Any vibration creates a certain number of sound waves that propagate in space and time. By its very nature, sound is ephemeral: it spreads out, sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, and gradually lose its vigor to finally fade away completely. It is also unique: we might be tempted to reproduce as faithfully as possible a sound we have already heard, but the characteristics of a space and therefore of the place in which the sound unfolds are never exactly the same (the temperature, the movements and the pressure of the air fluctuate continuously, modifying the particularities of the sound transmitted). The ear may also pick up the sound slightly differently at each iteration, perhaps simply because of tiny variations in ear orientation, or otherwise because of the general arrangement in which one is standing. Not only does the fleeting character of the sounds seem to be inscribed in its very nature, since it goes from life to death in the time of a brief instant, but also its "singularity", since there can never be two perfectly identical sounds.
The "Empreintes sonores" interactive installation offers a way to free the sound of these constraints so that it is not, on the one hand, subjected to a restricted time and so that it can, on the other hand, be withdrawn from its unicity. To reach this end, it is necessary to stop the effect of time on the sound, to prevent the waves from propagating so that it can somehow hang, frozen, in a given space.
This installation makes it possible to engrave a sound into space, to freeze the time of the sound. Naturally, sounds move towards our ears. However, in this case, it is up to us to physically move our ears towards the sounds in order to hear them. This allows users to freely explore, both forward and backward, the granularity of the audio content by moving around in the installation’s space. By freeing the sound from its ephemeral nature, “Empreintes sonores” allows users to navigate the granularity of their own voice in a way that is normally impossible. After a while, the trace fades away and dissolves with the other ambient noises to finally evaporate completely.
