Sonic Totem, performance-installation

Commissioning of works 04.03.2021

Floy Krouchi is a bass player, composer of electroacoustic music and radio artist.
She continues to produce Sonic Totem in various forms.

Sonic Totem is an interactive sound sculpture, a receptacle and transmitter of sensitive sounds. Programmable to react to distance and nearby movements, the Totem becomes a versatile instrument of real-time interaction, generating narratives: it carries a circular crown of ultrasonic sensors that trigger and modulate sound sequences according to procedures between necessity and randomness.

Born from a reflection and a radio creation work by Floy Krouchi on genealogy, the Totem is fed by field recordings, interviews, potentially infinite sound documents, made by the artist and recorded in all the places where it is installed. It can also receive and modulate a live audio stream from another location.
The figure of the traditional totem is invoked, a ritual object serving as an interface with the world of ancestors and invisible forces: the sculpture functions as a contemporary "digital totem".
It allows us to reformulate and question the human/non-human/machine ontology as well as the function of the art object as a magical object.
A "meta-genealogy" emerges: the processes of interactive composition reflect the processes of the Living. By selection, repetition, mutation, between determinism and chance, sequences are built, identities and memories are defined, at the level of the cell, of the individual, of the collective history.

After a prototyping and realization of the sculpture at the Hangar art center in Barcelona in 2018, Sonic Totem-Interactive Installation sees the light of day at the Dream City Biennial in Tunis, in October 2019.
Accompanied by a team of Tunisian performers and collaborators (Badiaa Bouhrizi on vocals, Nejma Zghidi, actress, Selma Zghidi, text and performance, Marwen Abouda, video mapping and set design), visual artist Ursula Scherrer and Devin Brahja Waldman on saxophone, Floy Krouchi activates a/this first version of Sonic Totem in Tunis, the place of her maternal origins. The sculpture of wood, metal and horn, which incorporates a series of interactive speakers, is installed in the center of the chapel in the Medina of Tunis, and surrounded by a quadraphonic device. The installation lasts four days and the public attends two performances: the Totem is presented in the middle of a virtual circular space, around which everyone can turn 360 °. The public interacts with the sculpture to generate unique narratives, hybrid identities and spatio-temporal disruptions; the performers and musicians accompany them through a tree-like narrative around the object.

"One could say that we find in this piece the characteristics of the first mineral and then human artefacts, namely the verticality of the Shiva lingam, the phallus stone, symbol of the verticality of Sapiens, and of which we will have multiple variations later on from pre-Columbian art to the column of Brancusi or the bottle holder of Duchamp. "

As a continuation, Floy has created a radio version to be broadcast on France Culture on 30 May 2021: " Sonic Totem - the Manifesto of the Object ", in the Experience, directed by Celine Ters.
This radio play is organised as a subversive and musical theatre-fiction: several levels of space and time retrace the history of a parallel humanity, based on the memory traces of a people, contained in the sculpture. The narrative mixes past, present and future, and approaches a science fiction story.
From the interiority of the body to the formation of planets, from pre-history to a possible extra-terrestrial life, from the post-anthropocene to a mythical "before" ... a narrative takes shape.

"That'swhat you are, eternal return, nomad on the spiral of time. I will speak, perhaps, of something that does not exist."

Finally, on April 2, 2022, at the Avant-Garde festival in Césaré in Reims, Floy Krouchi presents a new part of this long term project: Sonic Totem - The world upside down. This version focuses on an experimental film made by the artist, edited by Carine Doumit. Produced as part of a two-year residency at Césaré-cncm (2021-2023), this film is shot between a desert in Spain and a forest in Paris, composed with images from Egypt, the United States and images from microscopes.

Film and light respond to each other: Yves Godin (light designer) conceives a device that plays on the reflection of the film itself.

The steps were carried out:
- Sonic Totem - Part 2: The Upside Down World.
Production: Césaré-cncm / Co-production: Soluble dans l'Air / Partners: Hémisphère Son / with the support of the Culture pole of the Association des Maisons de quartier de Reims.
- Sonic Totem #1 The Object Manifesto
Production: France Culture-Radio France.
- Sonic Totem, interactive sculpture
Production: Soluble dans l'air / Coproduction: Art2M, Hangar / Partners: Can Serrat, The Camargo Foundation, Dreamcity Tunis.

Floy Krouchi will be in residence at Césaré CNCM/Reims during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons, funded by the DRAC Grand Est.

It has been supported and accompanied by Hémisphère son since 2021.

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