Noé 2.0 is a modern tale with a scenography which is exclusively based on sound.
The objective of this work is to describe with sounds what the public cannot see, in order to make it accessible in the same way as a stage set would do,
but without interfering with the speech of the actors.
The music includes the main theme, a tale music declined in several versions, as well as an orchestral music, composed for a visual, very choreographed scene,
with a rhythm which evokes the rhythm of an industrial plant.
Besides the composition of the music, it was necessary to create the acoustic atmosphere of an industrial henhouse, of a "disassembly" line, and finally,
to create the specific sound universe of a video game, with not only a music, but also a whole set of sound effects. To manage this sound set with the
necessary precision and flexibility, I wrote a Max/MSP patch, usable with a simple MIDI controller and a computer keyboard.
This work is in progress, and is planned for theater season 2015-2016.
The play
Noé 2.0 is a play written for a teenager public, which tells the journey of a little boy who goes in a factory farm with three animals from his own
farm, and who has to deal with the cogs of an infernal machine.
Gauche Uppercut
The sound design
The sound design consisted in finding and creating the atmospheres which match the desires of the director, as well as the entrance and
exit sounds for the characters, according to their character, and to their place in the microcosm of the play. This work was remotely made,
as the creation took place in Paris, while I had just settled down in Istanbul, and I was only able to attend a first reading of the play.
Through regular electronic meetings, and after several attempts, the Director and I managed to create the various sounds of this play
In addition, as I was away, I could not attend the representations as a technician, and the final sound scenography was too complex to be
executed with a public software, or by playing a CD. Hence I wrote a specific patch for this play, extremely easy to use, so that the
responsible technician would have to concentrate only on the moment when he had to launch or stop each sound event.
The play
“Here you are in Archipelago B612. Here, it’s not good to be noticed! Then we do not provoke! A contract is a contract! And we have papers!
Here, three rules (or rather one): you’re in couple or off you go! Outside is the beautiful world, invisible, inaccessible and imprisoned
by the virtuality... Armored Universe of rules which let glimpse a mere draft of freedom you will eventually find only in yourself. Today,
an order was delivered: Archipelago B612 must vanish.”
—text extracts of La Bulle du Temps
Attempts on her life
The music
The work I made for Attempts on her life is a multifaceted musical composition.
The structure of the play requires about fifteen transitions designed
to establish a clear interruption between two consecutive scenarios. During these transitions, basically played on the piano, and which are built
according to the repetition - variation principle, the sound introduces an atmosphere, a concern, a malaise in the spectator’s mind, about what he
has just seen or what he is going to see.
The sound work also has a performance aspect. On one hand, for one of the scenarios, we chose to record a set of sentences and phrases, with several
actors, in order to mix them together, and to broadcast them during the show to respond the actor on stage. On the other hand, for another scenario,
I produced a composition for a solo voice, two chorus-singers and electronics, written as a song.
The play
A character, whose name is submitted to variation and whom we shall never see on stage, is mentioned in every scenario.
Anne/Anny/Annie/Anya/Annoushka becomes alternately the mistress of a politician, a war victim, a car, a terrorist, a cheap cigarette…
Play-inquiry, play- labyrinth, Attempts on her life plays ironically with the representations, the speeches (security’s, sectarian’s,
media’s, advertising‘s…), the clichés (of the image, the language), and the stories which circulate in the public place. Through the
uses of a skewed perspective, the play invites to consider how familiar events can bear violence, even terror, and eventually attempt
on our own lives.
