Tonal Landscape Generator

The landscape only exists in the eye of the beholder. It is a point of view, a construction of the mind and of our gaze upon nature …a creation. Evidence shows that the landscape only appears in the Western world with the advent of humanism, when the individuals became aware of themselves and of the place they occupied in the world. Thus, it is the spectator that makes the landscape, he’s the one who makes the artwork, to quote Marcel Duchamp’s lovely formulation.¹

crédit photo: Marco Casella

However, during his residency at LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE, Italian artist Marco Casella exposed a landscape of a completely different nature. There is nothing to contemplate here: only sounds and a few gathered objects that, as underscored by the artist², are traces of the creation process– the witnesses of an approach – and not the artwork in itself. Thus, as the visitors cross the threshold of the gallery, they do not find themselves facing a landscape but rather inside one. A sonic landscape, a landscape to be rebuilt, to experiment, to internalize.

crédit photo: Marco Casella

Casella’s practice revolves around the use of everyday life sounds and images taken from the web and used to create immersive works. This audio and visual content is then transformed, handled, mutated through various technological devices to create both conceptual and formal environments where time, space and digital data are used as a language that can bring the spectator beyond what is at first perceived.

During his residency, the artist worked on the conception of the Tonal Landscape Generator project that aimed to create a landscape from sounds captured in the four corners of Quebec City. Armed with a camera, a microphone and a guitar tuner, Casella explored the Vieille Capitale in search of significant locations, that is to say emblematic/tourist sites, but also less famous venues that in other respects also contribute in making the city unique. In these locations, the artist recorded ambient sounds. Then, by feeding them to the guitar tuner, he highlighted the tone changes that modulate the sonic environment of the city.

crédit photo: Marco Casella

In other words, the device allowed to capture the sounds coming from the urban fabric as a real material that could further be handled and orchestrated within an immersive installation where the city was sort of synthesized. In LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE gallery, the sound sculpted the space, generating an ambiance rooted in the City’s reality, but who, paradoxically, propelled the listeners totally elsewhere.

crédit photo: Ivan Binet

Tangibly, the Tonal Landscape Generator device translates venues into sounds. It maps and codifies them so as to generate a new space of representation. Casella then acts as an art director or a conductor who arranges sounds and digital data in order to propose a new landscape, halfway between the reality and the virtual, the tangible and the conceptual.

Through this installation, Casella relativizes his influence on his environment by showing that it is foremost the world that surrounds him that transforms his gaze and not the other way around. He also calls into context the importance of technology in the way we interact with nature, things and individuals who cross our daily lives. Thus, unlike what was put forward in the introduction, it is no longer the landscape that is built up through the eye of the beholder – in this case the artist-, but the opposite. It results in a whole new way to design the space in which we operate and, at the same time, a whole new way of perceiving and mapping the urban fabric.

1. Quotation of Marcel Duchamp : « Ce sont les regardeurs qui font les tableaux .» in Marcel Duchamp. 1967 : Ingénieur du temps perdu / Entretiens avec Pierre Cabanne. Paris : Pierre Belfond, p. 122..
2. Interview given at LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE during his residency. [Online] : www.vimeo.com/249209052 (page viewed on January 11, 2019)