CIME Belgium - FeBeME

Composer: Charo Calvo (Spain)

Sound Diffusion: Todor Todoroff (Belgium)

The sonic response of a modular synthesizer to small variations on electric voltage is so mysterious to me, as that a of a balloon singing while forced to exhale the air by squeezing the opening. I have been working with those two sound devices to try to crack the enigma without success, but in the meantime, I produced this piece. It also draws on elements of the Pol Bury monotype digital sur canvas after Ingres’painting ‘Oedipe explique l’énigme du sphinx’ and of the work of Turkish choreographer Bahar Temiz with whom I have collaborated especially for the dance performance Punkt (2023) which speaks of various notions of perspective and depth, also reminding me of certain issues in Bury's work.

Composer: Roeland Luyten (Belgium)

Sound Diffusion: Todor Todoroff (Belgium)

“Viscosités” is an exploration of different auditory densities, a fusion of sounds and textures that evokes both fluidity and thickness. The work is inspired by the physical property of a fluid, which determines the degree of resistance to flow or deformation. It highlights the interaction between the various sound elements, like the interactions between molecules in different states of matter. This piece was produced in the Musiques & Recherches studio in March 2024.

Composer/Sound Diffusion: Todor Todoroff (Belgium)

Voice: François Vaiana

In the cycle “Voices“, “Voices Part IV - Hallucinations” continues the exploration of the human voice, its resonances and transformations. Journeys through intuitions and analogies, disruptions of the senses and phantasmagoria with the words of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, taken mainly from “A season in Hell” and inspired by the letters known as “of the Visionary”.

The work with François Vaiana, founding member of the Brussels Vocal Project, uses a wide variety of digital processing, both in real time, while recording, with auditory feedback for the singer, and after the recording.

In particular, it takes advantage of the multiple possibilities offered by a proprietary analysis-resynthesis software, enabling partials to be extracted and resynthesized in a multichannel sound space, with various waveforms and modulated phase distortions. Processes for selecting and modifying the frequency of individual partials enable the generation of a continuum of textures ranging from inharmonic sonorities to quasi-orchestral inflections that unfold in space.

Voices Part IV - Hallucinations was composed at ARTeM studio with support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Direction générale de la culture, Service de la musique) and premièred on the 14th of February 2024 at Bozar in Brussels, Belgium, in the framework of the Belgian Music Days.

CIME Belgium - M&R (Musiques and recherches)

Composer: Annette Vande Gorne (Belgium)

Sound Diffusion: WEN Bihe (China)

Not objectified nature, which today asserts itself through the accumulation of climate disasters, but the animal voice, subjectivised by a certain anthropomorphism. The animal world has its own language codes, expressing the primary needs that concern us all: love, hunger, fear. When listened to, these signals can be grouped into three dynamic behaviours: inflections, iterations and melodic profiles, which are the subject of study in this fifth and final work in the Vox Alia cycle. The space, whether pointillist, movement or ambio-phonic, is here rather symbolic. Work produced in 2024 at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches. With the support of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Department of Artistic Creation. Original format in 16.4.

Composer: Elizabeth Anderson (Belgium)

Sound Diffusion: WEN Bihe (China)

In outer space, there is no gravity as we know it, and there is no sound, so we are free to imagine it.Helios & Selene (part 1) is a three-dimensional theater piece for sound. The sound material is quivering and nervous, which gives it a sense of airborne instability, and it deploys as characters that bask on a three-dimensional stage in the interplay between the light of the sun and the shadow of the moon. Yet, there is a physical element to the sound material that is palpably human, and despite its celestial moorings, it is a movement-driven piece that can be sensed by the human body on Earth. The dialectic between opposites is a constant source of creative tension for me; in the case of Helios & Selene (part 1), it unfolds as the dialogue between the light of the sun and the shadow of the moon as well as between the body-centeredness of the human being and limitless outer space. To create the fluid sound constructions for Helios & Selene (Part 1), it was necessary to conceive space differently, without gravity. This was made possible by a residency at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches (Ohain, Belgium) in October 2024.

The initial sound material comes from Productions Totem Contemporain in Montréal (Québec), from field recordings made in the summer of 2024, and from earlier recordings made in Istanbul (Turkey) and in the studio. Helios & Selene (part 1) was realized in 2024 at the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio of Musiques & Recherches in Ohain (Belgium) and at the composer’s studio in Brussels (Belgium), and premiered on December 18, 2024 in the Fondation Annette Vande Gorne - Concert 2 at Le Senghor in Brussels. Helios & Selene (Part 1) was commissioned by Musiques & Recherches and was composed with support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles-Service des Musiques. Thanks to Annette Vande Gorne for her support.

CIME Mexico - AARSOM

Composer: Elías Puc (Mexico)

Sound Diffusion: WEN Bihe (China)

Alquimia Sonora is a contemporary electroacoustic work that pays tribute to the innovative Mexican composer Javier Álvarez. Inspired by his unique ability to fuse musical tradition with modernity, this piece invites the listener on a sonic journey where the conventional boundaries of music dissolve. Through the manipulation and transformation of sound, Alquimia Sonora celebrates creative exploration, experimentation, and openness to new auditory landscapes, resonating with Álvarez's transgressive and visionary spirit.

Composer: Edmar Olivares Soria (Mexico)

Sound Diffusion: WEN Bihe (China)

This is a transmedia audiovisual work that deals with the speculative capacity of machines to know and experience the phenomenon of the divine. In this work, speculative research, experimental electroacoustic rhythmic music and advanced 3D computer modeling/animation converge in a single multimedia experience.The visual element is developed through a deep exploration of diverse 3D modeling/animation techniques (No Al) such as procedural modeling, parametric modeling, hard-surface and 3D scanning among others, in order to create audioreactive virtual scenarios and unimaginable entities that move between the extremes of the organic-figurative and the abstract. The musical and sonic composition emerges as a result of an experimental exploration of the language and compositional techniques from electroacoustic music in conjunction with elements of rhythmic patterns and artificial soundscape. In this sense, the work seeks to develop an audiovisual language based on the interaction of the visual, sound, body and technology; in other words, it proposes an alternative form of human-machine interaction from the digital creative but that is raised not only at the technical level but from the conceptual and reflective. This work starts from the premise of formulating a question within the context of possible futures and technological singularity:

Could a machine ever have the potentiality of conceiving the transcendental?

Will it come to wonder about the concept of divinity and even experience it?

CIME Great Britain - BEAN

Composer: Irving Kinnersley (UK)

Sound Diffusion: WEN Bihe (China)

Estuary 2 is a sonic exploration of place as a ‘heterogenous and multi-temporal present’ (Laurent Olivier). Constructed from field recordings, studio recordings, historic sound and synthesised materials, the piece is structured as an episodic sequence of natural events and human interactions with the environment. The estuary shoreline of Bridgewater Bay formed by the vast geological processes of deep time and powerful tidal forces provides the liminal space where the narrative of the piece develops.

The materiality of this environment in its destructive and more gentle manifestations is central to the composition, with the sound of rocks, pebbles, sand and waves forming much of the sonic texture of the piece. Human presence in this environment is seen as fragile and fleeting; footsteps, voices, morse code, rhythmic tapping and phone messaging, enigmatic sonic traces appear and disappear throughout the composition.

Composer: Enrico Dorigatti (UK)

Sound Diffusion: WEN Bihe (China)

Morphogenesis is an acousmatic composition named after the homonym biological process through which a complex living organism is shaped through the cooperative efforts of several simpler entities. Morphogenesis highlights simultaneously the macrostructure and the small, elementary sonic entities shaping it. The composition of the piece relied on an original library of field recordings; the sonic affordances of the sounds included guided the development of both the sound design and compositional processes and, consequently, the evolution of the piece itself.