A documentary by Alexandre Bazin featuring David Toop, Bill Fontana, Christina Kubisch, Max Eastley, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, with INA archives – Translation and dubbing by Spencer Bambrough.
This second part extends the exploration of sound as a material by opening it up to space and the environment. Sound is no longer limited to objects or instruments: it becomes a flow, circulation, phenomenon. Through installations, recordings, and invisible devices, it inscribes itself in reality and reveals tensions.
From the wind in Max Eastley’s strings to Bill Fontana’s vibratory architectures, Christina Kubisch’s electromagnetic fields to Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s living ecosystems, a different kind of listening emerges: expanded, situated, immersed.
Sound becomes landscape, memory, and presence – a way of inhabiting the world.
Bill Fontana A pioneer of sound art since the 1970s, Bill Fontana develops installations that reveal the invisible vibrations of structures and environments. His work captures and displaces sounds from the world to transform our perception of space.
Christina Kubisch German artist and composer, Christina Kubisch explores electromagnetic phenomena and their sonic translation. With her “Electrical Walks,” she makes audible an inaudible world, revealing a hidden dimension of our technological environment.
Max Eastley Composer and inventor of instruments, Max Eastley works with natural forces like wind or movement. His sound sculptures, often wind-activated, produce music in perpetual transformation, blurring the line between composition and phenomenon.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot French artist, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates installations where sound emerges from living and autonomous situations. His devices transform ordinary contexts into sensory experiences, where chance and balance play a central role.
David Toop Writer, musician, and major figure in contemporary sound studies, David Toop has been exploring the links between music, environment, and perception since the 1970s. His works have deeply renewed the way we approach listening. Here, David Toop continues his reflection on listening as an experience of the world, between environment, perception, and sonic imagination.
Musical Selection: – Max Eastley – Aeolian Arc And Strings (1974) – Bill Fontana – Imaginary Sonic Visions (2013) – Bill Fontana – Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns (Installation Version, 1981) – Bill Fontana – Silent Echoes Notre-Dame (2022) – Bill Fontana – Acoustical Views – Sydney (1988) – Christina Kubisch – Sechs Spiegel (1995) – Max Eastley – Two Aeolian Arcs (1974) – Max Eastley – Aeolian Harps Pt. 1 (1980) – Max Eastley – Swung Aeolian Flutes And Grass Blade (1979) – David Toop – The Divination of the Bowhead Whale – Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – Clinamen, Bourse de Commerce (2025) – Recording: Kevin Luce (kevp888, freesound.org), CC BY 4.0 – Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – From Here to Hear (2024)
