Clair-obscur ou le dialogue intime de la musique et de l’image

Website(s) : http://lospinguinos-alternatifs.net/daidal/ / http://lospinguinos-alternatifs.net/daidal/play/ / http://www.daidal.bandcamp.com

Biography

Daidal:
Arsène Ott: saxophones and effects.
Cédric Fonné: sequencer, sampler, filters.
Iannis Rabotas: diatonic harmonica, bass guitar, cigar box, slide guitar, keyboards.
Julien Meyer: didgeridoo, mouth harp, laptop.
The project arises from the association of a motley crew of four atypical musicians who propose musical creations that go beyond the usual musical clichés. Daidal’s music is based on an electronic rhythm section coupled with computer-generated sounds and acoustic instruments. The idea is to play with all types of effects and the possibility to use real-time sound loops.
Chiaroscuro / Clair-obscur :
Aurore Emaille, video artist. Aurore Emaille creates images out of real-life material, in real time and aims at stimulating the viewer’s imagination.

More information

“If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.” Pablo Picasso
Dedalus is both the guide and designer of the labyrinth as a place of passage, of initiation, that is to say a wayward path towards oneself and the others. Every way, be it a possible or impossible one, is a way to delay or heighten the moment of confrontation.
In visual arts or music, one can thus instantly lose oneself in a dimension in which all boundaries and landmarks have been deliberately erased. We have to accept the challenge of improvisation, of unexpected encounters and, after such anxiety-ridden meanderings, we may finally decide to emerge and come back to our initial identity, allowing ourselves to return to familiar, peaceful and welcoming surroundings.
This is what Daidal’s music is about: devising strange paths out of loops, superimposition of sounds, interpolation and dazzling breakthroughs that lead back to the disquieting familiarity of some well-known territory.
The Chiaroscuro project, which was born of this collaboration between the musicians of Daidal and Aurore Emaille, plays upon these tensions. Like the figure of the Minotaur which would appear if all the ways taken by Picasso were to be joined up with a line, sketches of our lives and experiments as musicians and visual artists appear intermittently in the chiaroscuro of music and visuals. Music thus appears as the line binding the spectator’s eye and ear, whose convoluted shape most aptly evoke a labyrinth.

Technical note:

The Sound & Video performance proposed under the name “Clair-Daidal-Obscur” is both a manufacture of sounds and visuals in real time in which visuals interact with the music, and a sort of virtual orchestra or theatre reshaping our perceptions by drawing upon a bank of pre-recorded visuals and sound samples.

Live intervention on sound and visual elements using appropriate software allows the audience to be caught in the free flow of the creative process (visual and sound loops).
Superimposed on this process comes the expressive and improvised dialogue between the different instruments and original scenography using camera shots of a curio cabinet.

This device allows a confrontation of digital or prefabricated elements to real, living, spontaneous elements. While drawing on techniques of live creation of digital sounds and visuals, we strive to preserve an organic approach to musical and visual creation.

Music lies at the heart of the creation of the accompanying videos via MIDI and sound analysis.