Raphaël Thibault
Vox Humana - Performance - 2009
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 11
Performance
this project is a joint piece between video-maker Raphaël thibault (studying in his second year at Le Fresnoy) and composer Hyun-hwa Cho (a student on course 2 at iRCAM), whose purpose is to produce an audiovisual performance combining live music and video. the title of the project, Vox Humana, refers to the organ stop around which a musical composition intended to expand the classic church organ by means of electroacoustics and spatialization revolves. the title also defines the phenomenon of the human word placed at the center of musical expression which finds its diegetic expression in an abstract and highly dynamic world. the video shows two human beings plunged into a dark, dimensionless environment: a constantly uninhabited house; or an inside with no corresponding outside. Echoing this invasion by alien bodies, the space is traversed by seismic convulsions: volumes accumulate, break up, move about, striving to readjust to an out-of-kilter environment. At the end, these spatial structures will pass through and into real landscapes -- calm skies or uninhabited territories -- and the characters disappear into the gloom of underground tunnels. the project exemplifies that gradual revelation of changes of state that affects physical processes, where everything straight fleetingly curves, where all speed is relative.
