Presented at Festival Les Musiques 2019.
Produced by GMEM and Chroniques (Seconde Nature).

SelphieOrchestra is the result of a collaboration between Peter Sinclair and Montreal-based composer and Musician Owen Chapman (Unity programming - Jonathan Tanant) The installation is a realtime interpretation of visitor's movements, voices, faces in and around La Friche de La Belle de Mai. A 3d model of La Friche was created using photogrammetry and its acoustic spaces sythesiszed using audio convolution. These were integrated into a game environment allowing punters to particpate in a surreal, musical virtual-visit of the architechture surrounding the installation space (Marseille objectif danse) by piloting their own avatar with a game pad.

Chapman and Sinclair worked together during residencies in Marseille and Montreal in the contexte of the europeen project “Future Divercities” hosted by LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE in Quebec and Seconde Nature and GMEM in Marseille. The Sinclair and Chapman also worked together in the Locus Sonus Vitae AudioMobile https://maf.locusonus.org/ research program that culminated in 2015. They co-authored an article about this work : “On Listening as Analysis: The Selfie Orchestra Project” in Canadian Theatre Review https://doi.org/10.3138/ctr.184.005.

“Peter Sinclair and Owen Chapman have been working together between Marseille and Montreal for the past year and a half on this installation/game. It is an audio and visual interpretation of urban space conceived from human movement. Using a specially developed app, the two sound artists collect movement and sounds as data to compose a sonic and visual work. With their own smartphones, each spectator is invited to participate in Selfie Orchestra by recording their journey, sounds, and images within the Friche space for a short period. At the end of the various journeys, the public can gather at the heart of the installation to discover and listen to the resulting musical and visual experience. Each journey will be shared with those of the other participants.”

Announcement: https://www.lafriche.org/evenements/selfie-orchestra/

https://gmem.org/peter-sinclair-owen-chapman-5a5bc6c5

Interview with Owen Chapman: