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Collido_scope
artist's statement |
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Collido_scope explores the urban identity of the town of Issy-les-Moulineaux, via a multitude of images photographed, for the most part, in the vicinity of the town hall and market. The images form an ever-changing collage, driven by interaction with its spectators and with its sound environment. The latter depends on the installation's location - during 1er Contact, a broad pavement in front of a supermarket (the Monoprix), across a main street from the town hall. The picture provides a stage for the daily comings and goings of the town's inhabitants and visitors, creating a visual poem in a state of permanent recomposition via the infinite rejuxtaposition of individual images.
Collido_scope wishes to metamorphose the "immortalised photographic instant" by encompassing a multitude of moments, and by so doing materialise the urban investiture of place by the town's people. Though the artistic imperative of photographing people at such close range shows a lack of courtesy, the treatment of each individual, within the ceaseless flow of humanity, is at the service of their innate dignity. The generation of such an unexpected, impossible, disarranged sequence of views gives inhabitants a means to decode and emotionalise the sense of place and subconscious of their environment.
Three of the scenes concern the town centre: in the first, the reflecting facade of the supermarket itself and the fresco in front of which the installation was situated; in the second, a view of the same pavement from above, in the rain with umbrellas (parapluies in French); in the third, four points of view from the same café, called Les Colonnes, which faces the market square and town hall. The fourth scene, more rested, less urban, was photographed in the Saint Germain park on an island in the Seine at the bottom end of Issy. The fifth scene is of a lake - called Greziolles - in the Pyrenees Mountains, at the other end of France, on the Spanish border - this is for when the town dreams at night... The relationship between the scenes is shown in the following diagram. For version 2 (and not shown in the diagram): a sixth scene composed of different views of Issy at night, and a seventh called "of victuals and hands", taken in the town's Friday market.
COMPOSITON
The five scenes function either autonomously, or together. In the first case, a dynamic collage is built up from images from a single scene, according to a set of rules specific to that scene. In the second case, a more tumultuous collage occurs between images from different scenes.
In "philharmonic" terms, the scenes can be considered as being musical movements. Each has its own nature and structure, but they are bound together via a series of geometrical congruencies at the compositional level.
Thus certain scenes are divided into two halves vertically - Monoprix, Les Colonnes, Saint Germain - or horizontally - Les Colonnes with the balustrades on the pavement, the path in Saint Germain. Further subdivisions - the rhythmic window frames in Les Colonnes - reinforce this.
They also contain clearly affirmed diagonals - Umbrellas with its pavement, Monoprix with the fresco, Les Colonnes with the buildings opposite.
Reflection also plays a role in the geometrical construction - the glass facade in Monoprix, and the lake in Greziolles.
Texture plays a role, via the paving in certain scenes - Monoprix, Umbrellas, Saint Germain.
In version 2 of Collido_scope, these compositional elements will be further developed to enrich the complexity of superposition.
INTERACTIVITY
Collido_scope interacts with its surrounding environment and its audience via a sound interface.
Thus the fusion of images is harmonic or chaotic, depending on the level of noise coming from the environment. During 1er Contact the installation was located next to a traffic light, so the acceleration of vehicles at regular intervals, whenever the lights turned green provided a rhythmic surge of noise which would set the picture off. Similarly, heavy traffic, or a single, loud vehicle passing by would have a direct effect. In these cases, the scenes would mix, and the previous scene would be replaced by a new one.
The work functions differently during the day and the night. During the day, the Monoprix fresco forms the primary scene, while during the night, much calmer, the picture of the lake takes over.
The audience interacts with the work by clapping. A single clap corresponds to a mouse click, which has a specific effect depending on the particular scene being displayed at that moment. There is a "double clap", which causes the scene to be replaced by a new one. Rhythmic clapping "hypnotises" the Collido_scope by putting it to sleep - signified by the appearance of the scene of the lake - to allow spectators to briefly simulate night-time conditions during the day.
The sound programming was done by Roland Cahan, a composer working in digital art with the Ircam (George Pompidou Centre sound laboratory), using the Ircam's jMax sound environment software.