Écosystème

The underwater world definitely isn’t quiet… and what we hear there tells a story. Waves, boat engines, marine animals communicating, the ice pack cracking or the sound of flowing water – proof of steady melting – this immersive film explores a little-known component of this ecosystem: its soundscape.

A project between arts and sciences

Écosystème is the result of a long residency combining research and creation. The project originated from a team of marine ecology researchers who wanted to experiment with the links between art and science. Back from a polar mission, they called upon the talents of electronic music producer Maxime Dangles to create new musical material from their underwater sound recordings.

To illustrate this sound journey, visual artist Dylan Cote set out to create a dark and enigmatic aquatic universe inhabited by synthetic and minimalist entities. The animated film dives into this world and explores its imaginary lands, guided by a narrative thread showing their progressive disturbance.

This immersive film has benefited from the support of the SAT’s creation program.

Combining research and creation

The BeBEST Franco-Quebec International Laboratory focuses on the ecology of extreme environments and was founded by a team of researchers returning from polar missions. After 350 ice dives, having realized that an environmental disaster was imminent and that they were clearly unable to witness the aesthetic shock experienced during these missions, the group decided to combine artistic creation, in residence at the polar research base, with their marine ecology work.

A large part of the scientific research work in the BeBEST laboratory is based on passive acoustic methods. The sounds recorded are those of marine animals, as well as those of human activities and of the sea itself (waves, swell, current, rain, ice cracking…). These sounds represent precious new material for musical creators.

Musician Maxime Dangles was invited to participate in the work, to create new musical material from these sounds, particularly for creating a 360° immersive audiovisual performance in a dome, after experimenting with a spatialized sound system (Meyer 24.4 active diffusion points, controlled by an audio-digital interface) allowing sound immersion.

The sounds used as raw material in the creation of this immersive composition have a unique range and an aesthetic value of their own, but they also carry a meaning: they give voice to the perils that threaten this fragile environment. The audio work mixes the raw ambiance of underwater sounds turned into instruments with a more traditional writing of instruments and vocals.

The artistic approach of this project is intimately linked to the time spent in residence in the laboratory, which allowed the artists to make the sounds their own, along with the the context in which they were captured, their meaning, and more broadly, the current content of this marine ecology research.