Lise Lebleux

The Solitude of the Sound Recordist is a sound composition about the relationship between the sound recordist and his or her sound environment. Taking sound is a powerful act that involves shaping what the world has to say, composing with the state it is in, making do with reality. When sound is recorded, the sound material undergoes a transformation, resulting in a distortion of the original sound. Recording is the result of a succession of choices, such as the type of microphone, the location and our position in relation to the sound source. In this intimate moment with sound, you have to trust your point of view, which will sharpen the recorded sound. This intimacy can be comparable to a feeling of solitude. By equipping oneself with headphones that focus their listening on what the microphones pick up, the sound recordist wraps himself/herself in a layer that distances him/her from reality. This is a moment he/she can share only with himself/herself. He/She sets out on a quest to freeze sounds.

In this moment of active listening, our ears are on the alert, on the lookout for every sound they can perceive. Our body orientates itself according to the sounds that emerge around it, it is capable of remaining static in front of a sound source, sometimes even forgetting its own existence. When we record a landscape, the sounds are condensed into a single sound material, but when we listen to them, they are perpetually in motion, almost elusive. Taking sound creates a private link with sound space.

With the collaboration of musician and philosopher Agnès Gayraud.