OLIVIER LASSON
Olivier Lasson, sound artist, is interested in the vibrational phenomena of materials and living things. He strives to combine research in geophony, anthropophony and biophony in his works.
A student of Georges Paczynski at the CIM, Olivier Lasson learned drums and the relationship to sound space through gesture and mastery of striking. From this training, he would retain a passion for vibration and metals, which he first transposed into the electronic universe.
For the creation of his electroacoustic works, he captures and thus reveals the presence of sounds, even the most imperceptible. From aquatic sound recordings to the imperceptible movements of the earth. From the wind in the trees transmitted by the wood and captured via the roots to the movements of insects and the vibrations of manufactured materials.
The meeting with the MU Collective in 2013 and the discovery of Field Recording was then decisive in the evolution of his practice. He then replaced musical instruments with the capture of sounds from specific territories.
The contribution of the sound environment in the rhythm enriches its vocabulary and makes it more organic. It allows him to integrate random elements and to open the way to a new aspect, the music of reality, of which he would be the conductor.
In 2014, he decided to focus his practice on Musique Concrète and participated the same year in the Festival Bande Originale around the Canal de l'Ourcq in Paris.
Focusing his creations on the sounds of the soundscape and their subsequent manipulations, his works invest different artistic domains. He creates pieces for the theater (Rituel pour une Métamorphose at the Comédie Française in collaboration with Yasmine Hamdan) and for dance (Le Chant du Styrène by the Tétrapode company). He performs live on Revox (Tape Looping) at the Instants Chavirés in Montreuil, at L'Eglise des Frères Prêcheurs and the Chapelle Madeleine in Arles (Festival On).
He produces sound art works for the Château d'Esquelbecq (Sound Memory for the Art aux Jardins exhibition), for the Musée Transitoire (Exhibition O in Chambesy, Switzerland), for corporate events (sound design for the Parisian Hermès stores). In collaboration with the NNIPAS photographers' collective, he produces in situ sound pieces for the "C'est dans la Vallée" festival produced by Rodolphe Burger in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and the exhibition at the Grands Thermes de la Bourboule with L'eau chaude sur ma peau.
He continues to perfect his exploration of the music of reality based on the sounds of natural and architectural environments, as during his residency at Casa Pantrova on the heights of Lake Lugano, invited by Amandine Casadamont and the Musée Transitoire.
SHOW REEL - Olivier Lasson
Sound Memories // Château d'Esquelbecq
Field recording and composition
All matter retains an imprint of past events. Resident for a week at the Château d'Esquelbecq, Olivier Lasson went in search of these sound traces. He releases the music inscribed in all the architectural elements, from the stone walls of the cellar to the metals from the castle gates, to create the music of reality. He extracts sounds, manipulates them using electronic and analog processing, to create a piece of electroacoustic music.
From the open-air greenhouse, facing the castle, listening with headphones is offered for total immersion. Visitors can thus let themselves be carried away by the resonances of this building which tells its story.
Exhibition “Art in the Garden” at the Château d’Esquelbecq, July - September 2017. Curated by: Aude de Bourbon Parme
Edition of 30 vinyls (Engraving / Numbered and signed), 2019.
Credits: Field Recording & Composition: Olivier Lasson
Production: Olivier Lasson & Association du Château d’Esquelbecq
Design by Cranes Factory
Hot water on my skin // La Bourboule
Concrete Music - 39'28''
The Grands Thermes are like a giant monster that wakes up every day at 6 a.m. Flowing with liquids, it breathes, it unfolds, it lives in the labyrinthine basements.
"I followed Stéphane who, according to a very precise ritual, wakes up all the machinery every day. The gestures are executed meticulously to restart the pressure necessary for the system and to disinfect all accesses to the miraculous water of La Bourboule. The water takes a single path, a single direction, from the source to the tanks and then into the gigantic circuit of pipes leading to the treatment rooms. It creates a silent harmony that I allowed myself to organize and process to reveal a discreet music. You have to stick microphones on the metal to draw an organic and beneficial symphony from it."
The piece L'eau chaud sur ma peau is the result of these captures and manipulations in post-production in order to create an aesthetic of concrete music, a style that allows me to use the environment like a giant orchestra.
Credits: Sound Recordings & Composition: Olivier Lasson
Shifts // Lugano - Transitory Museum
Alternative sound recording work with an aerial microphone on the right and a hydrophone or geofon on the left, produced during the residency of the Transitory Museum at La Casa Pantrova on Lake Lugano. These sound sequences are adaptations of the offsets of Dana Diminescu, a sociologist invited to the creation by Amandine Casadamont and Romina Shama.
How to reproduce two different points of view of the same situation or action.
Sound transcriptions of two conjoined but opposing spaces.
Credits: Sound recordings and production: Olivier Lasson
Fluxibility // Festival Original Soundtrack
Sound creation around the Canal de l’Ourcq for the MU Collective and the Bande Originale Festival.
After a series of Field Recordings recorded along the Canal de l'Ourcq, Olivier Lasson created several audio sequences ranging from musique concrète to reconstructed soundscapes. These sequences were broadcast via the SoundWays application in geolocated sound bubbles along the Canal, from the Bassin de la Villette to the Parc de la Poudrerie.
From July 12 to August 10, 2014, in five events and five stopover cities, Bande Originale is a nomadic event that deploys Navettes Sonores, Parcours Sonores, and a mobile application to discover in situ the creations of around twenty guest artists.
Credits: Sound recordings, Compositions and productions: Olivier Lasson
Happy Valley // Festival It's in the Valley
Sound piece composed with concrete sounds recorded in the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines valley during a residency with the NNIPAS collective in July 2015 at the Ferme chez Rodolphe Burger.
This piece includes a sound and musical restitution of the wanderings in the region. The concrete sounds reflect the life and industrial past of this valley. The concrete music represents the development of the imagination offered by the Contrast between this outdated city and its lush natural environment.
Exhibited in multi-channel on October 9, 10 and 11 in the NNIPAS capsule during the “C'est dans la Vallée” festival in Sainte Marie aux Mines.