Étienne Chambaud

La Nuit Sauve [The Untamed Night], 2022-2024

A sound-only version of a multi-channel video installation Variable dimensions, infinite duration Courtesy of the artist, of Labor, Mexico City and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul

La Nuit Sauve is a video installation focusing on the animal body and the apparatuses that capture its visibility (zoo, diorama, and cinema). It has been filmed in natural history museums, various aquariums and zoos, as well as on a theatre stage where a motion control camera tirelessly follows a geometrical motif traced on the floor.

The soundtrack is intermittently taken over by an orchestration algorithm that analyses and transforms the direct sounds documented in the film into a musical version played by generated symphonic instruments. As a result, a film focusing on the classification and confinement of bodies becomes a vehicle for the emergence of an ever-changing music, both classical and algorithmic.

Here, we present an audio-only version of the piece. The sound of the installation is created through a custom software program made specifically for this piece. At the core of the program is Orchidea, a tool for computer-assisted orchestration, which attempts to match the recorded sounds of the film with orchestral instruments. Probabilities and randomness determine the evolution of various parameters that affect the orchestration. A single instrument may play a virtuosic solo, but as time goes on this can be transformed into sparse, static chords from a brass ensemble. These changes unfold over many hours and are never repeated; in each day a new series of sounds unfold.

Sound recording: Florian Namias, Todd Vos, Stephen McLaughlin, Étienne Chambaud, Benjamin Feuillade

Sound edit: Benjamin Feuillade

Orchestration and spatialisation programming: Luke Dzwonczyk

Orchestration production supervision: Carmine-Emanuele Cella

Orchestration based on Orchidea, a joint project between Ircam (Music Representation Team), HEM and UC Berkeley, based on Ircam's Orchid* line of softwares.