Since it was launched in 2004, the research group Locus Sonus has been working on artistic possibilities arising from the intersection of networked and acoustic or local audio spaces. The first projects, Locustream & Wimicam, were developed from experimentation using audio streaming techniques, and engage with problematic related to the use of flux for artistic purposes (flux understood here as a continually updating medium) in local and networked environments. Today our research is grouped under two main headings Field Spatialization and Networked Sonic Spaces. Our research is fundamentally practice based aiming to create a corpus of artistic experimentation around a common problematic. The forms emanating from this activity are « verified » essentially through their presentation in public contexts. The choice of implementing this research within the art education environment is prompted by the current renewal of techniques and art-forms which are at the intersection of the visual arts and music.
The marriage of sound and space (sound problematized by space and visa versa) is at the heart of our research and experimentation, the main pivot of our investigations. A number of different forms are experimented within the group, ranging from concert/performance, through installation to web-based projects. The elaboration of these different types of proposition implies the development of appropriate systems for the restitution and diffusion of acoustic and electronic sound, of apparatus and devices such as instruments, computer programs, interfaces and the invention of processes, protocols and concepts. The main part of our current investigation concerns the transport of sound (and sound ambiances) which has lead to the construction of streaming systems as well as sensorial and experiential environments which favour different listening experiences, synchronous and asynchronous, local, distant, geographically identified, autophone and chronotope: the networked sonic spaces. .
Our current questioning of networked sound spaces is centered on modification of perception and usage of space, the conditions which these modifications require or imply and the way that these conditions are implemented into systems which interact with a place or several places simultaneously. The artistic dimension of this networking of spaces refers not so much to existing forms such as remote concerts, or remote interactive systems, as to the social dimensions inherent to the creation of a circle (i.e. a social circle) or the participation in a game.
Critical analysis plays a large part in our research, and has largely developed through exchanges with researchers working close to us in the areas of sociology, epistemology, esthetics and sound anthropology .
This exploration of networked spatial systems reveals and clarifies the context in which new audio practices are developing between physical and virtual spaces while offering a new experimental dimension in audio art and music.
