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Trained as a sculptor, Méryll Ampe has transposed her research into matter and form into the realm of sound, starting with recordings from her immediate environment. And by taking advantage of the vibratory potential of sound to sculpt space, particularly in her live performances.
Méryll Ampe (b. 1984) was originally a woodcarver. On graduating from the Ecole Boulle, she headed for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Cergy, renowned for its emphasis on sound art. If her plastic work speaks of sound without ever giving anything to hear, the sound work she developed there speaks of sculpture in an immaterial way. This "musical" activity, which now occupies most of her life as an artist, was first developed with a Zoom recorder and a microphone - and then, of course, some good software: field recording has always been the original, primary material. Briefly processed, the sounds of reality have forged the grammar of a music nourished ("informed") by the great works of musique concrète.
This sculptural approach to sound is also coupled with work on its vibratory force, its physical power, and its projection in space: "I seek to amplify vibrations in order to play in a physical way, i.e. so that the body is impacted by the vibratory state of the space. These vibratory states provoke images, emotions and abstract feelings. Sound can project forward like an energetic, vital movement...", she recently explained to artist Lauren Tortil for her series [woːks] - a series of online and musical encounters around sound art. Sculpture too engages the body, after all. So live performances are an essential part of her practice, of this music that is both horizontal and vertical, meditative and cathartic, inner and physical. Although she likes to quote Luc Ferrari and William Basinski, Méryll Ampe listened to a lot of rock (Led Zeppelin as well as Durutti Column, Silver Apples or Bauhaus) before techno (Plastikman, Peaches, Mika Vaino, Pantha du Prince) and clubbing triggered her desire to make it: "In fact, rhythm is coming back into my music these days", she observes. It's hardly surprising, then, that she has made lucha libre, that Mexican variant of wrestling, spectacular to the point of upsetting all the senses, the subject of her most ambitious project to date: a sound installation in which the documentary, the real itself, becomes a material to be handled and kneaded, a cinema for the ear that takes the listener, she tells us, on a "subjective, lyrical"trip ...
You learned to play the cello and drums in your teens, but it was at the Beaux-Arts in Cergy that you switched to computer science and musical electronics. Is that when you discovered field recording?
Yes. My teachers - my professor at the conservatory and my sound art professor at Cergy - gave us a microphone and a recorder, and we had to come up with a piece. It was mostly urban noise. I have the impression that field recording was the vector that really got me more into music. It was this practice, by enabling me to gather together the material of everyday life - be it my drums or the boiler room at my parents' house - and compose from that, that led me to electroacoustics. Although I'd heard pieces by Denis Dufour and Pierre Henry, I knew nothing about this kind of music before coming to Cergy. My initial aim was to combine sculpture and sound. But in the end, after two years, I was totally immaterial.
Do you have any favorite sound sources or recording equipment?
I confess I've long had a weakness for all industrial machines. But it's true that when I was a student, and I didn't necessarily have a lot of money, I started with things that were in my room, around me. It can be microscopic as well as macro - I can record a large shell in my bathroom or bathtub, for example - and it's spread out over time: I test things, as if the object I move becomes an instrument. Maybe you lose a bit of the notion of "terrain" inherent in field recording, because I put myself in a situation in my everyday space, I use objects that are around me... Later, I went to record things like the atmosphere of the night in the forest, a bit like Luc Ferrari, which I love. But these are simple things.
Similarly, as I didn't have any great microphones, it was mainly stereo, with an amplifier or with a Zoom recorder: the Zoom allows you to draw very quickly, even if it means having a bit of parasite or dynamic jumps when you move - some sort of strange tension with the grain, accidents that sometimes produce interesting things... For me, field recording is linked to waiting: I record for 15 minutes and then I try to find the rare pearl in those 15 minutes.
Until you added the synthesizer, field recording was the main material, the basis of your sound work...
Absolutely. The raw material was really concrete sounds, everyday stuff, sometimes very raw, processed in a really simple way: adding gain, maybe a little overdrive, equalizer... I proceed rather by superimpositions, by strata. Later, when I finally bought my first little synth, I got interested in electronic energy. But I always come back to field recordings, and I regularly reinject them into my music, sometimes as memories, almost psychoacoustic elements... On the other hand, I certainly don't do the same kind of work as Chris Watson, Thomas Tilly or Julie Rousse, for example.
For a long time, your sound work has been conceived more for live performance than for recording...
It's true that my research, whether in the field or in the studio, is often primarily designed for live performance. Even though I'm working more and more with filmmakers and choreographers, and therefore on fixed compositions. On the other hand, I use very little sound in my plastic, "physical" work: it's more about the volume of sound, silence, the way sound is seen in relief, but without involving it.
Is the physicality of sound essential to you?
Definitely. It's true that I first perceive the medium of sound in terms of density and mass. What I'm looking for more in physical, material things is a relationship to vibrations, energy, perspectives, dynamics, horizontality and verticality, which for me brings me back to sculpture. I see in it an analogy with what I was able to do before as a woodcarver - my first training... Similarly, as a performer, I conceive most of my concerts in terms of the venue, the sound system, the acoustic impression. I like to play with things that are sometimes quite massive, so I need to know a little about the venue, the way the space resonates and responds, to know what tool to use to highlight them, play on certain depths, sculpt, carve out the sound a little more, shape it live. Where some would speak of frequency, timbre or tessitura, I see volumes, shapes, states, different moments...
The opposition between figuration (or naturalism) and abstraction (since field recordings don't interest you for what they represent, you distort them to the point of making them unrecognizable) is another fertile tension at work in your work. In this respect, your installation Lucha libre stands out for its almost documentary quality...
It's true that when I discovered lucha libre ("free wrestling", a Mexican variant of wrestling, editor's note) in Mexico, I was impressed, immersed in something I didn't know, it gave me a lot of desire, and I immediately wanted to come back and capture these sounds. After a lot of field recording in Mexico, Lucha libre gave rise to two parts, two formats that don't talk about the same thing. First, there was a fifty-minute radio piece, which I started working on in early 2018, shortly after my return from Mexico: it's a kind of audio diary, with a very intimate dimension (I tell a bit about my life, I talk about the earthquake, my doubts, I try to inject some personal daily life). The installation, on the other hand, which required an enormous amount of production work over several years, takes us away from the known world and into another world, towards something abstract and noisy. The composition lasts 24 minutes, starting with a moment from everyday life and gradually shifting towards an imaginary universe, even if it is sometimes referential (certain sounds can evoke video games, for example) and even if there are always moments when reality returns, including towards the end, when you start to lose track of where you are... There are no images, just light, sound and smoke, and the sound takes on a hyper-important body as a result: It's an almost cinematographic game to take the audience elsewhere, to something totally subjective, lyrical, where everyone can see what they want. It's a real trip.
What role does sculpture play in your work today? What makes you decide to produce sculpture rather than sound?
At the moment, I'm very busy with sound, composition, live performances, research with my machines, and "commissions" for live performance or film. I do far fewer pieces on a single material or medium, because I have far less time for it. But sometimes I'm asked to produce something for group exhibitions, a kind of mini-edition - a drawing, for example - always based on sound. I'm soon to take part in a group exhibition at Atelier W, in Pantin, on the theme of the staircase, and I'm currently thinking about what I'm going to produce... I'm also in residence at La Station, in Aubervilliers, where I'm working on a sound installation based around the tree house: I'm going to build a tree house - a real tree house made of branches and logs, like in the forest - in which there will be a mini-studio where we can compose.
That said, my sound work always includes a graphic dimension. Whenever I have a new project, I make notes, draw, create scores with color, pens, felt-tip pens, to see the energy I want to convey in the composition. I always have notebooks, A3 sheets, so that I can come back to them, and also so that I can explain my projects to people.
David Sanson
*In concert in Paris on 14/10 (duet with Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes), 23/10 (Be My Ghost trio) and 19/11, in Brussels on 18/11 and in Lyon on 21/11.
