“Carte Localisation Région France Champagne-Ardenne“. Via Wikipedia.

The Camac Art Centre is situated in the 230-person town of Marnay sur Seine, just an hour southeast of Paris by train, in the Chapmpagne-Ardenne region of France. The centre’s director, Jean-Yves Coffre, curated a tremendous sound/art show in June 2014.

Christian Marclay’s “Graffiti Composition” is displayed in the middle of the room.

Marclay pasted blank musical sheets all over Berlin. Once the sheets were full, he asked musicians to interpret the scores. He then took pictures of all the pieces and recorded them.

You can flip through the 800 photographs while listening to their interpretations.

Lidwine Prolonge’s “Mute Juke Box” holds 30 people’s playlists. Each drawer holds a typed sheet with the music they listened to when they were teenagers. It’s a low-fi nostalgia machine.

Isabelle Giovacchini’s “5661 Carats” reinterprets Arvo Part’s “Spiegel im Spiegel.” Each beat of silence in the original piece is indicated by the symbol for 18 carat gold: an eagle’s head.
 

My favorite piece was Carsten Nikolai’s “Wellenwanne.“A flat, filled with water, sits atop speakers.

The various sound waves from the speakers create patterns in the water, which you can see in the photos on the wall.

Here’s a video of one soundscape

Carsten Nikolai, who also goes by Alva Noto, has been published in textsound. His collaboration with Anne-James Chaton can be heard here: u_08-1.

 
*A special thanks to Sierra Nevada College’s Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Nevada Arts Council for supporting this residency.