SOUNDPAINTING EXPERIENCE

Journal Sud-Ouest May 16, 2009  « Magical opening show / It is 3 PM, welcome aboard the flight to the 10th Festival of high school students and apprentices,” whispers a soft voice to the young people who are struggling to temper their excitement after the warm welcome from Alain Rousset, the president of the Regional Council (organizer of the event). “You are going to experience an interactive experience,” promises the voice. Silence. The sixty musicians from Sweden, Romania, Germany, and Italy begin to play the notes of Spiderman while a plant fairy 1.70 m tall emerges from a metal music box. The music accelerates, the fairy spins around, releasing flower petals into the air. A delight for the eyes that enjoy the close-ups thanks to three screens. Very quickly, almost too quickly, young people come to put the fiber back in its metal case to make way for the rest of the show. Video, dance, theater. For nearly thirty minutes, it is Jérôme Bardeau, “soundpainter,” who plays the master of ceremonies. Using twenty signs, he tells the musicians to play either “Spiderman” or “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Depending on the audience's reactions, he brings on stage the six student actors from Kastler High School in Talence (Gironde) who perform texts by Noëlle Renaude and/or the fifteen student dancers from Gerde High School in Pessac (Gironde). In soundpainting, there are two golden rules: adapt and never stop. “It was a real challenge,” says Jérôme, “because we only had six hours to set everything up. The students were amazing and the audience really engaged. I am very happy.” The musicians also had a wonderful experience. Seehyek, 16, is still very moved as he leaves the stage: “It was an honor for me to play in such a high-quality ceremony. Thanks to Jérôme, I managed a great improv,” smiles this German violinist.

Journal Sud-Ouest May 14, 2009  “Since yesterday, the rehearsals for the opening ceremony have set the tone. The show “Soundpainting Experience 2,” created by the company La Boîte à Sel, the European symphonic orchestra, the theater workshop of Kastler High School in Talence, and the dance workshop of Gerde High School in Pessac, will be a real-time improvisation that will blend music, theater, dance, and video. This work, the result of a collaboration between professionals and high school students, seemed to be on a very good track yesterday afternoon.”

The short performance of Soundpainting: “EXPERIENCE SOUNDPAINTING #1” presented in 2008 by Cie La Boîte à sel, during the opening ceremony of the Festival des lycéens et des apprentis d’Aquitaine highlighted the playful, interactive, and festive nature of this improvisation technique, which is perfectly suited for the opening of a festival aimed at the voluntary and passionate participation of high school students and apprentices in very different projects from one another.

In 2009, Cie La Boîte à sel proposed to take the experience further by creating an artistic project around Soundpainting: “EXPERIENCE SOUNDPAINTING #2”. This project involved a group of high school students and apprentices contacted in advance of the festival. This performance, directed live by Jérome Bardeau, was designed as a show lasting about 40 minutes and offered the audience the opportunity to improvise as well.

Céline Garnavault

THE SOUNDPAINTING / Soundpainting is a technique created and developed by New York composer Walter Thompson. It is based on gestural conventions that allow communication simultaneously with actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists, filmmakers… and currently includes about 750 signs. Participants can be, in their respective fields, of all ages, all levels, all cultures, and all experiences. This approach disrupts the conventions specific to each discipline and requires everyone to step outside the limitations of their own world. Participants cannot predict in which direction the director, the soundpainter, will lead them, and must simply conform to what is asked of them in the sequence of signs. As for the Soundpainter, they can only predict to a certain extent the sound, music, dialogue, or images that will result from the signs they have chosen. This unique interaction develops throughout the performance and constitutes the originality specific to Soundpainting. Soundpainting is now a complete system, a sufficiently evolved language, to allow for the spontaneous realization of entire concerts as well as theatrical or choreographic performances, film music, or educational applications.

THE VI-JING / The term video jockey refers to the person or people responsible for a visual animation projected without further indication of the techniques used or the graphic choices made. The acronym VJ comes from the contraction of the English words “Video” and “Jockey” and is inspired by the term DJ, specific to music. The acronym is tending to become a word in itself, and it can take different forms such as a verb: VJing or doing VJing (creating the visual animation). Similarly, the variants used to designate video jockeys are numerous: visual jockey, visu (contraction of “visuals”), veejay, or even vijay. In English-speaking countries, the term was popularized by MTV, which used the term VJ to refer to the person who hosted and presented video clip broadcasts. As a creator of visual experiences, they work closely with the sound environment of which they are the visual expression.