Stethoscope Safari

Heartscopes was born from the Musiscopes project, adding induction speakers, designed to transform materials into loudspeakers. Using these at very low volume to discover and explore sound compositions using stethoscopes.

The simplest formula is a stethoscope safari, without any installations. It's best for suitable environments: For the 125th anniversary of the Lausanne Children's Hospital. Groups of children learned to use a stethoscope: Exploring themselves and others, discovering the stethoscope's potential as a musical instrument; allowing you to hold your ears in your hands and immerse them in water, for example. Playing with musiscopes and small installations, before setting off on a hospital safari. I had scouted the area; we were expected and welcome :-)

Heartscopes prepares and stages the environment, for the public's exploration safaris: With mechanical and acoustic installations. Highlights, optimizations and transformations of parts of the environment. Broadcasts of recordings in selected parts of the environment and/or Heartscopes installations prepared and integrated into the environments. There were various Heartscopes instruments to be played by the public and living Heartscopes,

(Page under construction: Photos are coming:-) Old project presentation

During the first exhibitions in Mons and Besançon in 2009, there were around a hundred installations creating tours through the city. In Mons, the priority was to transform parts of the environment into listening devices: mailboxes, courthouse gates, church doors, shop windows, public sculptures, benches, etc. By adding stickers and signs indicating the places to explore.

The public set off on a free exploration with their stethoscopes and a map. Groups of children went on safari, accompanied by facilitators trained to use stethoscopes and familiar with the city.

For the Sonorama festival in Besançon, we primarily created installations to be placed throughout the city, integrating the community, institutional, and local communities into the creation process.

Since then, there have been several broadcasts of existing installations and two main creations: One for a trail in a forest, as part of Mons, European Capital of Culture. For several months, an artist worked with children, creating recordings broadcast on panels made of different types of wood, installed in the forest.

And a creation commissioned for the Beffroi of Mons as part of the Victor Hugo exhibition, from April to November 2017. This creation was similar to filmmaking: explorations of history and texts, recordings of actors, and there were mainly voices, but also creations of atmospheres and music for the installations: a mannequin in period costume to explore as an introduction, a map of the city with recordings to discover, and two large sculptures of Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet, each with four broadcasts to speak to us.

The sculptures are made from a mixture of plaster and bio-insulation cellulose. The dyeing of wood species with ecoline offers particularly rich renderings.

Heartscopes is also alive each year, through the tours of François' Cyclophones, which are in themselves Heartscopes installations. And through the Carotte Quantique project where stethoscopes also play several key roles.

 
    Musical Woods_ Gent 2011_ Musiscopes & Heartscopes