Scenocosme

Interview by Fanny Bauguil (VIDEOFORMES relay teacher) and Manon Derobert (VIDEOFORMES communications manager)

• How would you describe this installation? What do we see? What do we hear? What do we do?
  What is it about?

Lights Contacts

Interactive work of light and sound

Perceptible to two or more people, this sensitive, tactile, sound and light installation uses spectators’ bodies to transform them into human sound instruments.

The first person places his hand on the marble and takes a breath. As long as she maintains contact with it, her body is noticeably reactive to the contact of other living bodies. But if she remains alone, there is no reaction. She must invite a second person to touch her, and the contact must be skin-to-skin. Depending on the proximity of the contacts and the spectators, each bodily touch provokes variations in light and sound. Staged as a ritual of encounters through touch, it creates unexpected bonds between people who may or may not know each other.In this work, we augment the spectator’s body, turning it into a living sensor: skin-to-skin contact between human bodies generates sound and light in real time. In this way, we offer a sensory experience that makes our electrostatic contacts with others audible and luminous. Sound textures change according to the approach and electrostatic intensity of each individual. This language of sound is experienced in contact with the bodies of others. We’re interested in the way certain sounds influence the way we touch others, and in this way we put the spectators’ bodies on stage. This installation, ritualized by contact, unites human beings of different cultures and personalities in a performance that they reinvent together, in real time and ephemerally.

Lights Contacts is the work most representative of our approach to interactivity. Interaction involves touching another’s skin. It gives rise to both improbable stagings and powerful emotions. Skin-to-skin contact generates a multitude of possible sound scenarios that stimulate a variety of behaviors. Sometimes, dozens of people form human chains around the work. Individuals who don’t know each other at the outset caress each other’s hands and faces, or invent singular gestures. The work creates intense moments of encounter and play, transcending all generational and social barriers. All this is made possible by an artistic ritual that creates intimate, ephemeral encounters.

We’re interested in how sound can influence relationships between spectators. Variations in proximity and electrostatic energy influence sound and light textures, which in turn induce singular interactions between spectators. Different groups of sounds are associated with different shades of light, generating a wide range of staging possibilities. The luminous hue evolves according to the sound pitch, offering fragile vibrations linked to the subtle energetic variations between the bodies.

The installation also creates a kind of bracketed space, where proxemic distances as experienced in everyday life are temporarily broken. The ritual of touching follows a series of preconditions (such as breathing time) before coming into contact with the other. In this situation, which makes our electrostatic contacts with others sensitive, the aim is to provoke and shake up the degrees of closeness we maintain with known and unknown beings: hierarchical positions and social distances are banished during these sensory relationships. Lights Contacts thus generates a transgressive space-time in which social relations are suddenly overturned and inverted.

As a work of mediation, this installation offers a social, sensory and symbolic dimension, involving the public sensitively and emotionally. It has the capacity to create unexpected links between visitors. It offers the possibility of bringing people together, provoking interrelationships and stimulating the imagination.

• Is this the first time this installation has been presented to the public?

We’ve already exhibited this work many times, in France and abroad since 2010, in very different geographical and cultural contexts. On each occasion, the artistic ritual makes contact possible between people who don’t know each other, whatever the culture or context.

Because of its important social dimension, this work also finds its place in public space under the name Urban Lights Contacts. The scenography of the work and its luminous dimension reveal the surrounding space – a building, an architecture – in a way that is ephemeral, surprising, alive and vibrating only when spectators come into contact. The light and sound vibrations then appear fragile, depending only on electrostatic exchanges linked to contact between spectators.

• Can you tell us a little about the process involved in creating this work?
  Can you give us one or more web addresses where we can see your work?

Our interactive works propose sensitive relationships capable of heightening our senses and perceptions. The spectator’s body is the focus of all our attention, insofar as it is capable of entering into a relationship with others and with the elements. We are particularly interested in the relationships that individuals can have with each other, and in proposing new possibilities for encounters and relationships with the works. In our approach, we always seek to physically and socially involve the viewer’s body at the heart of the work, so that they become one with it, very often through touch. The evolution of technologies constantly leads us to divert them from their primary use, in order to design sensory works capable of perceiving and feeling. In this way, we propose sensitive, symbolic and living interactions that question the public’s contemporary relationship with the environment, whether natural or social.

For many years, our artistic approach has led us to make sensitive, visible and audible the invisible relationships we have with the natural and social environment. In particular, since 2007 we have been following a process of hybridization between nature and technology, with technology disappearing in order to sublimate a sensitive and symbolic relationship that is most often experienced through touch. In most of our works, we play with different degrees of proximity and intimacy, depending on the viewer and his or her cultural environment. We explore the depths of touch, from real contact to effleurement. The different qualities of contact and approach with the elements reflect singular connections, symbolic relationships. These exchanges generally translate into specific sound languages that awaken in us a sense of existence, both in our bodies and in our relationship with the environment.

Our artistic approach is explained here:
https://www.scenocosme.com/PDF/publication_toucher_l_invisible_scenocosme.pdf

A text by Pascal Krajewski: https://www.scenocosme.com/PDF/critique/Pascal_Krajewski_art_techno.pdf

• What difficulties, constraints, challenges… have you encountered in the development of your installations?

The notion of interaction, beyond interactivity, is a precious, delicate aspect of each of our installations. We strive to develop it so as to offer a strong, sensory and symbolic gesture. In each of our interactive works resulting from this hybridization process between nature and technology, we sublimate a fragile contact into an emotional relationship. As we work with the living, with electrostatic energy, and in ever-changing environments, we also have to find a balance each time, an interactive accuracy that demands a great deal of our attention. We’ve gradually built up a set of electronic devices and software settings to match.

• A few keywords that would fit in well with your installation?

Interrelations, interactions, emotions, encounters, social, body, skin, touch, behaviors

• A few words about your artistic career? When did you first become interested in digital art?

We’ve been living and working together since 2003 in the Rhône-Alpes region of France. Since 2003, our creations have taken shape in a variety of forms: interactive installations, visual art, digital art, sound art, collective performances, etc. By distilling digital technology, we bring out its dreamy, poetic essence, making the most of its living, sensitive and even fragile aspects. We hijack various technologies and develop the notion of interactivity, whereby the work exists and evolves thanks to the spectators’ bodily and social relationships. We create hybridizations between technologies and living or natural elements. Most of our interactive works perceive various invisible relationships between bodies and the environment. We make sensitive the minute energetic variations of living beings by proposing interactive stagings where spectators share extraordinary sensory experiences.

Anaïs, born in 1981, holds a DNSEP diploma from Lyon’s Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She completed a post-graduate diploma at the Saint-Étienne School of Art and Design. She also holds a degree in anthropology and trained in electroacoustic music at the Villeurbanne national music school.

Grégory, born in 1976, holds a Master’s degree in multimedia from the Arts Plastiques / Arts Numériques department at Valenciennes University. He also has several degrees in computer and electronic engineering.

• Do you manage to make a living from your creative work?

We’ve been working and making a living from our creations for some twenty years.