Story
By Camille Bédard
It’s a balmy Thursday evening of late summer, corner Maisonneuve and Saint-Laurent. At the exit of the subway, bewildered faces emerge. This residual impersonal urban space, traversed so frequently on the way to work, from work to the show, and from the show back home, is today transformed by the monumental presence of six colorful pipes. The sound of buses, of police and ambulance sirens, and from the speakers of various festivals seems to fade out, giving way to the symphony of Wind Instrument, a fantastic organ urging passersby to slow down.
The city soundscape as we know it is most often a source of annoyance rather than pleasure and, ironically, can only be appreciated once we manage to forget it. Yet this infinitely variant soundscape comprises a range of different sounds that complement urban daily life: the bursts of laughter from children’s parties, the tinkling of glasses on a terrasse, the muffled sound of footsteps on freshly fallen snow, church bells ringing on a joyous occasion...
Étienne Paquette’s tubular installation and the sounds it generates converge to create a seemingly real wind instrument. The aesthetic ensemble hides a musical instrument software that captures surrounding sounds and analyses their harmonic levels and frequencies, transposing these into the work’s musical spectrum. Curious participants who speak, sing or shout into the small lilac pipe at the foot of the structure contribute to the various sounds produced by the machine and create a progression of chords. Through their voice, they participate in the city’s soundscape. However, nothing here is random: Wind Instrument’s partition follows the harmonies of the pentatonic scale. Can one find peace in the hustle and bustle of city life by adding to the noise rather than seeking silence?
At nightfall, this surprising musical vessel takes on an entirely different appearance. If daylight emphasizes the installation’s brightly coloured pipes, the evening lighting facilitates an understanding of its musical composition, each pipe being illuminated from inside when a sound is produced. Entranced by these lighting effects, passersby waltz to the sound of a pleasantly reinvented urban song.
