Specialising and exhibiting

Week1-Sound Arts Lecture Series

Félix Blume (France, 1984) is a sound artist and sound engineer. He currently works and lives between Mexico, Brazil, and France. He uses sound as a basic material in sound pieces, videos, actions, and installations. His process is often collaborative, working with communities and using public space as the context within which he explores and presents his works. His practice involves an extended understanding of listening, as a way to encourage the awareness of the imperceptible and as an act of encounter with others. His work incorporates the sounds of different beings and species, from the buzzing of a bee, the steps of a turtle, or the chirp of a cricket, as well as human dialogues both in natural and urban contexts. He is interested in myths and their contemporary interpretation, in what voices can tell beyond words. 

Los gritos de México

With more than 20 million people, Mexico City can feel noisy for most people, but if we learn to listen, it can turn into a sonorous city. This Mexico City’s soundscape pays homage to all of its shouts, as it takes part in the sound memory of a time that will be over sooner or later. 

We listen to the typical street vendor hawking shaping a polyphonic city chorus. People angrily shout at demonstrations, shouting together ¡Viva Mexico! to feel joined, shouting louder to be heard. Inside churches people also shout, while others are praying… we listen alone and jointly whispering.

This is one of my favourite Multichannel pieces which was made by Félix Blume, the voice of people speaking were very noisy but funnily edited. Though I could not understand what people were saying, I found they were like proposing something or making some propaganda. The piece also let me think of old documentaries before ww2, it had a historical sense of view. I also enjoyed the rain surroundings, it was very clean and natural, displaying a juxtaposition in the soundscape.

Impossible Dialogue / Titanik Gallery (Turku, Finland) / April 2019
Impossible Dialogue is a project using walkie-talkies. In the piece, the communication system is de-contextualized, as it’s used as an aesthetic instrument to generate sounds instead of communication. If the dialogue seems impossible, content and noise merge together, generating electromagnetic resonances and interferences in the microphones, leading to a common sonority, from harmony to noise. Acting towards the busy street and riverbank by Titanik’s large windows, the artist creates a shift between looking and listening, between public and private space, and invites the pedestrian to listen to the electromagnetic phenomenon.

After watching Felix Blume’s sonic feedback, I borrowed a somas microphone from my friend and would like to have a test out. The effect was 100 percent better than the telephone-pick up microphone. I could hear the difference among pencils, electric stuff, and hand noises. I still believe the idea of sonic walking would be very amazing because it is like the communication between organisms and electric.