Crinoïdophone

One could quite easily come across this installation in a cabinet of curiosities of future times, in which what remains of a primitive cinematic memory would be preserved.

The crinoïdophone, made in collaboration with Tristan Dubus, is a sound sculpture made from salvaged industrial material. Resting on a metal pedestal, in a large Plexiglas bell jar filled with illuminated transparent liquid, shreds of magnetic tape salvaged from VHS cassettes are suspended and float in the liquid. Intermittently and unpredictably, in a discontinuous rotating movement, the pieces of magnetic tape are set in motion by a small motor concealed in the top of the bell jar, which makes them whirl in the liquid. As they turn, the fragments rub against two magnetic tape playback heads immersed in the liquid. The result is snatches of sound, fragments of a cinematic memory impossible to apprehend other than in a kind of fleeting and fascinating sonic whirling.

Before this work, the visitor to this cabinet of curiosities would witness something that could not even be imagined, the state of an art, of something, emerging from a fragmentary, incomprehensible and fleeting memory.

There is something of contemplation before this work, of magic, a time of the present in which one contemplates and captures the magic of ancient sounds, like those specimens preserved and displayed in formalin in a natural history museum. It would be like standing before a sound diorama, restoring what remains of an ancient time, snatches and rumblings of a vanished cinematic memory, of which only the memory of engulfed sounds would survive.

See the artist’s website: http://www.tanguyclerc.com/