Weekly Meditations is a research-creation project and a cycle of seven audiovisual works that investigates how incorporating meditative practices into the creative process can redefine the role of the performer and deepen collective immersion. The project also explores how consciously shaping the atmosphere — the seen, heard, and felt dimensions of the performance — can heighten the immersive experience for both performers and audience members.
An oscillating methodology—moving between theory, practice, and reflection — guided the creative process. This approach made it possible to examine the aesthetic and technical impacts of these new practices, while also shaping the musical, visual, and conceptual parameters from an immersive perspective, not only for the audience and performers, but also for the composer.
Through repeated rehearsals, performances, and feedback collected from both audiences and performers, the integration of meditative practices and careful attention to audiovisual space appear to significantly enhance the immersive quality of the concert experience.
The cycle features works for various acoustic ensembles, spatialized electronics, and visuals. Rooted in a desire to cultivate a personal and ongoing relationship to musical experience through regular practice, the cycle is structured into daily pieces — each one offering a unique perspective on meditation.
The thesis can be found here (in french): https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xmlui/handle/1866/40395
for 6 instruments, electronics, video and lights.
Following the morphological structure of shoals, the piece is divided into three repeating states: the first being homogeneous and highly synchronized, the second introducing a disruptive element that will scatter the musicians both sonically and spatially (as a bird would when diving to capture its prey), and a third where the individuality becomes community once again. This structure also mirrors meditation practice, where peaceful attention to one's audiovisual environment can be disturbed by a distraction - whether physical or mental - which, after a certain time, dissipates to make room for our environment once again. The instrumentation is open-ended, intended more as an exercise in homogeneity, collaboration and listening to one's environment and to others than as a work for a specific ensemble.
for 6 instruments, electronics and video.
Meditations on a Tuesday is a sonified meditative exercise, positioning mindfulness within the performance process. Performers are asked to continually sustain a given note and to lower/raise it by an eighth of a tone whenever they become aware of a distancing from the present moment. Each sound is thus intimately linked to the concentration dynamics of each performer, following their own temporality throughout the work. This results in a constantly evolving drone, where the temporal individuality of each performer influences the shared experience, and vice versa.
Open instrumentation, electronics and video
Meditations on a Wednesday is a tele-performative work for two mixed ensembles, composed in collaboration with Émile Gingras-Therrien. Each ensemble is positioned in a distinct space, and must try to communicate with the other despite the physical and temporal distance. The latter is due to the time-shifted broadcasting of each ensemble in each space. The performers are invited to listen to a synthesized sound and pay particular attention to its morphological changes, before attempting to imitate that sound and its temporal development on their acoustic instruments. This exercise in interpretation and meditation lies mainly in attentive listening and translating the synthetic into the acoustic, using Deep Listening and improvisation.
Meditations on a Thursday is a performance for modular synthesizer and loudspeaker full-dome. Following the practices of mindfulness and Deep Listening, the work is intended as an exercise in continuous awareness of one's sound environment, translated and creatively reorganized through reactive manipulation of multiple sound and spatial parameters randomly generated during the performance. The performer's task is to manage this overwhelming environment and musicalize it. The material of the work mainly consists of sound recordings from the various waves emitted by Jupiter and its moons, captured by the Juno, Cassini and Voyager space probes.
for tenor saxophone, spherical loudspeaker and video.
Meditations on a Friday is the product of a collaboration with saxophonist Thomas Gauthier-Lang, in which we explored the meditative practice of metta, better known as loving-kindness. Inspired by the planet Venus and the goddess of love, Friday was written for Thomas' sole interpretation, featuring musical excerpts that shaped his practice. This intimate approach is supported by vulnerable visuals of Thomas's body, projected onto a curved screen that surrounds him and the audience.
Audiovisual installation for 8 loudspeakers and 360-degree projection.
Audience members are invited to practise a slow-moving meditation, in which a meticulous analysis of the whole body (and therefore of every physical sensation, however minimal) is required to produce the most continuous movement possible. 8 membrane potentiometers are positioned on a large ring 4 metres in circumference around which the public is invited to rotate and touch continuously. The membranes closely monitor pressure and speed, translating them into sonic and visual parameters. The relationship between the stability of the participant's movement and the sound material constitutes the very object of the work, producing an intense immersion by absorption.
Meditations on a Sunday is an acousmatic work that links the breathing of members of the audience to sonic and spatial parameters. It was imagined as a sonification of the birth of our star, beginning with stable clouds of sound that compress and destabilize, reaching a climax where the sun is born in a swirl of noise, followed by a peaceful environment that gives way to life as we know it today. A strong bodily connection is established by linking the breathing of the audience members, allowing them to participate in the creation of the work through a bodily action so primitive and so intimately linked to our emotional disposition.