisation. This work also addressed the question of erasure, an issue dear to the artist in his performances and the objects he has presented in previous installations.

ROBER RACINE – Signatures sonores

“Signatures sonores” is based on a colelction of signatures: a number of people were invited to sign their names over the course of several minutes, using their voice of pencil and paper. In this way Racine paid tribute to a somewhat trivial matter that often goes unnoticed: the sounds of written words. This work is also a poetic and physical celebration of writing.

BILL MULLAN – Omega Sunsets

This piece, taken from a CD compilation produced by the Western Front Society, represents a collaborative undertaking by artists working in various media (video, radio, sound installation, music, performance and writing) and displaying a pronounced sensitivity and interest with respect to sound. The project emerged from several live improvisations in which the artists used sounds produced by traditional and handmade instruments along with voice, the breath and magnetic tape. Bill Mullan selected a few segments from these sessions and reworked them into their final shape as a strange sound collagem as “music out of noise” – to use his own expression. Paul Clarke was a guest contributor.

DANIEL OLSON – Soundtrack

By having a vinyl record spin endlessly at the end of its playing time, Olson raises questions about the passage of time and about what happens when listening is over. Suffused with nostalgia and created with the help of what one could call background noise, this piece is intentionally wearing. As such, it stimulates reflection on time.

HUGH LE CAINE – Mouth Cavity Oscillator with MKI Touch Sensitive Organ

“Le Caine described them as demonstrations, preferring to leave the ‘composing’ to professional composers.” (Notes from the CD folder, text by Gayle Young.) For this piece imbued with humour, Le Caine used the voice as an instrument and paved the way for a series of later experiments by various artists, performers and musicians.

EMMANUEL MADAN – Soundwalk through “Incredibly Soft Sounds”

This recording documents a walk through the “Incredibly Soft Sounds” exhibition, where the curator, Emmanuel Madan, collected sounds. The exhibition was presented from January 8 to February 2, 1998 at Gallery 101 in Ottawa. It brought together sound works by Christof Migone, Terence Dick, Eric La Casa, Terry Piercey, Sandra Szasz, Carl Stewart, Brandon Labelle, Michael Campbell, and Claude Schryer as well as visual works by Noreen Battaglia, Ian Cauthery, and Jeannine Schryer.