Experimental composition combining high pitched frequencies with deep resonating bass.

Highmidlow

Machines 4 Production is a sound piece conducted by imaginary machinery of mechanical and electronic origin. This industrial performance guides the listener through different acoustic spaces creating a sensorial experience. My approach has always been heavily centered on visuals due to my background in photography. Once I encountered sound as a production and art practice, audio became fundamental in bringing alive my imagery. At the same time, industrialization became a topic for my multimedia work exploring a mixture of virtual and real interior spaces. Sound design became the driving force of my constructions which deliberately needed to be auditory to work spatially. This piece aims to reduce all visuals purely to sounds. The machinery controls our sense of the invisible interiors and constructs therein.

Machines 4 Production

This project explores the soundscape of a tunnel. A traveling listener often experiences such tunnel from the inside of a vehicle. While trapped within the vehicle the listener is subject to an ominous mixture of low frequencies and resonating tones. My piece reconstructs such voyage and emphasizes the deafening sounds that drown the traveler. The first part of the work plays an important role in creating the soundscape of the tunnel by defining the outside of that space. Starting in a Garage, the vehicle is entered; presenting a new interior that delimits and controls the way sounds are perceived. The vehicle thus acts as an enclosing bubble mediating the soundscape. Further subduing the soundscape is the approach at high speed towards the tunnel, which receives a sudden brush of air and fully submerges the traveler within the soundscape. The drone effect is the main element of the piece emerging as a result of the environment. Filtration recreates the atmosphere and the various individual sounds heard, from the friction of the tires creating a heavy rumble to the resonance of the air while ridings through the tunnel. Once exiting the tunnel, openness is felt even though the experience remains controlled by the interior of the vehicle. The most important aspect of this soundscape is in fact the vehicle that becomes the filter through which all sounds are mediated.

Sound Tunnel 01

From Above is the result of an invitation to create a 60 seconds composition for the 60x60 Death Mix (Vox Novus), created by Melissa Grey.

Once the deep echoing call of the air raid siren goes off, all hell can break loose. The distressing tone turns its surroundings into a warning zone of imminent danger. Yet instead of an actual threat this composition develops its own looming destruction using the sounds of machinery to fill the air. The mechanical technology heard is outdated yet the effect is pervasive. The acoustics symbolize the death encompassing the siren and in doing so, attack themselves, reducing their own build-up to nothing. Sound, all at once, warns and pressures itself towards its own annihilation.

From Above

Tunnel is a multi-channel sound installation reconstructing the voyage of driving through a tunnel at high speed. The audience is to be seated in two rows of chairs as the passengers of an imaginary vehicle. The soundscape of a tunnel is normally traveled while inside a vehicle yet no physical driving takes place in this installation. Instead sounds are isolated from their original environment focusing on the sonic effects of the voyage. Rather than representing a soundscape the installation becomes a sensorial experience transforming the movement of driving for a stationary audience.

The particular environment of the tunnel involves not only a constant drone but a repetitious pattern putting the listener into a trance. The sonic experience becomes ominous and reflects a world where man-made structures drown our senses momentarily. A monotonous tone emerges from the rigid landscape of the tunnel while at the same time a rich cacophony of low frequencies, mechanical noises and resonance is brought to attention. The separate audio channels allow for certain sounds to be emitted from specific points around the audience for a more accurate spacial recreation.

For the tunnel to be experienced, one has to be outside of it in the first place. Even though the tunnel is the primary subject, the vehicle remains an important element in the construction of the sound voyage. This vehicle acts as a new interior that delimits and controls the way sounds are perceived by filtering all that is heard while driving. The audience sonically enters the tunnel by first getting in the vehicle and proceeding on a highway. Yet the automobile is imaginary and the passengers are trapped inside a tunnel of deafening sounds; guiding them through the enclosed sonic environment, sound takes the driver's seat.

Type: Installation for multiple listening passengers
Duration: 4 minutes and 6 seconds
Specifications: multi-channel electroacoustic sound composition. Two sets of stereo speakers, subwoofer, chairs, cables, room

Tunnel 02

This composition represents the sound design of an imaginary film with no visuals. The acoustics interact spatially with what is on or off screen, as if bound by the frame of an image. Yet there is nothing to see and the audience can only listen to what takes place. As a result, sound becomes the protagonist and determines the narrative of what has become cinematic acoustics.

The Contract

Within an immense empty place sit machines whose primary purpose is construction. The mechanical parts produce a succession of sounds, as motors wind up, grind, clank, accelerate, depress, and activate one another; each piece operating diligently its program. The whole becomes an elaborate production establishing presence within the large empty interior. This orchestrated construct defines a factory, one whose outcome is not the production of goods, but rather a powerful industrial acoustic space.

Industrial Power

My idea for this composition was to tell a story of spaces. Rather than narrate through dialog and events, the acoustics of interiors construct a sound narrative. The sonic experience is guided by two nameless subjects engaged in gibberish as they pass from one space to another. What takes place throughout is merely the medium through which sounds establish localization.

Sound Narrative

Sound Design project using a passage from A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury. Mainly using existing sound libraries focusing on post-production and mixing.

This mix uses the following sounds from freesound.org:
• Dinosaur_Loud Roar.mp3 by CGEffex ( http://www.freesound.org/people/CGEffex/sounds/89549/ )
• Exhale_10115a.wav by otherthings ( http://www.freesound.org/people/otherthings/sounds/65619/ )
• PredaRancor.wav by james duckett ( http://www.freesound.org/people/james%20duckett/sounds/55079/ )
• Unionskin.wav by HerbertBoland ( http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/29862/ )
• Gulps by Project_Trident ( http://www.freesound.org/people/Project_Trident/sounds/140323/ )
• Snap-a-neck01.wav by CGEffex ( http://www.freesound.org/people/CGEffex/sounds/97783/ )
• wristwatch.wav by Udit Duseja ( http://www.freesound.org/people/Udit%20Duseja/sounds/104518/ )
• gunreload_9.wav by j1987 ( http://www.freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/107805/ )
• gunreload_2.wav ∏by j1987 ( http://www.freesound.org/people/j1987/sounds/107798/ )
• lightning_strike.wav by artifact ( http://www.freesound.org/people/artifact/sounds/29675/ )
• deep bass rumble 3.wav by ERH ( http://www.freesound.org/people/ERH/sounds/34187/ )
• cinematic deep bass rumble.wav by ERH ( http://www.freesound.org/people/ERH/sounds/34012/ )
• CinematicBoomNorm.wav by HerbertBoland ( http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/33637/ )
• walking_through_forest_2007_04_15.wav by reinsamba ( http://www.freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/33841/ )
• 00170 steps on a forest road 1.wav by Robinhood76 ( http://www.freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/55690/ )
• morning_in_the_forest_2007_04_15.wav by reinsamba ( http://www.freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/33827/ )
• More forest sounds.wav by genghis attenborough ( http://www.freesound.org/people/genghis%20attenborough/sounds/28108/ )


Sound of Thunder Mix

Submission for the Ableton/Soundcloud contest 'Beat the Clock':
"From May 14th to 28th, download a free Live Pack featuring sounds from M83, Junior Boys, and Nosaj Thing. Use this material to make a new, original track with Ableton Live. But be quick - your track must be submitted within 24 hours after you download the Live Pack."
Music created using Ableton Live Lite 8 and the 'Beat the Clock' Live Pack.

Beat the Clock

Originally from Switzerland, Marc studied photography in NYC. His fascination for interior spaces now leads him into the acoustics of the imaginary.

Marc Fiaux

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