CD + BOOKLET – Swarming

Eric La Casa reminds us that the urban spaces we travel through and frequent constitute a personal ecosystem of the city – a world unto itself – and that every architectural space contains, on a human scale, a part of reality. What is such a reality made of, this reality that conditions life in specific spaces? What relationships do they establish with space and with these internal environments? Intérieurs tries to answer these questions by analysing the resonance of certain rooms, in search of a liminal sonic dimension of everyday life, based on the belief that every architectural space contains its own materiality and its own acoustics. The result is remarkable, even if the spaces with which the author regularly interacts refer us to more abstract and celestial atmospheres than everyday, placing the emphasis on generally ignored and even imperceptible sounds, for example the sounds of ventilation systems and of unidentifiable machines, sounds coming from outside, strange electric or hydraulic hums and creaks. La Casa chooses a different setting for each of the three compositions presented; in the first the sound samples come from his Parisian apartment, in the second it is Michaél-Andréa Schatt’s art studio in Montreuil, in the third the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Each environment expresses its own unique character, gradually moving from private to public. La Casa stresses how much more time he spends indoors rather than outdoors and this also elicits a certain claustrophobic atmosphere, however splendid and poetic in its outcome, rich in musical nuances and meticulous orchestrations. Each space contains redundant and milder elements in its own way and is full of many small sources of noise; it is their vivid interaction that creates the overall impression. Here the microphone is a kind of measuring instrument as well as a musical instrument, a medium of knowledge that records the manifest and the inaudible.

 

Eric La Casa – Intérieurs