Jean-Pierre Gauthier – Machine Artist
Battements et papillons / Beats and Butterflies
Marqueurs d’incertitude / Uncertainty Marker
Marqueurs d’incertitude / Uncertainty Markers (detail)
Except from artist website
When the Eyes Imbibe Noise
Noise surrounds us, it is inside us, it is everywhere. It besieges us constantly. It is a dishevelled heap, a sonorous and protean mass in opposition to all separate and distinct sonorities. It is undesirable. The composer of noise, or bruitiste, for his part, creates sound images, imitiations and sound simulations using objects. These objects are so unrelated to the subject evoked that they provoke astonishment. Many of my installations rest on this principle of the gap between the object, its usual function and its sound potential. Musicality (free-form) and sonorous evocations of a mysterious animal world emerge through the intermediary of a panoply of heterogeneous mechanized objects. Noise interests me when the encounter is fortuitous, when recognizable sound suddenly emerges in all its sonorous particularity. Then, just as suddenly, all music, all speech, all song become disturbing noise: for a moment reality is turned on its head and a new cycle of creation then begins. It is difficult to dwell very long in this parallel dimension, this wormhole. That is why I try to create brief moments of elation that activate the ear so it is no longer an organ waiting to be stuffed like a goose. At those moments, the ears are mouth and eye at once; they observe carefully, stealthily, and greedily imbibe the sound. The challenge is to leave the experience with both ears intact. My wish in making sound installations has always been to recreate these special moments.
My two cents, Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s installations are conceptually complex, yet the materials used to realize them remind you of an all to familiar urge. Through the buzzing, scrapping and tapping sounds generated, his work invites the viewer and or participant along a material and sensory examination that is both genuine and playful. Gauthier’s use of everyday materials and technology present…or remind us of the value of play and experimentation. I highly recommend that you check his work out.