Tour de Contrôle

A new way of experiencing sound using light and space.


Tour de Contrôle (Control Tower) is an instrument, object, installation, sculpture that allow new ways of experiencing sound, using spatialization and visual translation. This control unit allows recording, slicing and modifying sound which is played through an 8-channel speaker-system. LED stroboscopes and tungsten lights translate the sound in real time as it travels through a space.

The large control unit made from stainless steel and birch wood features 8 audio inputs, 10 audio outputs, protocol ports (MIDI, DMX, USB, RJ45), an audio interface, a computer and a touchscreen. Its custom designed software can be operated using two MIDI controllers regrouping a total of 170 sensors (mechanical switches, faders and potentiometers) all held by two custom PCBs.

Sound Research Residency - DDW 2023

Tour de Contrôle has been designed as a flexible system to be operated by musicians; the reveal and presentation of the project will take place during a week-long residency of live experimentations and performances at DDW23.

Each day will host a new artist or collective. Each of them will have the day to test, experiment, create and perform on the Tour de Contrôle. Resident in-situ will be Lucien Nicou, the designer, developer and constructor of the Tour de Contrôle. He will act as a guide and collaborator to the array of different artists taking part in the exhibit.

The curation of different musician and collectives working in the sonic realm unlock and showcase the console’s diverse audio-visual-spatial possibilities.

WATCH SOUND RESEARCH RESIDENCY IMAGES HERE


TimeTable / Day

During the opening hours of the exhibit, public is welcome to come in, listen and experience the sound experimentations unfolding in the space. Please stay quiet during the performative moments.

11:00 - 14:00 : Opening to public + Standalone / Public participation.
14:00 - 19:00 : Artist experiment + Meet the designer.
20:00 - 21:30 : Artist performance - Book your free ticket.


Week Program

21/10 - Boris Nicou
22/10 - Anni Nöps, Casimir
23/10 - Flavien Berger
24/10 - Oï les Ox
25/10 - Jespfur, Fallwood, Paula
26/10 - Max Frimout
27/10 - Elie Zylberman
28/10 - Sebastien Robert
29/10 - Lucien Nicou


Location

United Cowboys - Black Box.
Kleine Berg 62, 5611 JW Eindhoven, Netherlands



Boris Nicou

Founding member of Clinch (experimental group founded in 1996) Boris Nicou played with One Switch to Collision, Turzi, Rhys Chatam and Module.

For the residency Boris will mainly play with a drum machine and anoise box, focusing on the impacts and the resonances. He will use the TDC to work on the textures, the grooves and the spatialization.


Anni Nöps

Anni Nöps is a sound artist, electronic composer and DJ based in the Netherlands. Her sonic palette is visceral, interlacing ghostly drone, floating melodies, hard hitting percussions and tactile noise.
She has performed and presented her sonic works at arebyte gallery (London), Sonic Acts Festival (Amsterdam), Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (Zürich), iMAL (Brussels), Rewire Festival (the Hague),  FIBER Festival (Amsterdam), Klankvorm (Rotterdam), and has collaborated with contemporary choreographers at ICK/Veem Theater (Amsterdam) and Stuttgart Ballet (Germany).

Listen to Anni Nöps here :)


Casimir

Casimir Geelhoed is a composer and software developer who explores expressive relationships between software and sound. Recurring themes in Geelhoed's work are a focus on overstimulation, introspection and fragility. In his latest performances, he aims to evoke intimate associative reactions through the gradual transformation of sonic elements.

Listen to Casimir here :)


Flavien Berger

Flavien has been in the French pop music business for almost 10 years, he composes and performs while being his own musical producer. He experiments with sound material through electronic research, filed recording, and synthesis work in the workshop, which he then infuses into his pop compositions, mostly sung in French. He is part of the radical naive impressionist movement.

He will focus his work on the Tour de Controle around the creation of an imaginary sonic picture, the soundscape of a dream planet.

Listen to Flavien Berger here :)


Oï les Ox

Aude Van Wyller, born 1991, after a 10 years musical training as an harpist and a master graduation at Villa Arson, Nice french school of art, is a visual artist and composer from Paris. She is interested in poetry and music and its dispersion in many spaces such as stairs, amphiteaters, concert rooms, gardens...

After creating multi-channel installations performing readings with actors and recordings, she worked on a single project of sound poetry and electronic music, under the moniker Oï les Ox, called ‘Crooner qui coule sous les clous’ (A crooner that sinks under nails). It has been released in 2020 on tape and reissued in 2021 on vinyl via The Death of Rave (UK) and digitally by Primordial Void (US). She released another EP on K-Rut/Kraak records (BE) with ‘Terrain Transparent’ in 2020. She has been resident in at La Muse en Circuit, CNCM (Paris, 23), Le Botanique, Les Ateliers Claus (Brussels) and Hetbos (Antwerp).

Listen to Oï les OX here :)


Jespfur

Jesper “Jespfur” Vervoort is a multidisciplinary artist born in Helmond and currently based in Amsterdam. With two mixtapes, Mind Map (2020) and The Weak Tape (2018) and several singles, might as well might swell bright bell light fell kite dwell fight knell (2023), Serendipity (2022), Condition (2021), selected audiovisual works (Squeeze 1, 2 & 3) released to date, Jespfur has slowly but steadily been honing his DIY approach, resulting in an honest, unpredictable and elusive catalogue.

Jespfur will experiment with a Sampler and Midi controller creating instrumental from a "Free Jazz" perspective.

Listen to Jespfur here :)


Paula

Paula stands as the musical embodiment of Amsterdam-based sound designer Ruben Oosterman. Paula explores a broad spectrum of musical styles, with a focus on folk-inspired guitar and ultra processed recordings. Paula's creations evoke a sense of nostalgia and merge sonic experimentation with contemporary expressions.

Paula’s will use the Tour de Contrôle to perform and play various ambient loops created over the past year.


Elie Zylberman

A trained multi-instrumentalist, Élie specializes in his studies in music production and then produces several albums for various French artists, such as BRÖ, Alain Chanfort, 47Ter, Lujipeka.. His instrumental heritage and his attraction to electronic music then meet, and opens his search for a balance between the organic and the digital.

Élie will be using the Tour de Controle as an object of interrogation, inviting and conducting the public to participate in a 3-parts experience. As the human and its relationship with both humans and machines will be the starting point, Élie will also perform using a violin and a piano.



Sébastien Robert

Sébastien Robert (1993. Nantes, FR) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who develops a practice at the intersection of visual and sound art, technology, science and ethnography. Most of his projects revolve around a research cycle, You’re no Bird of Paradise, through which he explores disappearing Indigenous sonic rituals and cosmologies.

Sébastien will use the Tour de Contrôle to play Magnetic Fluctuations, the final iteration of Sébastien’s research The Lights Which Can Be Heard, about the sound of Northern Lights. A modular sound system receives real-time data from various magnetometers and antennas from the Polar Light Center, a station monitoring aurora activity in the Lofoten in Norway and run by Dutch radio astronomer Rob Stammes. All the data collected directly influences various sound parameters (velocity, pitch, timing etc.) and creates a continuous soundscape. In other words, a musical score composed and played by the Northern Lights. Originally conceived as a standalone sound installation, Sébastien will perform with this system live for the first time.

More abour Sebastien’s projects here :)


Lucien Nicou

Passionate about Sound and its combination with Light, Lucien Nicou has been creating the past last years some machines, instrument and system allowing him to experiment with new mediums. Influenced by analog electronic music, he first produced and played as Nikou, played alongside Module and lately released a field recording EP called LTC.

For his participation to the residency, Lucien will live-develop and experiment a system within the Tour de Contrôle installation, allowing a drum machine to communicate with precise light beam.

Discover Lucien’s work here :)  


Sound provided by Adam Audio.
Light provided by Cameo.
With the support of New Generation.