Céleste Boursier Mougenot

Works

Boursier-Mougenot's works unite musical and visual spheres, contain unexpected sources of musical sounding. There are situations or devices created or contain by means of which musical events are expressed visually or visual information acoustically.

The composer Boursier-Mougenot creates the set of standards for sound producing rather than music. The artist tries the acoustic potential of usual objects, spheres and actions.

In "Videodrones" (2001) Boursier-Mougenot addressed to nonconventional use of video. Work allows the audience to watch everyday details of the familiar environment: on five screens in exhibition space in real time views of streets, boulevards and the sidewalk are projected. Actions (the movement of pedestrians and transport) call the cascade of sounds, describing events as music.

From Here to Ear

In "From Here to Ear" (1999), the artist used pack of zebra finches and piano strings for acoustic structure creation form of which was defined with behavior of birds. In view of Cage's practice, Boursier-Mougenot's method lies first of all in transliterations of natural structure, aural identification of certain realities which are not seen for eyes.

Project essence presents the musician placing an electric guitar to the open-air cage with zebra finches and writes down sounds made by birds when sitting down on an electric guitar and going on strings (in one of the videos there is the bird touched a string with a branch in a beak). "Concert" with amadin in which about 40 birds were involved, was shown in one of the exhibition halls of London (Barbican Centre), and before – in Galerie Xippas (Paris) and Lentos Kunstmuseum (Linz, Austria). Attempt to make similar performance of birds on percussion instruments was less successful. Work caused considerable interest of mass media.