audio


Click on the titles to listen.
All compositions
© christophe charles and authors
see also Discogs
2021
Yellow Mountain
Yellow Mountain was first composed in 2015 using actual sounds of Lake Guy and Bogong Village, and was designed for headphone playback while traversing Lake Guy by canoe. It is also an homage to Henning Christiansen, who was fond of birds. It commences with a mix of sounds of the lake’s surroundings, including various birdcalls of varying intensities, mixed together with the hum of Clover Dam Power Plant and some trombone notes played around the lake by Miyamoto Kazuyuki. Sounds of insects and lawnmowers gradually appear, before we plunge beneath the surface of Lake Guy to hear the underwater activities of streams and air bubbles, modulated by the vibrations of the power plant, eventually returning to the surface where the birdcalls are calmer. Some of these sounds are hidden, or too far away to be heard by the human ear, but nevertheless present enough to delineate the Bogong Village soundscape. The piece forges a relationship between the under and above water spaces, through different sound events sustained by the continuous hum of the electric power plant, which also suggests the deep, latent presence of a non¬human, non¬animal presence. Yellow Mountain (2021) reshapes the 2015 piece, and uses previously unreleased material, providing new perspectives on the Bogong soundscape.
Each sound that I produce is transparent and stands for itself. No one covers or eliminates another. The listener is therefore invited to pay also attention to the sounds of the environment. I am looking for the possibility to make all sounds audible, by the use of specific time and space structures.
Notes from the Field: Bogong Centre for Sound Culture
Friday 26 February – Sunday 27 June 2021
Paul Ramsay Galleries and ANZ/Zauner Grand Foyer, MAMA

Notes from the Field is first a portrait of a place – Bogong Village, in the Alpine region of North East Victoria. Bogong is a place of exceptional natural beauty, and a site of many intersecting concerns. Halfway between Mount Beauty and Falls Creek, it was established in its current form as a worker’s village for the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme.
Bogong is the Dhudhuroa word for “big moth” and gives its name to Mount Bogong, the Bogong High Plains and Bogong Village, as well as the well-known moth whose existence is now threatened through industrial agriculture, habitat destruction, climate change and other anthropogenic impacts. The discordant relationships between industrial technologies, human involvement and the environment is stark in the unique setting of Bogong Village. The power station is a major presence in the village, and although hydroelectric technology promises to produce green energy, the damming of the Kiewa River has forever altered the valley’s ecosystem and landscape.
It is in this environment that Madelynne Cornish and Philip Samartzis have been running the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture for the last ten years. The centre invites artists from across the globe to travel to this remote part of Australia and immerse themselves in the site. The artists mainly engage in fieldwork, a process of recording, compiling and organising information, such as sound, video, photographs, and sketches.
Notes from the Field brings together the work of 15 artists who have been residents at Bogong Village over the last ten years, with work presented both in the gallery spaces and online. Notes from the Field celebrates the incredible initiative of this globally reaching and supportive artist residency program in North East Victoria. The artists have observed and recorded the dissonance between landscape, humans and technology and now present their findings for us to consider.

Featuring the work of:
Adam Pultz Melbye, Andrew Tetzlaff, Bridget Chappell, Christophe Charles, Daniela d’Arielli, Felix Wilson, Gabi Schaffner, James Geurts, Justas Pipinis, Lesley Duxbury, Madelynne Cornish, Michael Vorfeld, Philip Samartzis, Sabine Vogel, Shannon Leah Collis.

Explore the work of all 15 artists, including additional digital works and pieces from International artists on the dedicated Notes From the Field website.

2020
Toneshifter
I was invited by TJ Norris to compose a 30 minutes playlist for his radio program:
Toneshift -
Celebrating A Decade: 2010-2020
https://www.mixcloud.com/toneshiftradio/guestmix-by-christophe-charles/


The playlist uses some of the pieces that were featured in the spring radio program on
∏-node in a more compact format with different configurations and balance.

0'00"-5'32" Christophe Charles - Introduction to Brahms' Haydn Variationen [Define Festival 2016] (2016)

0'31"-4'14" Paul Zukofsky & Takahashi Yuji - For You I Sing this Song [The Art of Paul Zukovsky] (2007)

3'44"-7'21" Philip Samartzis & Michael Vorfeld - extraction [Current] (2013)

5'37"-10'53" Christophe Charles - Sculptures Musicales (2012)

7'19"-10'31" Christophe Charles - Five Minutes for JR and Mopomoso (2020)


9'41"-17'16" Christophe Charles - With Harajuku, together with sounds by Onodera Yui (2020)

13'01"-16'15" Christophe Charles - Sculptures Musicales (2012)

16'32"-21'47" Philip Corner - Satie's Rose Cross as a Revelation [Ars Acustica - Fluxus] (2001) edited by Christophe Charles (2020)

19'12"-21'49" Kosugi Takehisa - Untitled #7 [Mode - Violin Improvisations] (1989)

19'19"-24'29" Christophe Charles & Jesper Nordin & Sønderborg Symphony Orchestra - Luc Ferrari Tautologos III [Define Festival 2016]


22'40"-25'34" Kosugi Takehisa - Untitled #11 [Mode - Violin Improvisations] (1989)

23'48"-29'55" Airs du Genji Monogatari (Fujitsubo) [Œuvres vocales de Yoritsuné Matsudaïra] (1991) by Nara Yumi (voice) with Miyata Mayumi (shô) and Fukunaga Chieko (koto), edited by Christophe Charles (2020)

26'22"-30'00" Christophe Charles - Aleko + Sur Terre + NVSC (2005-2011)


2020
D-E-G-D
I was invited by Kim Cascone to make a composition for the 2020 release of "From Here to Tranquility- Volume 12 - Horizonte Aeternitatis" on his Silent Records label, "the reboot of America's premier ambient label, founded in 1986 by Kim Cascone". He was looking for "something dark, electronic, glitchy and drony", hence the title.

https://silentrecords.bandcamp.com/track/d-e-g-d

2020
Five Minutes for John Russell and Mopomoso
Jul 19, 2020, second edition of Mopomoso monthly webcast, presented by John Russell.
A live improvisation at home on a Les Paul Junior 1956, Electro Harmonix Freeze & Pog2, Yamaha REX50, e-Bows, bottlenecks and clothspegs. 
https://www.mopomoso.com/

2020
hommages-radio
On May 07, 2020, I was invited by Samon Takahashi to play for his Antivirus radio program on ∏-node [https://p-node.org/].
I have intended to pay my homage and respect to artists who have passed away, some very recently:
Dave Greenfield, Paul Zukofsky, Demetrio Stratos, Steve Lacy, Henning Christiansen, Luc Ferrari, Kosugi Takehisa, Matsudaira Yoritsune, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Florian Schneider. Their music is mixed with compositions/performances by Mark Fell, Takahashi Yuji, John Russell/Phil Minton/Roger Turner, Philip Samartzis/Michael Vorfeld, Philip Corner, Nara Yumi, and myself.

List of the material with approximate timing:

0'00"-2'00" Dave Greenfield & the Stranglers - Golden Brown [La Folie]

2'02"-4'26 Mark Fell - manitutshu

4'10"-9'42" Christophe Charles - Introduction to Brahms' Haydn Variationen [Define Festival 2016]

4'41"-8'24" Paul Zukofsky & Takahashi Yuji - For You I Sing this Song [The Art of Paul Zukovsky]

8'50"-13'39" Demetrio Stratos & Area & Steve Lacy - Caos (parte seconda) [Maledetti]

10'45"-16'22" John Russell & Phil Minton & Roger Turner - MinRusTur [Freedom of the City 2001]

14'16"-16'12" Philip Samartzis & Michael Vorfeld - extraction [Current]

15'32"-22'09" Henning Christiansen - Requiem of Art Op. 50

19'26"-23'38" Philip Corner - Satie's rose cross as a revelation [Ars Acustica - Fluxus]

21'37"-28'58" Christophe Charles - Next Point + Sculptures Musicales

28'40"-34'35" Christophe Charles & Jesper Nordin & Sønderborg Symphony Orchestra - Luc Ferrari Tautologos III [Define Festival 2016]

32'28"-37'08" Kosugi Takehisa - Untitled #5 [Mode - Violin Improvisations]

34'30"-40'16" Nara Yumi - Airs du Genji Monogatari (Fujitsubo) [Œuvres vocales de Yoritsuné Matsudaïra]

39'59"-45'09" Christophe Charles - Der Hirt auf dem Felsen + Statics

44'00"-48'59" Christophe Charles - Aleko + Sur Terre + NVSC

47’48”-58’32” Throbbing Gristle - Separated [Part Two the Endless Not]

49'38"-55'25" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge & Throbbing Gristle - Vow of Silence [Part Two the Endless Not]

51'17"-59'15" Christophe Charles - Cave

57'30"-60'00" Florian Schneider - Stop Plastic Pollution

59'11"-59'47" Rick Rue - Ocean Flows


2020
with harajuku - shiseido floor sound design
Shiseido Floor Sound Design direction by Onodera Yui and Oguro Junichi with sounds by Christophe Charles. 

WITH HARAJUKU is "The Hangout Where The Future Is Made - A New Stage in Tokyo for Global Culture and Creation. The subcultures born here today will become the mainstream styles of the future, spreading through Japan and then to the world. It's the creative mindset and subcultural identity of people who gather here, that have created this distinctive culture."

Open: May 2020.

Seven pieces by Christophe Charles to be mixed with the music of Onodera Yui and Oguro Junichi, as a generative-interactive sound environment.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7


2020
Introduction to Haydn Variationen
Exhibition AUDIOSPHERE / AUDIOSFERA
Social Experimental Audio, Pre- and Post-Internet
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
May 26th - September 21th, 2020
curated by Francisco Lopez

Introduction to Haydn Variationen was composed in 2016 for the Define Festival in Sønderborg, Denmark. The first part of the piece revisits the remix of the hoon CD "unfinished" (see below
2001 undirected/hoon), the last part revisits hcdc (composed in 2008 and published in 2013 by Murmur Records), based on the "breathe" piece (2008).




2019
DubLab Interview - Japanese Ambient Journey
https://dublab.jp/2019/10/japanese-ambient-journey-vol-3/
Christophe Charles interview by Onodera Yui on the DubLab
"Japanese Ambient Journey" radio program. Presentation of 5 pieces, compilations of former compositions.

この放送は、音楽家/サウンドアーティストの小野寺 唯による日本の環境音楽に焦点をあてた新番組『Japanese Ambient Journey』。第3回目のゲストは武蔵野美術大学映像学科教授のクリストフ・シャルルさんをお迎えし、東京成田国際空港第一ターミナル中央アトリウム 常設インスタレーションなどに代表される”環境デザイン/パブリックアート”としての常設インスタレーション や、エリック・サティやリュック・フェラーリなどのフランス人作曲家からの影響、環境音との公共空間のサウン ド・デザインなどを手掛けた音楽家の吉村弘の企画・プロデュースで80年代後半から90年代にかけて開催され た、サウンド・アート作品を集めたグループ展シリーズ「サウンド・ガーデン」展での展示など当時の貴重なお話を 紹介します。

Japanese Ambient Journey vol.3
日時:2019年11月7日(木曜日)20:30〜22:00
Host : Yui Onodera
Guest: Christophe Charles

1- Next Point
2- Der Hirt auf dem Felsen - Statics
3- Acustica - Aleko
4- Narita
5- Sculptures musicales

2019
John Russell Lecture, Concert and Workshop
John Russell Visiting Professor:
Lecture, Concert, Workshop
at Musashino Art University,
June 10 to 15, 2019.

2019 ジョン・ラッセル 訪問教授:
課外講座、コンサート、ワークショップ、
武蔵野美術大学、2019年6月10日〜15日

It was a great honour and pleasure to welcome John Russell as a guest professor, for a series of lectures, workshops and concerts at Musashino Art University in June 2019. John had invited us in 2008 to participate in a Mopomoso event in London (https://youtu.be/IImRGr65F4k). Eleven years have passed, and it was possible at last to invite him to Musashino Art University, to teach as a guest professor to undergraduate and Master Course Students. We did two concerts as a final presentation during the 2019 Open Campus.

2019年6月に武蔵野美術大学で講義、ワークショップ、コンサートを開催し、ギタリストであり、世界をリード するフリーインプロヴィゼーション(自由即興音楽)の第一人者であるジョン・ラッセル氏を訪問教授として迎えら れたことは、大変光栄である。2008 年、ジョン・ラッセル氏はロンドンで行われた「モポモソ」イベントに私たちのセミナーを招待してくれた(https://youtu.be/IImRGr65F4k)。 そこから 11 年もの時を経て武蔵野美術大学の訪問教授として、学部生・修士課程の学生を教える運びとなった。2019 のオープンキャンパスの最終プレゼンテーションとして、2つのコンサートを行った。

With John, we were able to make a journey through sound, exploring the un/intentional and un/controlled elements, trying to listen carefully and to react instantaneously to our inner and outer environment. Details about the workshops, transcriptions of his lecture on June 10 and a conversation with Christophe Charles on June 14, are included in a booklet, which can be downloaded from this link:
http://home.att.ne.jp/grape/charles/texts/2019John_Russell-MAU_Booklet.pdf

ラッセル氏と一緒に、私たちは音を通して旅をし、意図的 でない、制御されていない要素を探求し、注意深く耳を傾け、内外の環境に瞬時に反応するように努めた。訪問教授プログラム情報、6月10日の課外講座と6 月14日に行われた対談の文字起こしなどをブックレットに載せています:
http://home.att.ne.jp/grape/charles/texts/2019John_Russell-MAU_Booklet.pdf

Links to the video documentation:

20190610 - John Russell Concert with Sabu Toyozumi, Suzueri and Christophe Charles
21:49 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Zhang Fei
https://youtu.be/O5vnpnuanuo

20190610 - John Russell Lecture at MAU on Free Improvised Music
25:09 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Zhang Fei
https://youtu.be/kjnL-cIlKX8

20190611 - John Russell Workshop - Day 1
41:18 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Zhang Fei
https://youtu.be/j1dpJ_1n9ig

20190612 - John Russell Workshop - Day 2
38:31 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Zhang Fei
https://youtu.be/pP9dnYxKWFI

20190613 - John Russell Workshop - Day 3
17:38 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Yu Shida
https://youtu.be/b0rMWHBSy1E

20190614 - John Russell Workshop - Day 4
01:26:56 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Yu Shida
https://youtu.be/U-aVzaFYmv8

20190615 - John Russell Concert with Students
45:31 - Camera: Zhang Fei, Zhao Zhengrong - Editing: Yu Shida
https://youtu.be/RGT4-VzpFHI

2019
Yokohama-Cave
15 min ground tone with guitar and bass parts inspired by The Fall.
Performed at
『洞窟の蠢き』(Wriggle in the Cave) event at Yokohama Cave with Tentenko and Otani Yoshio, organized by Miyoshi Ryota.

2018
Tokyo-Marseille-Barcelona
TMB, an international project in two parts:

1- Musashino Art University (MAU - Christophe Charles) and Aix-Marseille Université (AMU - Jean-Marc Montera), Residency and Concert at Marseille GMEM Module, 2019, February 28 - March 5.

2- Musashino Art University and MÀSTER EN ART SONOR - Universitat de Barcelona (UB - Carmen Pardo Salgado, Josep Cerdá, José Manuel Berenguer), Residency and Concert at Convent Sant-Augustí Barcelona, 2019, March 6-9.

1- Marseille Concert

Performers: Jean-Marc Montera, Fujimoto Shô, Jérémy Manca, Noah Juchem, Félix Cleyet-Marrel (electric guitars), Ugo D’Orazio (acoustic guitar), Eliot Roussel, Florent Architta, Maxence Dubout (electric basses), Julien Lazer, Matthieu Fabien, Daraji Balduini (percussions), Jean-Louis Eymond, Gabriel Guth (pianos), Romain Giordano (trumpet), Christophe Charles (electronic sounds - Max/MSP), Li Qiangwei (electronic sounds - SPEAR software), Takahashi Hiroki (electronic sounds - Sonic Pi software), Chiba Gaku (Korg Minilogue synthesizer), Wakabayashi Honoka (circuit bending), Yokoyama Chiho and Chen Youmin (electronic images).

Thanks to Jean-Marc Montera, Christine Esclapez, Michèle Ricozzi, Julien Ferrando (AMU), Christian Sebille, Jérôme Decque, Basile Bouteau, Florian Lejeune (GMEM).

"+ -" (1987) by Kosugi Takehisa

"For One, Two or Three People" (1964) by Christian Wolff

"Five Video Patterns" (2019) by Yokoyama Chiho

2- Barcelona Concert

Performers: Malu Hatoum (voice and sound sculpture), Francesca Toro (voice), Ginebra Raventós (words/voice with real time electronic treatment), Leafar Delgado (voice and percussions on metal bucket), Martí Ruids, Gustavo Bartolini, Paolo Carretero (percussions on sound sculpture by Josep Cerdà), Mathias Klenner (synthesizer), Oscar de la Fuente (effect pedals), Emilio Marx (patch Max/ MSP), Riccardo Chinni (electric bass and synthesizer), Fujimoto Shô (electric guitar), Christophe Charles (electronic sounds - Max/MSP), Li Qiangwei (electronic sounds - SPEAR software), Takahashi Hiroki (electronic sounds - Sonic Pi software), Chiba Gaku (Korg Minilogue synthesizer), Wakabayashi Honoka (circuit bending), Yokoyama Chiho and Chen Youmin (electronic images).


Thanks to Carmen Pardo Salgado, Josep Cerdá, José Manuel Berenguer, Martí Ruids (UB), Pablo Miranda et Kenchan Onaga (Convent Sant Agustí). http://www.ub.edu/masterartsonor/ http://conventagusti.com/


"+ -" (1987) by Kosugi Takehisa

"Scale" (1982-83) by Elena Asins


CD Cover Design by Gustavo Bartolini with visual elements by Kosugi Takehisa, Christian Wolff and Yokoyama Chiho.

booklet:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cdz67v1gkub82y2/tmb_2018-2-light.pdf?dl=0



2017
Christophe Charles + Inada Kozo i[]
On the making of i[]

When I met Inada Kôzô at the “Off-ICMC” festival in Berlin in 2000, he suggested to start a collaboration, stating that our sounds “had the same smell”. The project would be named i[], in the continuity of his previous works: a[], b[], c[], etc. Inada first sent me sound files, and I began to use them freely in different settings and spaces, as I had done with the Oval sound files during the “dok” collaboration. They were mostly long sustained tones, some of them sampled from the environment (rain, fire), a classic orchestra, or church bells, etc. and processed through multiples delays. I began to mix Inada's sounds with my own sound collection, looking for connections of timber and “smell”. At first I had no particular method, just making intuitive associations, or enjoying chance encounters related to alphabetic order of the files names, etc.

I had already been working for several years with choreographer Ishikawa Fukurow. It seems there was also a “smell” connection between my music and his dance. In 2005, Ishikawa asked me to work on the music which would provide the time frame for his new dance work “Kafka”. “Ishikawa designs and builds himself robots which move on the stage together with the dancers, leading to a dialogue between the human and the machine. On stage, dancers and robots build strange relationships of fascination, mimicry or conflict. "Kafka" is a show that immerses the viewer in an atmosphere inspired by the temporality of the "Noh" theater. A dancer, a robotic spider and a human brain replica express the different phases of an internal conflict. It functions as a reflective face to face, where the human recognizes the machine in his hand to be hieratic and where the machine mimics human gestures and aspires to be alive.” (from the program of Festival “Bains numériques”, Enghien-les-Bains, 2005).

In 1998, I had produced a 20-minute sound work for the legendary butô dancer and choreographer Maro Akaji, director of the “Dairakudakan” company (who was also a yakuza in Quentin Tarentino’s “Kill Bill”). Maro declaimed a haunting poem, with the title “Yukei” (“Pledge to the Dead”), which became the time frame of a video work where he was seen wandering like a ghost through a city devastated by atomic bombs. The sounds sequences which I composed according to the meaning and musicality of the poem read aloud, were fitting the idea of “internal conflict” of the dance by Ishikawa. I thus decided to use some of the “Yukei” sound material together with Inada’s sounds to compose of the overall structure of “Kafka”. We worked then together to decide about cues, adjusting the timings of some of the sound sequences to the needs of the choreography - however the first draft of the overall structure was left almost untouched. The above stories, images and ideas guided the structure of the final composition, which I sent back to Inada. He added his last touch, splitting the 53-minute Kafka sound track into 5 tracks:  i[1] (10:19) , i[2] (08:07), i[3] (07:55), i[4] (18:35) and i[5] (08:04).

During the following years, Inada and myself did several concerts together, using i[] as sound material, notably during the Sightsonic Festival of York (UK) and the Setouchi Triennale (Japan). In 2015 Cameron Shafii contacted me regarding my 1996 “undirected” max patch, and subsequently suggested to release the i[] collaboration on his music label as two LPs, graphically designed by Joe Gilmore, together with the corresponding digital files. It took many years before i[] was released on an ideal format, but the music sounds somehow atemporal, or suspended in time, like a Noh theater play which massages the audience brain.

 (Christophe Charles)

06 - Christophe Charles + Kozo Inada 'i[]' (LP)
All audio by Christophe Charles + Kozo Inada
Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio at Gench Studios
Design by Cameron Shafii and Joe Gilmore
℗ 2017 Ge-stell
© 2017 Ge-stell
https://www.discogs.com/label/745945-Ge-stell

Matrix Identifiers:
Ge-stell 06 - A -
PPER VVFIN APPR ART NN KON VMFIN
Ge-stell 06 - B -
PROP ART ADJA NN APPR PPER VVINF $.

Tracklist:
A1 ― i[0] (10:19)
A2 ― i[1] (08:07)
B1 ― i[2] (07:55)
B2 ― i[4] (08:04)

2017

геометрия настоящего

Geometry of Now
http://geometryofnow.v-a-c.ru/
curated by Mark Fell

This collaborative piece by Сhristophe Сharles and Kozo Inada is a response to the acoustic space of a metallic elevator shaft. The sound by Inada is placed at one extreme of the shaft, and the sound by Christophe Charles is placed at the other extreme. Visitors are invited to enter the space on floor 2 where the two sounds mix in the unusual acoustic space of the metal cuboid.
Christophe Charles composed the two soundtracks, the lower one with his own sounds, the upper one with the sound samples Kozo Inada provided for the installation. Charles' sound is 23 minute-long, while Inada's sound is 19 minute-long. They are played simultaneously and keep shifting one from another. One complete loop's duration is 19 x 23 = 437 minutes = 7 hours and 17 minutes.

Upper Sound (Inada)
Lower Sound (Charles)

---

About the festival:

V-A-C Live is proud to launch its future Moscow home GES-2, with GEOMETRY OF NOW, an investigation of sound through site-specific interventions in the space of the former GES-2 power station.

The project features a series of installations reclaiming the raw structures within GES-2, an interdisciplinary lecture and workshop program developed around topics in sound art studies and performances that reconfigure its architectural space.

“For me the most interesting aspect of the space, an imposingly beautiful pre-Soviet power station, is its temporal physiognomy: a site of discontinuity between deconstruction and reconstruction. The building as active process, as opposed to passive object, challenges our basic assumptions about it being a mere container of ‘space’, as a hypothetically inert primitive lacuna or pause. These are sonically redrawn as intersections between an indefinite number of dynamic contexts; the place where possible histories and futures interrogate one another in a play of reciprocal disturbance.”

(Mark Fell)

---

About the installation:

"The sound installation takes place in the elevator shaft, with one speaker at the top of the building, and one at the bottom. The visitors can listen to the sounds from a place in the middle of the two sound sources, and hopefully sense (vertical) space through sound movements and textures. The sounds are conceived in relation to the texts and photographs which were provided about the past and present of the site.

For many years I have been working on sound works which are close to the idea of Marcel Duchamp’s “sculpture musicale”, where music is not only conceived as a time art but also as a space art: “different sounds coming from different places, and lasting, producing a sculpture which is sonorous and which remains” (1). John Cage was probably thinking about “sculptures musicales” when he said that he had "an enjoyment not just of the sounds which start and stop and have in them some indication of change", but also of "the hums and drones of the technology which gives us comfort.” (2) My music focuses on those hums and amplifies them.

The work is also related to the Japanese garden where surrounding landscapes and soundscapes are sometimes “borrowed” and become a constitutive element of the garden. Similarly, the music cannot exist only for itself but is always in relation with its environment, so is the world today: the enjoyment of our interdependence is a condition for our survival.

(1) Marcel Duchamp, "Duchamp du signe", Flammarion, 1994, p. 47.
(2) Charles Amirkhanian interviews John Cage on January 8, 1987, San Francisco Exploratorium’s "Speaking of Music" series.

(Christophe Charles, Feb. 2017)


2016
Define Festival: Christophe Charles with Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester, dirigent: Jesper Nordin
1- Mozart Ouverture til Figaros Bryllup

2- Mahler: “Adagiettissimo”, Adagietto fra 5. symfoni
(transcription: Jesper Nordin) versus Christophe Charles, elektroniske lyde (the adagietto  from Mahler 5th symphony was played 2.5 times slower, together with electronic sounds by Charles)


3- Christophe Charles: Soloværk – lydcollage
(introduction to Brahms' "Haydn Variations")


4- Brahms: Haydn-variationer


5- Luc Ferrari: Tautologos III

Orchestra version by Jesper Nordin and Christophe Charles for 54 musicians, one director and electronic sound

P2 Koncerten Sendt første gang

Define Festival i Sønderborg.
Koncert i Alsion i Sønderborg, som viser hvordan komponister i dag ved brug af tidens nyeste teknologi skaber egne værker og samtidig lader sig inspirere af tidligere tiders klassiske værker.
Musik af Mozart, Luc Ferrari, Mahler, Christophe Charles og Brahms.

Christophe Charles, elektronik og computer.

Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester.
Dirigent: Jesper Nordin.
(Alsion, Sønderborg 11. november 2016).
Vært: Esben Tange.
http://www.dr.dk/p2koncerten

2015
Yellow Mountain
This compilation presents an overview of commissioned sound works produced for the BCSC since its inception in 2010. Included are compositions by Christophe Charles, Byron Huang-Dean, Rosalind Hall, Geoff Robinson, Michael Vorfeld and Philip Samartzis — comprising direct responses to the ecology of the Kiewa Valley and its attendant infrastructure.
https://bogongsound.bandcamp.com/album/topologies-1

http://bogongsound.com.au/

https://www.discogs.com/label/1089699-Bogong-Centre-For-Sound-Culture

2015
Christophe Charles / Cal Lyall
Sunday Night String Theory
All music by Christophe Charles / Cal Lyall
C&P 2015
Recorded at Ftarri (Tokyo) 06-07-2015

Christophe Charles (guitar, effects)
Cal Lyall (banjo, effects)

Mastered by Peter Slade
Special thanks to Yoshiyuki Suzuki (Ftarri)

Cover design by Cal Lyal

https://subvalent.bandcamp.com/album/sunday-night-string-theory

2015
Christophe Charles + Shibata Satoko
Nagoya Sound Performance Platform 2015

duration: 20'21"
柴田聡子&クリストフ・シャルル

「Premières pensées」

・・・語り、朗 読、独り言、溜め息、呟き、囁き、せせらぎ、嘆き、愚痴、叫び、鳴き、韻律、スレノディ、カンティレーナ、 呪文、辺境、酔拳、説教、プロパガンダ、メガホン、訓戒、洗脳、熱弁、チャット、言霊、波長、戯言、戯れ 言、空論、ナンセンス、格言、座 右の銘、反省、イミフ、2チャン、怨念、乙、ポエム、禅問答、解脱、独唱、単音・・・

2015年3月 11日、12日の2日間に渡り、舞踏、音楽、さまざまな要素が複合したアートイベント「サウンドパフォーマ ンス・プラットフォーム」が開催される。会場/主催は、愛知県芸術劇場。

同イベントは、 2006 年から開催してきた公募企画「AAC サウンドパフォーマンス道場プロジェクト」から、今までの流れを汲みつつ、よりたくさんの作品と出会える場(=プラットフォーム)に変容したもの。

柴田聡子は、 2010 年より都内を中心に活動を始める。ヴォイス、ギター等を用いて、アルバム制作、ライブを行う。自主レーベル「shibata satoko」にて『いじわる全集』を発売。

2014
Karkowski in Amazonia
A Sonic Tribute to Zbigniew Karkowski
NO BULLSHIT

A Sonic Tribute to Zbigniew Karkowski (1958-2013)

Pieces created by friends of the late Zbigniew Karkowski using his music / noise
Compiled between December 2013 and February 2014
Initiated and coordinated by Francisco López
Released in May 2014 (edition 1000 copies) by SONM:
Sound Archive of Experimental Music and Sound Art - www.sonmarchive.es


2013
Christophe Charles, Tamaru and Opitope
duration: 10'36"
Opitope - A Colony of Kuala Mute Geeks
℗ 2013 White paddy mountain
Released on: 2013-05-01
Mixer: opitope
Producer: opitope
Composers / Performers : Christophe Charles, Opitope, Tamaru.

2013
Christophe Charles, Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, Tetsuro Yasunaga, Toshimaru Nakamura and Opitope
duration: 13'09"

Opitope
- A Colony of Kuala Mute Geeks
℗ 2013 White paddy mountain
Released on: 2013-05-01
Mixer: opitope
Composers / Performers : Christophe Charles, Opitope, Christopher Willits, Taylor Deupree, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetsuro Yasunaga.

2013
Telofossils
The exhibition is oriented around a trilogy of works titled “Destruction,” dealing with the end of the world. Following the unfolding of the exhibition itself the “End of the World Crisis” appears first and is an overture to destruction, composed of a series of economic, ecological and political crises. “At the End of the World”, the second movement, reveals the different forms and processes of destruction through four individual pieces in two exhibition rooms. Within the vast emptiness of Room 201, in a quiet yet oddly sinister atmosphere the third piece “Imagination of the End of the World” is displayed. This is an installation comprised of real objects―made on-site―and futuristic multimedia, which transforms the gallery into a hypothetical simulation of an archeological excavation site in a future where humanity is already extinct. This highly immersive, sensory exhibition experience is perhaps a little like an alternative chapter in an apocalyptic novel or film. The narrative is structured so that true/false, genuine/fictitious elements are mingled together, and so that spectators wandering through the exhibition will find it difficult to tell fact from fiction.

The Telofossils exhibition highlights the specific narrative mode, existentialist thought and crucial philosophical questions that characterize the contemporary technological age. From it, we can glimpse the various faces of “Destruction” that are visible in contemporary civilization. For instance, in this age of information and the internet, the weakening of mankind’s tangible existence and the deterioration of values is a social reality; the media obsessively focus on consumption, war, natural and human disasters and likewise manifestations of our civilization; moreover, the role and meaning of “memory” in the technological era is becoming ever more ambiguous. Standing before the exhibited “Telofossils” exhibition, viewers can contemplate the diverse perspectives of a “future archeology".


Museum of contemporary art – Taipei (2013)
Unicorn Art Center – Beijing (2015)

Exposition au MOCA Taipei (Taiwan) du 02/02/2013 au 14/04/2014
En collaboration avec Dominique Sirois et Christophe Charles
Curators : Shuling Cheng & Sylvie Parent

With the support/avec le soutien of CALQ, CAC, Institut Français.

2013
Sculptures musicales
The playlist duration is 18 hours and 17 minutes, in homage to the "Vexations" concert of September 9, 1963.

Marcel Duchamp a laissé en 1913 la note suivante:
« Sculpture musicale – Sons durant et partant de différents points et formant une sculpture sonore qui dure ».


En 1989, Cage met l’idée de Duchamp au pluriel : « Sculptures Musicales « Sounds lasting and leaving from different points and forming a sounding sculpture which lasts » (Marcel Duchamp). An exhibition of several, one at a time, beginning and ending « hard-edge » with respect to the surrounding « silence », each sculpture within the same space the audience is. From one sculpture to the next, no repetition, no variation. For each a minimum of three constant sounds each in a single envelope. No limit to their number. Any lengths of lasting. Any lengths of non-formation. Acoustic and/or electronic. »


Au début des années 1980, les lectures de « Silence » de John Cage, et de « Paysage sonore » de R. Murray Shafer, m’avaient conforté dans l’idée qu’on avait tout à gagner à écouter notre environement quotidien, les sons qui le peuplent étant tout aussi délectables qu’une composition de Jean Sibelius ou de Jimi Hendrix. Dans un entretien en 1987, John Cage insiste sur les sons continus, sans début ni fin, qu’il nomme « bourdons » (drones) ou « ronflements » (hums) : « I went at one point into an anechoic chamber, a room made as silent as possible, and I heard in that room two sounds, one was high and one was low, and I thought there was something wrong with the room. I went outside and found the engineer in charge. I said there were two sounds and he said describe them, and he said the high one was your nervous system in operation, and the low one and the low one was your blood circulating. That meant that I was making music without intending to. And I decided to go into the direction of non-intention. And one of the first steps I took, on the one hand was the use the chance operations to free the sounds from my intentions, and the second to show with the silent piece that there were sounds all the time. Even then I didn’t have what I have more recently, and that is an enjoyment not just of the sounds which start and stop and have in them some indication of change, but I have come to also enjoy the sounds which most of us and I too was always ignoring: the hums and drones of the technology which gives us comfort. »
["Speaking of Music: John Cage - Part One", 41:03 to 43:34, (http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=SOM.1987.01.08.A) : Charles Amirkhanian interviews John Cage on January 8, 1987, as part of the San Francisco Exploratorium’s "Speaking of Music" series.]


Je n’ai appris l’existence de la note de Duchamp et des « Sculptures musicales » de Cage que récemment, et me suis aperçu qu’elles allaient exactement dans le sens de mon travail, et de celui de beaucoup de mes mentors et collègues.


Pour ce programme d'écoute une sélection succincte de musiques spatiales composées avec des « hums » et des « drones », qui prennent souvent en compte l’idée de « non-intention » chère à Cage, tout en se mettant sur un pied d’égalité avec les sons de l’environnement, pour former dans l’air une « sculpture moléculaire temporelle » (The Real Frank Zappa Book, p.144).


(Christophe Charles, Tokyo, 20 janvier 2013)




2011
sansujuku live: boris hegenbart vs christophe charles

duration: 29'12"
Recording of the concert of November 24, 2011 at Tensai Sansujuku in Asakusabashi, Tokyo.

Free improvisation by Boris Hegenbart and Christophe Charles.
Stereo recording direct from the main mixer to a Zoom H1. No overdub or editing.

2011
nvscc (NUMB vs Christophe Charles - TMUG release)

duration: 13'35"
alternative version of track 6 from:
compilation VEIN [MUS-002]

http://plumus.tokyomax.jp/release/mus-002

https://plumus.jp/track/nvscc
℗ 2011 +MUS [ Compilation, Digital ]
Released: 2011/09/24

1 DUB-Russell: Adam Steals Payment
2 Daisuke Tanabe: You are climbing a telephone pole 2
3 Katsuhiro Chiba: elegant slope
4 Lluviasonido: Sabbath
5 hazcauch: scept
6 NUMB vs Christophe Charles: nvscc

Mastering : NUMB (EKOUNE SOUND)


Artwork : Taiyo Yamamoto

断続的に行われて来たNUMB,Christophe Charlesという電子音楽界の巨人二人によるセッションの初音源化。それぞれの音への聴取と繊細なオペレー ションの手つきを伺わせる緊張感に満ちた時 間が持続し、くぐもるような都市のサウンドスケープの中に、現れては消える輪郭を持たない電子音や具体音が点描 される。(Satoshi Hattori)

This is a reconstruction of the concert by
nvsc (Numb vs Christophe Charles) at Bullets, Tokyo, in September 2008. I have selected different sequences from that concert, enhanced parts of my contribution (recordings of respiratory devices, lawnmower and spring mechanism, voices treated with delay, convolution techniques and heavy reverb effect, etc.) and added them to the original recording, defining the timeline. Then Numb has remixed and mastered the result, adding stereo panning effect on some parts. Below is a link to my original mix, which is very different from the Numb mix used in the compilation. I personally prefer the Numb mix, which focuses more  on textures and timber than on rhythm patterns. I think it is interesting to compare the two. (Christophe Charles)

2011
For Julius

Exclusive music by Yasunao Tone and Christophe Charles.

Each episode of this series is followed by a special accompanying programme of exclusive music by leading sound artists and composers working in the field. This show presents two works, the first by Japanese media artist Yasunao Tone, followed by a new piece by French composer Christophe Charles.

01:33 Yasunao Tone 'MP3 Deviation', 2011 (28'20'')
29:50 Christophe Charles 'Music for Julius', 2011 (20')

Composer Rolf Julius passed away on January 21, 2011. He is known for his concept of 'small music' – a combination of multiple layers of electronic and natural sounds played through tiny speakers at low volume. He would use all kinds of small sized containers and receptacles (cups, little plates, flowerpots, etc.) together with the speakers to let them resonate in different ways. The experience of listening to his live music required active participation from the audience and was thus always very challenging. Julius' attitude and works have been of great inspiration for Charles, who through this 'Music for Julius', has tried to capture some of the characteristics of the colours and density of his music, in order to recreate a kind of 'small music' as he understands it. Some of the sounds were selected from Charles' own archives, others were recorded at night 'when insects and frogs are most loquacious, and combined with minimal electronic treatment'.  The confrontation of those complex sound layers produce unexpected results and the listener has to find his/her way through a dense world of vibrations which merge into the real time environmental sounds where the listening experience is to happen.



2010
mirages

duration: 6'00"
This track is a re- or de-composition of "mirages" by Olivier Alary / Ensemble (duration: 3'44", featuring vocals, strings, saxophone, percussions, guitar and mellotron), commissioned for the release of the album "Excerpts". The album was released in January 2011 by Fat Cat records (UK), but for an unknown reason this composition has not been included.

The composition
concentrates on the atmosphere created by the strings layers and the saxophone breathing sounds. Other ethereal ingredients such as planes, thunder, rain, cymbals, piano, have been added.

The music was used by Gregory Chatonsky for a time-lapse movie of his exhibition "Telefossils" (Taipei, 2013).

2010
unterwegs

duration: 28'12"
composed for the installation secret sound
at Sheffield's Winter Garden

from http://www.markfell.com/wiki/index.php?n=Mf.SecretSound

"a sound installation for children in sheffield's winter garden taking place on the 13th of june. sounds by artists including Ryoji Ikeda, Florian Hecker, Mira Calix, Evol, Francisco Lopez, goodiepal, christophe charles and taylor deupree will be 'hidden' around the indoor gardens for children and families to discover. produced and curated by mark fell and mat steel for lovebytes festival 2010."


2008-2010
hcdc
duration: 10'00"
This is a 10' version of the original 42' composition (2008). This version was
published in 2010 on the DVD "Daniel Charles et les mondes multiples" (Nouvelle Revue d'Esthétique, no.5, Paris, PUF).

The original 42' version was released on Murmur Records in 2013.
https://murmurrec.bandcamp.com/album/hcdc

HCDC is dedicated to Daniel Charles (November 27, 1935 - August 21, 2008) and Henning Christiansen (May 28, 1932 - December 10, 2008). Some of the sound material has been composed in collaboration with Henning (birds, bells, pipes) from the time I met him in 1985. Other material has been composed during live events in Fall 2008. The ending part is made of sounds of Daniel breathing through respiratory devices, recorded during his last days in August 2008.

The whole composition has been assembled in November 2008, using the four 1038b Genelec speakers of the Rymer Auditorium at the Music Resaerch Center of the University of York (UK), during a residency organized by Mark Fell and Tony Myatt in the framework of the New Aesthetics in Computer Music Research Project, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. http://www.music.york.ac.uk/mrc/na-cm/

Played at loud volume, the sounds move around the listener, and give impressions of contraction and expansion of outer and inner spaces. The wide range of frequencies and their movements make the work physical and immersive. Many sonic events happen in the low register, requiring thus this composition to be played through loudspeakers with a good response in low frequencies, and possibly extra subwoofers.

This music is conceived as an interpenetration without obstruction of multiple and transparent time-spaces.

(Christophe Charles)

With gratitude to:
Mark Fell and Tony Myatt, assisted by Peter Worth and Thom Blake, for organizing the residency at MRC,
Emma Ota and Juan Carlos Blanca Avilés, for organizing the concerts where most of the sound material was recorded,
Eero Tarasti, for his text,
Shida Ayaka, for the sky photography as a notation of the composition,
Blixa Bargeld, John Cage, ILIOS, Inada Kozo, Alvin Lucier, and
Area - International POPular Group (Paolo Tofani, Demetrio Stratos, Giulio Capiozzo, Ares Tavolazzi, Patrizio Fariselli) for their ideas and music.

[Below, a text by Eero Tarasti about the 42' original composition]

Wanderings through Musical Spaces - Notes on HCDC, a composition by Christophe Charles


I heard the electronic work by Christophe Charles for the first time in a most inspiring ambiance, namely at the Musée Marc Chagall and its chapelle-like auditorium at a symposium to commemorate the life of Daniel Charles (in May 2009). I was immediately taken by the sonorous landscapes realized with most refined skils and electronic tools. I was not quite able to situate the work in the proper genre but I approached it or, rather, it approached me as musique concrète, electronically elaborated musical fresco. As a semiotician I had the strong feeling of getting surrounded by sound events, which made me like float in a gravitationless musical universe. A.J. Greimas launched the terms englobé/englobant (surrounded/surrounding) as early as in his Sémantique structurale in 1966, yet borrowing them in fact from the existential philosophy of Karl Jaspers. To put it in later ‘biosemiotic’ terms, the composition by Christophe Charles constituted a kind of musical Umwelt, to which it invited its listener to step in. In later reflection another philosophical evocation came to my mind, namely the famous metaphor invented by the great Persian philosopher Avicenna, to prove the existence of a subject, namely a man floating in the universe without any sensory stimuli: would he then be able to say to exist?


In going through the piece by Christophe Charles I first encountered elements which I could only verbalize as follows: birds, nature, clocks, echoes, murmurs, barking, waves of a sea, winds, ocean. Obviously signifiers having their ‘first articulation’ – to recall the old debate of Lévi-Strauss whether musique concrète was a language or not – to his mind it was not: since it lacked the second articulation (whereas neither serial music was language missing the first articulaton i.e. recognizable musical shapes as its ‘words’). I remember having once discussed with Lelio Camilleri, Italian colleague and expert, how difficult it is for an electronic composer to write narrative pieces. Narrativity presupposes of course events ordered in time. In most general terms: something must become something else, x must become y. However, the work by Christophe Charles is very Cagean: it does not impose or force upon the listener any temporal scheme, disengagement and engagement in Greimassian terms, forming what we call a narrative tension or arch. We are rather like making a journey in a sonorous transcendence without time, beyond our Dasein, and meeting in this huge space expanding to us hitherto unknown and alien phenomena. But when I say ‘ we’ where is this subject? There is indeed not much actoriality in the traditional sense in this music i.e. anthropomorphic human-like ‘themes’ or sounds.


Nevertheless when we recognize something like ringing bells or a flute coming closer and the distanciating we have at least some traces of human signs, so a kind of vague actoriality. We are moving like on pre-symbolic level of units by cognitive scholars like Marc Leman. There is also a feeling of absence of actors, i.e. loneliness amidst huge space with a kind of water-like natural element. This is something like creation of the world: there is first only water and then comes a bird of the air and searches for a place to rest..and lays her nest and eggs on a knee of a water nymph. Such is the myth in Kalevala, which inspired once Sibelius for his Luonnotar. Christophe Charles shows us a modern version of this creation myth.


We hear drops into water, and then distant sounds of machines, like approaching us from somewhere, the idea of a crescendo like in Wagner’s ouverture to Lohengrin. At the moment 7’57’’ we hear falling down of trees, something like shooting at a distance, maybe with a laser ray – if it had a sound. In the moment 9’07’’ we hear rain, and visually something very bright, dazzling, then penetrating sounds like emitted by robots, like machines left alone giving still signals endlessly.

Here I thought that this music is truly transcendental, there is no movement up/down in the outer space, this is like pure virtuality. There is something like a type writer, bird and then twisting stones, movement gets deeper, all sounds are heard like in a jungle, not tropical but fictive. But I notice: how strongly rooted is our habit to search for meaningful elements of first articulation!


In 14’ there is a change into a metallic sonority in high register. We hear like church bells of space time, age from Sirius. Followed by sounds of helicopters. At 21’45’’ there is whistle which stops the previous section, as an index sign. Indeed, we are here like wandering through various atmospheres – in the sense of Ligeti, or through semiospheres or biospheres. There are up/down gliding signals, metallic pedal point and iconic up/down with whistles against this. Then we distanciate. There is long vanishment, only upper penetrating line remains, We are in timelessness. At 26’38’’ new universe opens to us. Again murmur and like a rebirth. Another counterpuntal pedal point. At 27’26’’ machines, airplains, strong feeling of getting down, plunging, lower and lower. But ultimately the machine disappears in the horizont. At 31’00’’ a new start from distance like tapping some strings of a koto or doublebass every 10 seconds. This picking up of strings gets louder and lead us to a new universe. The sound has more and more resonance and vibration – it is like Buddhist ritual and death bells. In the air we hear a chord like stemming from a string instrument which approaches us as a counterpuntal treatment. This music does have kinetic movements, climaxes and cadences, if it is not narrative it is at least functional in a certain sense. At 38’52 a diminuendo takes place, picking up of string becomed threatening – like in a Japanese movie by Yasujiro Ozu from 1953 (Tokyo monogatari) where a young man has to rush out from a funeral ritual of her mother because he cannot stand the sounds of the bells.We hear wind blowing…


In fact, what we have met in the music by Christophe Charles is exactly the same as what Marcel Proust said we always face when listening to music, namely we are like making a journey to an unknown star, we are looking at the reality with another’s eyes – and note: he said that about music. Altogether the composition by Charles is somehow implicitly also visual, which is certainly not anything against the pure essence of music as a sonorous art.
Eero Tarasti



2010
unter den linden

duration: 20'21"
http://www.nonvisualobjects.com/label/
NVO_022 split cd
Christophe Charles : unter den linden
i8u : und transit

unter den linden


« The “Grundton” of this 30-minute composition is the recording of the concert given at SND STUDIOS SHEFFIELD (UK) in March 2009, entitled “Why is there something rather than nothing?” by Mark Fell and powered with d&b speakers by Tony Myatt (MRC, University of York). The sounds of planes have been recorded in Mallorca (Spain) in 1987, and in Pilat (France) in 2009. This music comes after HCDC, composed in November 2008 after the death of Daniel Charles – his last days were darkened by breathing difficulties, hence the overall presence of the “wind”. The last five minutes were composed in 1987 with telephone bells, a silo and a Spanish garbage truck, under the name “unter den linden”. The piece is not related with Berlin, but with Jules Massenet’s “Sous les tilleuls” (from “Scenes alsaciennes” where bells are heard in a distance and thus modified by the wind), and evokes a peaceful atmosphere just before the bombs begin to fall. » Christophe Charles, September 2009


« This world of ours is one relative world. Any number of other possible or actual worlds are conceivable. Each such world is able to reflect all the others without ceasing to be the real world that it is of itself. » Nishitani Keiji


« Non, ce n’est pas une collaboration, mais bien un CD partagé entre Christophe Charles et i8u (la Québécoise France Jobin) qui ont droit chacun à une demi-heure. Charles propose une unique pièce de 30 minutes, concoction d’enregistrements de terrain et ambiants placés à l’extrême frontière de l’audible - je dois absolument réécouter pour m’en faire une bonne idée, elle est passée épouvantablement inaperçue. La proposition d’i8u est plus substantielle (du moins, au premier coup d’oreille), tout en respectant l’esthétique très microscopique de l’étiquette (qui correspond à la sienne, d’ailleurs). Cinq pièces donc, aux bourdons plus présents, aux couleurs froides, aux sons parfois en creux - “Montag” est très agréable. Mais ça ne vaut pas son dernier album chez Room40.

No, this is not a collaboration. It is a split CD with Christophe Charles and i8u (Quebecer France Jobin) contributing a half hour of material each. Charles offers a single 30-minute track, a concoction of field and ambient recordings arranged at the very threshold of audibility – I’ll have to listen again under perfect conditions to figure it out, as it went by almost completely undetected. i8u’s proposition is more substantial (at least on first listen), while keeping close to the microsound aesthetic of this label (which happens to fit her own too). Five tracks with heavier drones, cold colours, and occasionally hollow sounds. “Montag” is quite enjoyable. But it’s no match to her recent full-length on Room40. »
(francois couture, Monsieur Delire)

« An der Untergrenze der Wahrnehmungsschwelle beginnt dafür die Aufnahme von Christophe Charles, unter den linden (nv°22). Das Stück, das ursprünglich den schönen Titel „Why is there something rather than nothing?“ trug, bezieht seine Umbenennung nicht auf Berlin, sondern auf einen spanischen Lastwagen gleichen Namens sowie auf den Filmtitel „Sous les tilleuls“ von Jules Massenet, der – wie auch dieses Stück gegen das Ende zu – Glockentöne und ihre Veränderung durch Windgeräusche hörbar macht. Komponiert nach dem Tod seines Vaters Daniel Charles, schafft Christophe Charles aus vielen field recordings eine Computermusik in stiller, friedlicher Atmosphäre. Teil zwei dieser 22. nv°-CD entstand während dreier Monate, als i8u, bürgerlich: France Jobin, in Krems/NÖ artist in residence war. Der leere Raum des Minoritenplatzes inspirierte sie zur Quadrophonie-Komposition und transit. Von der Struktur und dem Gestus her ideal zur Arbeit von Christophe Charles passend, öffnet auch die Klanginstallation von i8u ruhige akustische Räume. In Summe zwei wundervolle soundscapes: skulpturale Elektronik an der endlich abgeschafften Grenze zwischen Musik, Architektur und Bildender Kunst.
(felix, freistil)

This is one of nonvisualobjects’ three new releases, all of which are collaborations, or split eps, by two artists. Here we have the latest by both Marseille’s Christophe Charles and Canadian sound sculptor i8u respectively. Starting with Charles’ Unter den Linden, a wonderfully atmospheric 30-minute composition which was performed in concert at SND Studios (UK) in early 2009. By using the sounds of wind ― and of flying things like planes and birds ― the skies are heralded. The above and beyond sounds pay homage to his recently deceased father, Daniel Charles. There’s something of a spirited rumble, though this is quite low-flying and vibratory. A transitional piece that lulls and suspends throughout, like a haunting reminder, or a flickering light at the end of a dark cavernous space that you gravitate towards curiously. Once through you are out on a bustling street, walking through the din of the city. Worlds slowly collide, politely shifting as an ascending craft swallows the scene, leaving behind a semblance of trickling water and whisper.

On Und Transit i8u (France Jobin) paints a restrained world with sine waves by bending elegant sounds, paired with the echoey hollows of a passageway in Lower Austria. During an art residency she found a certain inspiration in the Minoritenplatz, in a long corridor towards her studio. Within these sounds of emptiness Jobin recorded a certain reverberation here, a path that shuttles you in secret. The five pieces that comprise the work are a collection of manipulated field recordings in and around the city of Krems known for its eye-popping riverscapes and historical architecture. Unlike most North American cities contemporary art is integral to the social structure of daily life here. i8u helps draw from daily walks through the city in what may be better described as a micro-encoded mapping of her meanderings. It is on Donnerstag that this becomes most evident in this very elusive work. It lifts gently, opens with an airy drone, rises and glides away. »
(tj norris, toneshift)

« Für den Split unter den linden / und transit (nv° 022) taten sich CHRISTOPHE CHARLES & i8u zusammen. Als Motti wählten sie Follow your bliss (Joseph Campbell) und von Nishitani Keiji, dem die Philosophie eine Gedankenbrücke zwischen Heidegger, Existentialismus und Zen verdankt, einen Gedanken über die Relativität unserer Welt. Hinter dem Kürzel i8u findet man die Kanadierin France Jobin, die sich zu ihrem extrem dröhnminimalistischen, von nadelfeinen Clicks und Gesirr durchsetzten Konstrukt, wenn auch nur sehr implizit, anregen ließ durch alltägliche Eindrücke bei Gängen über den Minoritenplatz in Krems, wo sie sich im Winter 2008/09 als Stipendiatin aufhielt. Charles webte zuvor ein Klanggespinst aus feinem Gedröhn und Gezirpe, gelegentlichem Flugzeugdonner, Wind, dumpfen Wassertropfen. Der ‚Grundton‘ der halben Stunde basiert auf einem Konzert von Mark Fell, das betitelt war Warum ist überhaupt etwas und nicht vielmehr nichts? - nach Heidegger die Grundfrage der Metaphysik. Das klanglich scheinbar nur ambiente Beinahenichts entpuppt sich als Memento Mori für seinen Vater Daniel Charles (1935-2008), hierzulande bekannt durch seine Merve-Bände über Musik, Cage und Transzendentalismus. Charles suggeriert dabei die Stille vor dem Sturm, oder wie er schreibt: a peaceful atmosphere just before the bombs begin to fall. »
(rbd, Bad Alchemy)

« The second new release is also a split one, this time between I8U and Christophe Charles. He opens up with a piece called 'Unter Den Linden' and it uses various sounds of airplanes, telephone bells, a silo and a Spanish garbage truck. It lasts thirty minutes and it takes a while before it unfolds. The processing seems to be minimal here, but you're never sure then about these sort of things. Its an alright piece of music based on field recordings, but also the best I ever heard in this field. Canada's I8U has five pieces, which she recorded while doing a 3 months artist residency in Krems, Austria. While walking to the studio, she noticed some particular passageway at the Minoritenplatz, which seemed 'lonely', ignored by those who used it. She collected field recordings around the small city of Krems and did a four channel installation based on the emptiness of the passageway. These five pieces are typical of the current interests of I8U: high pitched sine waves, but not high in volume, and down on the ground there are bits of low end sound. Field recordings are hard to recognize here, if at all. Here too I have the idea that I am listening to something that is actually quite good, but also not very surprising. It might be due to the fact that I8U uses a too similar approach to treating her sounds. The outcome, in both cases is however nice enough. »
(frans de waard, vital weekly 732)
2009
Pour le LIVRE de Mallarmé

duration: 64"
contribution de Christophe Charles pour
0000

En 1957, Jacques Scherer édite le LIVRE de Mallarmé pour une première publication (désormais épuisée) et en 1967 Jacques Polieri réussira à en créer une scénographie électronique. Hasard spatio-temporel et symbolique, c'est justement entre 1957 et 1965 que Frederick Kiesler transfigure les codes scéniques et construit une «grotte du Livre» à Jérusalem. L'écriture contemporaine est depuis déterminée et déterminante face aux technologies numériques quand tout semble débuter par un langage là où le livre semblerait s'éteindre ?


C'est à partir du LIVRE dont le manuscrit reste aussi ésotérique - comme le langage informatique qui nous connecte avec l'univers - que Franck Ancel a tissé un réseau de collaborations pour le projet «0000» à partir du manuscrit du LIVRE de Mallarmé. Comme le LIVRE taoïste du destin, un échiquier repose sur le chiffre 64 et seule la mise en jeu suffit comme réponse. A partir des feuillets du manuscrit original conservé à Harvard aux USA, Ancel va mettre en espace, de manière aléatoire et en montage, l'ensemble des feuillets autour du chiffre 64. Quand toute l'histoire des arts depuis Mallarmé semble n'avoir été au monde que pour aboutir à un échec.


Une CONSTELLATION de créateurs et auteurs ont accepté de participer à une mise en jeu de 64 sons de 64 secondes à l'invitation de Franck Ancel : Annie Abrahams - Rodolphe Alexis - Art of failure (Nicolas Montgermont - Nicolas Maigret) - Joseph Attié - Jean-Pierre Balpe - Pierre Beloüin - Hervé Binet - Dinah Bird - Julien Blaine - Philippe Bordas – Jean Bordé - Antoine Boute – Philippe Castellin - Laurent Chambert - Christophe Charles - David Christoffel - Thierry Coduys - Michel Corvin - Sylvain Courtoux - Laurent Dailleau - Magali Daniaux & Cédric Pigot - Mathias Delplanque - Dina Douieb - Vincent Epplay – Erikm - Yvan Etienne - David Fenech - France Info - Bertrand Gauguet – Nicolas Gimbert - Michel Giroud - Bernard Heidsieck - HP Process (Hortense Gauthier - Philippe Boisnard) - Joël Hubaut - Marc Hurtado - Etienne Jaumet - Alice Keller - Pierre-Yves Macé – Stéphane Mallarmé - Léonardo Marcos - Bérangère Maximin - Pierre Ménard - Jean-Claude Moineau - Montagne Froide (Valentine Verhaeghe - Michel Collet) - Jean-Marc Monterra - Joachim Montessuis – Cécile De Montigny - NG - F.J. Ossang - Julien Ottavi - Tibor Papp - Serge Pey - Richard Pinhas - RadioMentale (Jean-Yves Leloup - Eric Pajot) - David Ramsamy - Jean-Philippe Renoult - Jocelyn Robert - Julie Rousse - Gaël Segalen - Emmanuel Sévigny - Black Sifichi – Ghedalia Tazartes - Kasper T. Toeplitz - Valérie Vivancos - Wild Shores (Evelyne Hebey - Fred Nouveau - Marc Roques) - Bertrand Wolff – Christian Zanesi.


Ces CONSTELLATIONS sont des visions d'un univers où chaque échec passé est une victoire sur les étoiles.

Franck Ancel

http://cuberevue.com/author/ancel
http://droitdecites.org/2011/10/16/franck-ancel-sur-websynradio/


2009
Christophe Charles + Zbigniew Karkowski
TT22
duration: 5'30"
from: Test Tone Anthology Disc One

Texture, rhythm and movement in all of its disguises, this anthology disc captures the myriad of expression that has become the hallmark of the Test Tone series at Tokyo’s SuperDeluxe. Focusing on riveting improvisation and stark electronica, the music collected here covers a lot of ground, from balloon duets to helicopter compositions and other experiments in noise. Challenging and evocative, this presents wide-angle snapshot of Japan’s current wave of international sound pioneers.


About Test Tone


In the fragmented urban playground of the city, free barter and the unexpected encounter of ideas creates a wellspring of creative engagement. Drawing from this, the Test Tone series aims to offer a venue for diverse and challenging artists to bring their ideas to a larger community. As a free event open to the public, we hope to bypass the old economies in order to create new ones, while encouraging collaboration in all forms. A collage of media, sound and art in a space available to anyone off the street, the event is a bazaar of potential collisions, where passersby are treated to the unexpected. For all of this, we found our home base at Super Deluxe, a unique space in Tokyo’s midtown, providing a relaxed atmosphere within its modular interior. The event continues to be a celebration of off-kilter creativity in the city: from installation pieces to performance art and visual collaborations; from noise, electronica, ambient sounds and free rock to disorderly jazz and manipulated field recordings. To date, close to 500 artists have been a part of the event, together creating opportunities for unexpected improvisation, collaboration, and festival spirit.


2008
breathe

duration: 5'24"
from compilation CD AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE
edited by Jamie Drouin
label: INFREQUENCY 005

"...earns its recommendation for bringing attention to a valuable historical document but also for being, on its own terms, an inspired and splendid conceptual recording. It's especially fascinating to witness what results when two such extreme audio poles―the earliest known recording and the vast potential of modern technological methods―converge." TEXTURA

Nine internationally acclaimed sound artists create new compositions based on the earliest known recording of the human voice. The original recording was made by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 using his own invention, the phonautograph, and consists of a series of scratches on a roll of blackened paper. Scott had never developed a way to play back his recordings and they went unheard for 148 years. In 2008, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory converted the thin lines back into audio, allowing us to hear a woman singing a segment of the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune”.

The two CD compilation is a conceptual extension of breathing life back into this document through modern technology; deciphering a voice that was etched into a thin layer of oil lamp smoke, and featuring a diverse group of international contemporary composers, creating new works from this ten second piece of history. The Édouard-Léon Scott recording is licensed by Firstsounds.org
 
"breathe" was composed in August 2008 in Antibes, France.



2008
Christophe Charles Quintet at Mopomoso
Free improvisation night with Christophe Charles, Yasutaka Watanabe and Hoonoda Kim on laptops and electronics, and dancers Lisa Koiso and Woo Kyung Son. The Momoposo events are organised by John Russell at the Vortex jazz club in London.

2007
A brief life

duration: 9'38
from compilation CD
Airport Symphony
label: ROOM40 (Brisbane)

https://room40.bandcamp.com/track/christophe-charles-airport-symphony-a-brief-life


"Airport Symphony, commissioned by the Queensland Music Festival and Brisbane Airport Corporation, documents and synthesises the experiences of travel. Each piece represents a personal meditation on aspects of travel in the modern age and suggests ways in which we control, augment and ultimately exists in a time where almost no part of the face of the planet is inaccessible. Each of the pieces features a source recording made in and around Brisbane Airport between March and June 2007 –in a raw form or transformed by processing.
Audio diary entries cataloguing the epic possibilities of flight, aero-passage and human bodies in motion and even at rest."
comment by Lawrence English, June 2007

All field recordings + photos by Lawrence English

2005
C smip C

duration: 5'37
from LP/ CD instrumentarium
label: Boris Hegenbart  / Staubgold (Berlin)

https://youtu.be/4RMFzEpgwaM

"instrumentarium" on the Staubgold label is an exciting  cooperation of artists from multifaceted areas like New Music, Sound Art, song writing, improvised  music, and dub music. 18 guest musicians have recorded exclusive overdubs for boris d hegenbart:  Michael Vorfeld, Fred Frith, Bernhard Guenter, Marc Weiser, Ed Osborn, David Grubbs,  Georg Zeitblom, Stephan Mathieu, Sascha Demand, Martin Siewert, Martin Brandlmyer, Oren Ambarchi, Christophe Charles, F.S. Blumm, Felix Kubin, Boris Hauf, Hanno Leichtmann &  Hannes Strobel. ...) to produce compositions with the material of his second Solo-CD [2/TAU] (released in October 2003 on Quecksilber). The [2/TAU] CD contains 13 "interviews": the concept of the remix is to remove the human voices and replace them with other sounds, preferably acoustic instruments. There would be 2 mono-channels on the [3/TAU] CD: channel-01, Hegenbart's remix of the [2/TAU] CD without the human voices; channel-02, guest musicians' remix of the voices... A tribute to an early DUB-LP by Lee Perry.

For my contribution I have extracted all voices from all original 13 tracks and convolved them with guitar, violin, and stone rubbing/scrubbing sounds. I have then superimposed all convolved tracks to fit the channel-02 concept.

--


Hegenbart used the exclusive recordings of 19 invited musicians and sound artists from several tendencies of the present creative scene (improvisers, electronicists and exploratory instrumentalists), and the results are not simply a remix or a processing of the material. He dissects everything in detail and brings the more obscure components to the foreground, like in a zooming operation. The most astonishing thing is that Hegenbart goes through exactly the same process in live, real-time performances. So, what we have here are the sketches resulting from instant reactions to the musicians' input. The contradictory nature of the sound sources keeps us alert and makes us smile with intriguing surprise. Nothing is forbidden, and the consequence is an incredibly rich concept and praxis, complete with the unique Boris Hegenbart mark.

(Text by Rui Eduardo Paes)

Boris Hegenbart with: Oren Ambarchi, Fred Frith, Felix Kubin, David Grubbs, Stephan Mathieu, Christophe Charles, Michael Vorfeld, Martin Siewert, Jan Thoben, Bernhard Guenter, Sascha Demand, Hannes Strobl & Hanno Leichtmann, Marc Weiser, Martin Brandlmayr, Christophe Charles, Ed Osborn, F.S.Blumm, Boris Hauf and Ulrich Krieger.
Mastered by Rashad Becker
Artwork by Yumiko Hegenbart-Matsui


2005
undirected/placode

duration: 11'49"
from compilation CD placode (unreleased)
label: n160 (Tokyo - Berlin)

Aluminum packaged cd compilation curated by Nibo [LINE/Raster-Noton], a former student of Musashino Art University, now member of Raster-Noton in Berlin. Artists on this compilation: Carsten Nicolai, Christophe Charles, Frank Bretschneider, Nibo, Byetone, Richard Chartier, Sachiko M., Sogar, Steve Roden, Taylor Deupree, and Otomo Yoshihide.

"undirected/placode" is the original version of "Interaural Saucer" from the "Bergbahn: Flux Figure Transform" compilation by Yamamichi Akira. It is also the basis for the "undirected/sur_terre" track on the "Sur Terre" compilation by Gregory Chatonsky & Nicolas Rousseau (see below).

2005
undirected/sur_terre

duration: 7'23"
from compilation CD Sur Terre
producers: Gregory Chatonsky & Nicolas Rousseau (Paris)

A compilation of 11 compositions by 11 composers (Fennesz, Scanner, Pure, Vladislav Delay and others) on the theme of people meeting on railroads. My contribution was made with samples of the music of Kako Yuzo and Inada Kozo, and recordings of the Howrah-Puri Express (South Eastern Railways in Bengal, made in 1984 with a cassette tape recorder). The voices of two actors (a French man and a German woman) were processed with a convolution patch in Max/MSP using samples of the Sibelius 4th symphony.


"Chaque musicien a composé un morceau original après la remise d’un DVD audio comportant un ensemble de sons provenant des archives de la SNCF. De plus, il a été remis un court synopsis de sur-terre et la description détaillée d’une scène à explorer: le couloir, la gare, le wagon-restaurant, etc. On retrouvera chacun de ces morceaux dans la partie concernée sur le site Internet sur-terre.net."


« Sur terre, projet multi-supports, existe sous forme de performance. Sa configuration est variable et consiste habituellement en trois ordinateurs reliés entre eux. Deux gèrent l'image, offline et online, l'autre le son. Un switch permet de passer d'une image à une autre et le son est généré en temps réel. Cette performance se présente comme une projection vidéographique classique, toutefois sa variablité devient sensible suivant la durée de l'exercice. De surcroît si le public suit plusieurs performances d'affilées, certaines différences apparaissent. Ces différences ne sont pas des chemins multiples à la manière du "livre dont vous êtes le héros", mais plutôt d'infimes variations qui signalent que la fiction se construit autour d'un stock disponible d'images, de sons et de textes et que son montage n'est pas prédéfini mais suit le cours d'une improvisation structurée. De la sorte un thème émerge progressivement: l'histoire n'est pas racontée, au sens où elle n'a pas un lieu d'énonciation localisé, mais elle se laisse imaginer par le public, de performance en performance, car un thème, comme on parle de thème musical, apparaît de façon progressive dans les interstices des représentations. Ainsi "Sur terre demo" n'est pas à proprement parler une fiction, au sens d'un récit, mais la bande annonce à chaque fois renouvellé d'un récit possible qui n'aura pas de lieu d'inscription défini une bonne fois pour toute. » (Gregory Chatonsky)

2004
Deep Acoustics Live Act Vol. 1
01 Christophe Charles
02 Christophe Charles + Hirao Yoshiyuki + Okazaki Toshihiro


Concert at KD Japon, Nagoya, on Jan. 30. 2005, organized by Okazaki Toyohiro and Hirao Yoshiyuki, with Akamatsu Masayuki, Okazaki Toyohiro, Hirao Yoshiyuki, and Christophe Charles.

"01" is a solo act where different compositions are remixed live: Dying For (samples from the nvsc collaboration), undirected/sur terre, and other elements.
duration
: 31'19"

"02" is a free improvisation of
Hirao Yoshiyuki, Okazaki Toshihiro, Christophe Charles.
duration
: 15'37"

2004
undirected/loom

indeterminate duration
audio SOFTWARE Loom
by SONY QUALIA (Tokyo)

This composition consists in 42 short (30 seconds to 2 minutes) compositions which are to be played on three tracks simultaneously, continuously, and randomly.

Qualia was a boutique brand of high-end electronics, created by Sony to showcase their best technology. Some Qualia products are brand new while others are upgraded and rebranded versions of regular Sony products. The line was launched in Japan in June 2003 and the U.S. in April 2004. source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia_(Sony)

2004
sisyphe

duration
: 10'08"
from the compilation CD nu:2003-04 / sonic films
label: nu: (Tokyo)

nu: is a collaboration unit with musicians from Tama Art University (Kubota Akihiro seminar) and Musashino Art University (Christophe Charles seminar). Members are: Soichiro Mihara, Akihiko Taniguchi, lalalila, Yuki Kaneko,  Akihiro Kubota, Satoshi Yashiro, pico pico stomachs (Kikuchi Haruma, Koyanagi Junji, Fujino Takatoshi, Kudo Masayuki), Atsushi Tadokoro, Christophe Charles.

On the 1st CD, Charles' solo contribution consists in "Sisyphe", a new version of "hean" (from ritornell 13) with unreleased material from the "continuum" series (cf. Mille Plateaux 22). The piece was composed for a collaboration work with Kawaguchi Takao and Kai Syng Tan, using images of the Ryoan-ji garden.

On the second CD, I have edited the "nu:" concert and studio sessions which were performed according to an analysis/reconstruction of Stan Brakhage movies.

collaboration tracks :
01lovesong.mp3
02mothlight.mp3
03lovesong2.mp3
04commingled_containers.mp3

lovesong score by Kubota Akihiro:
lovescore.mp4


CD jacket by Kudo Masayuki

2004
und[i]rected

duration: 08'00"
from the compilation CD "...as..."
label: resonance FM (London)

28 tracks on two CDs taken from Ben Green's 'as...' series. Contributions include music from Steve Roden, Michael J. Schumacher, Tetuzi Akiyama, Yannick Dauby and many more. The CDs come wrapped in uniquely designed wax-proof paper.
 

A composition using sounds by Inada Kozo (who has remixed my own sounds with his original max/MSP patches) for "Window Scape", a video work by Utsumi Akiko (Japan) presented in Turku, Finland. The video shows a paper window (shôji) with very delicate shadows of trees, appearing and disappearing.
2004
undirected/mobile opinions

duration: 11'32"
from compilation CD Erratum#4
label: erratum (Paris)
edited by Joachim Montessuis

see the notation bigger

« CC : born in 1964, Marseille, France. Lives and works in Tokyo. Since 1983, production of installations, concerts, CD, using sound, space, light. Since 1987, historical & theoretical research on media arts.
HC : born in 1932. Studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Copenhagen 1950-54, clarinettist at the Royal Guards 1955-60. Further studies with Vagn Holmboe. From 1964 cooperation with prof. Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy. His production includes a number of compositions in free style.
http://www.ubu.com/sound/christiansen.html

Decomposition/remix by Christophe Charles of a concert by Henning Christiansen (voice & metronome) & CC (soundscape) at Hamburg HfBK (1997) organized by Ernst Kretzer.

« Erratum : an errant and irregular publication. 2004 : 3 CDs, 53 artists. Poetry of sound / sound of poetry. Erratum brings together personalities both atypical and unclassifiable : outriders, stalkers, survivors of the sonic crash zone, those transgressing the strictures and clichés of unimaginative sound habits. Visual and sonic artists, bards, iconoclastic noise makers come together to create a subtle, hybrid, ever-changing, disseminated collective sonic psyche. From the time of Marcel Duchamp's Musical Erratum and Luigi Russolo's Art of Noises in 1913 to the latterday recuperation of software bugs, hardware crashes, along with the eclectic array of contemporary poetical noise praxis, there is a rich, complex and poorly understood history. Erratum's aim is not so much to associate poetry and music as to seek out their potential to merge : the crossovers, the openings, the interzones, meetings and fault lines, the ineffable yet tangible open fusion, that blends the different vibrations of voice, noise and electronics. Erratum tends to create bonds between otherwise diametrically opposed tendencies, in a spirit of broad-mindedness, alliance, impurity and cross-fertilization, while keeping a critical distance from sectarian and incestuous factions. Erratum weaves a lively and diagonal concretion, an alternative to restrictive and mechanical technological visions and it stands out as a realm of a possible Utopia of the indivisible that leads towards active questioning. Edited and compiled by Joachim Montessuis. »



2004
undirected/cour vitrée

duration: 25'00"
from compilation CD + catalog Setsuzoku
label: ENSBA (Paris) / Musashino Art University (Tokyo)

This track has been played during the concert at Cour Vitree on April 25, 2004. This is not a recording of the concert, but the material which has been heard through a Bose 402 system with the two full range speakers placed in front of the two doors in the middle of the shorter walls, and the subwoofer 502 placed in the middle of the hall. These materials have been chosen and readjusted for several hours before the concert in order to fit the long reverberation of the hall. The hall has very particular acoustics, and it was necessary to make precise adjustments to make it sound properly.


setsuzoku


Projet d’échange croisé ("setsuzoku" signifie connexion, relation, communication) entre étudiants d’art japonais et français. Un catalogue tout carré et en images des expositions, performances, sets musicaux (d’où la présence d’un cd audio), présentés dans les deux capitales.


Le catalogue Setsuzoku retrace en 80 pages et un compact-disc la double rencontre de deux groupes d’étudiants et jeunes artistes issus de l’université Musashino à Tokyo et de l’Ensba, orchestrée par Christophe Charles et Guillaume Paris, tous deux artistes de renommée internationale, respectivement professeurs et responsables des départements « Nouveaux Médias » au sein des deux universités.



Ce catalogue à double-entrée reprend, à la manière d’un livre d’images, les deux expositions du projet (à Tokyo et Paris) en 2003 et 2004, ainsi que les évènements (performances, concerts à l’Institut Franco-Japonais de Tokyo, Batofar, Science-Po Paris, ENSBA) qui ont ponctué cette double rencontre. 
Le compact-disc présente une série de pièces sonores créées ou jouées à l’occasion des différents concerts liés à Setsuzoku 1 et 2.


Auteurs : Christophe Charles, Guillaume Paris

Éditeurs : École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, Paris / Musashino Art University, Tokyo 

Année : 2004
Format : 15 x 15 cm (avec un cd)
Illustrations : 107, en couleurs 
― Pages : 80
Langue : anglais
ISBN : 2-84056-166-2
2004
verena - sonimage

duration: 8'00"
audio for software Sonimage
by SONY QUALIA (Tokyo)
A spatial remix of the basic elements of former composition "verena", using an unreleased speaker system conceived in Sony laboratories, enabling sounds to move 3-dimensionally.

Qualia was a boutique brand of high-end electronics, created by Sony to showcase their best technology. Some Qualia products are brand new while others are upgraded and rebranded versions of regular Sony products. The line was launched in Japan in June 2003 and the U.S. in April 2004. source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia_(Sony)


2004
interaural saucer

duration: 10'16"
Compilation CD Bergbahn: Flux Figure Transform
label: CODE Inc. (Tokyo)

A concept compilation CD by producer Akira Yamamichi a.k.a. Bergbahn. The individual tracks take a few samples by Bergbahn as their starting point. Unlike in the traditional remix approach, the artists were invited to use digital signal processing to mix, alter and transform the given samples into something entirely new and unique--even to the point of unrecognizablity as compared to the original sample. The artists then used the outcome of their individual processing as part of mixing a new track in click house / minimal style.
http://www.discogs.com/release/823501
2003
undirected/coran

A 60 second loop inspired by sound recordings made by Mike Hentz / Minus Delta T (The Bangkok Project) in Afghanistan and Irak in the early 1980s.

From the compilation CD "60 artists protest the war"
duration of each track: 60 seconds
label: ATAK (Tokyo)
Art Direction – Maria
Compilation Producer – Keiichiro Shibuya
Design – Myeong-Hee Lee, Ryoji Tanaka
Mastered By – Kimken
2003
Undirected 1992-2002

Two compositions recorded between 1992 and 2002:
Next Point - Hommage à Henning Christiansen
duration: 21'15"

Deposition
duration: 45'45"

label: SUBROSA (BELGIUM)
https://subrosalabel.bandcamp.com/album/undirected-1992-2002
https://www.subrosa.net/en/catalogue/soundworks/christophe-charles.html

1- 'Next Point - Hommage à Henning Christiansen', is a performance given at the MANCA festival in 1992, it is an extension of 'Media Opera' organized by Yamaguchi Katsuhiro in October 1992 on Awaji Island to celebrate the foundation of his 'Village of the Arts'. One can hear the rain falling in the south from Majorca, the voices of salesmen of coffee and boiled eggs of the station of Howrah, beside Calcutta, the chants of the monks of Todaiji in Nara, and the calls of the merchants of ice cream of Hangzhou (recorded by Martina Diestel). Other sounds were sampled among the works of Henning Christiansen: sporadic chords of the piano of the cave of Penthesilea, the very particular sound of the long pipe which Christiansen hits more or less regularly on one end, 'in order to give a certain feeling of time', or the bells and the tuba of the 'garden of the yellow mountain' where low frequencies make almost inevitably vibrate the ceilings of the rooms where it is played.

      
2: 'Deposition' contains ten episodes of various lengths which are connected according to a dynamics of tension and relaxation. There is no particular narrative dimension, but 'scenes', featuring soundscapes from various cities and countrysides, as well as musical (instruments) sounds: voice, flutes, or percussions, which reflect an interest for the fundamental actions of breathing, or hitting objects with the body -- rather than praising the mastery of a particular technique. The sounds generally come from an action which does not have any musical claim, for example, the Senegalese women who crush the millet. The voices are those of the salesmen from the Fischmarkt of Hamburg, the children of Calcutta, Italian dogs howling in the night, or insects of Japanese mountains. Other sounds come from a collaboration with Ryoji Ikeda, from 'In Memoriam Gilles Deleuze' and from the music of the two permanent sound installations of Osaka and Tokyo-Narita international Airport.

« In his extensive liner notes (eight booklet panels in fairly small type), Christophe Charles spends a lot of time explaining that his conception of chance operations goes back to John Cage, that the music in both "Next Point" and "Deposition" is the result of a long sequence of recording, performing, re-recording, restructuring, re-performing, etc., and that the resulting works stem from a two-headed process of computer-(un)controlled chance algorithms and sound/experience-aggregation through time. But that doesn't explain the beauty of the music. And "Next Point" and "Deposition" can be described as two extended works, respectively 21 and 46 minutes long, consisting of a widely variegated assortment of field recordings and treated sounds, presented as if they formed a narrative except that they don't (see chance operations mentioned above). But that doesn't explain the beauty of the music either. In Cage's music, for example in Roaratorio, one can appreciate the richness of the concept, the monk-like work that went into the preparation, and the chance arrangements of the results, but one still feels the hand of chance, the arbitrary. Here, the listener doesn't. The elements conspire to create the illusion of a narrative, an evolution. In every nook and cranny one can hear an acute artistic sense at work, chiseling sound meetings in order to keep the listener trapped inside a fascinating electro-acoustic world - especially true of "Deposition," which technically allows you to leave and come back, except that it offers too much to the attention to justify the desire to step away from its force of attraction. »
François Couture / http://www.allmusic.com

« If the fabled "global village" mutates into an actual city, Christophe Charles has the soundtrack. He collages field recordings into a scene in which Hamburg businessmen chat with Calcutta schoolchildren in a Bangkok traffic jam, while Japanese crickets and Italian dogs bicker into the night. In Undirected's liner notes, Charles insists that everything here is unmusical, as he lets a computer randomly play his sound files. Yet the result is awfully symphonic, as drones and field noises saunter at a meditative pace. This is raw psychedelia for the Information Age. »
Cameron Macdonald / XLR8R

2003
inter/action for laptop orchestra: audio
inter/action for laptop orchestra: score

duration: 19'39"
original score and reconstruction by Christophe Charles.

Performers:
AOKI Takamasa 青木孝允
Christophe CHARLES クリストフ・シャルル
HANNO Yoshihiro 半野善弘
HOSOMI Sakana 細海魚
KAKO Yuzo 加古祐三
NARITA Masaki 成田真樹
NIBO

2 days of performance, 30 minutes each, introducing SALVANILLA dance performance: "Inter/action", Roppongi Hills Arena , Tokyo, on June 28 & 29, 2003.

---


This composition suggests to use six general types of sounds, in various orders and combinations:

A- organic (complex) sounds
B- non-organic (complex) sounds
C- fast rhythmical sounds
D- slow rhythmical sounds
E- high pitch static sounds
F- low pitch static sounds

For each pattern will be defined the unpredictable (variable) aspect and predictable (controlled) aspect of frequency, timbre and amplitude of each type of sound.

vf- variable frequency
cf- controlled frequency
vt- variable timbre
ct- controlled timbre
va- variable amplitude
ca- controlled amplitude

At any moment, the performers are free to produce sounds which are not from the category which has been chosen for a specific pattern.

Therefore, the different patterns defined above are combinations of two, three, four, or six performers and do not feature the number one.

Each pattern will be performed using a specific type of sound with specific aspects, with no repetition.

During the performance of a specific pattern, performers belonging to a same line of a same color will use the same type of sounds.

For example in pattern 01, performers 1 and 2 will use the same type of sound, while performers 3 and 4 will use another type, and performers 5 and 6 yet another type.
The performance duration is 32 minute on both June 27 and June 28, 2003.

The laptop orchestra will perform 16 patterns of a duration of two minutes on each day. Each pattern, sound type and aspect has been chosen using the "urn" object of the Max/MSP software (which generates random numbers without duplicates).

In hommage to John Cage's Williams Mix (1952)





2003
narita

duration: 2'00"
compilation CD + Book Sound Cultures
label: Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt)

Mille Plateaux label director Achim Szepanski collaborated with the publishing company Suhrkamp on a paperback book on "Soundcultures", which included a mini CD (20 minutes) with 20 one-minute compositions by twenty artists (including Terre Thaemlitz, Carsten Nicolai and others). A "soundcultures" compilation CD with longer compositions was planned by Mille Plateaux but has not been released.

« Die Musik hört nicht auf, ihre Fluchtlinien ziehen zu lassen, gleichsam als «Transformations-Vielheiten», und dreht dabei ihre eigenen Codes um, die sie abrifizieren une strukturieren; die musikalische Form ist so bis in ihre Brüche und Wucherungen hinein dem Unkraut vergleichbar, ein Rhizom. »
(Gilles Deleuze / Felix Guattari)

Soundcultures
"Über elektronische und digitale Musik"
herausgegeben von
Markus S. Kleiner und Achim Szepanski
Suhrkamp Verlag
SV 2303 Frankfurt 2003


Taschenbuch: 240 Seiten
Verlag: Suhrkamp Verlag;
Auflage: 2 (28. April 2003)
Sprache: Deutsch
ISBN-10: 3518123033
ISBN-13: 978-3518123034


2003
undirected/soundcultures

duration: 08'05"
unreleased long version of the compilation CD + book
Sound Cultures
.

2003
dying for (in five poems)


duration: 38'01"
Dying For (in five poems)
, including "on set", "consumption and resistance", "dying for", "on going", "in(ter)dependency (undirected)" 
is "a hauntingly beautiful and expansive, multi-textured music composition set to the score of visual collage by Kai-Syng Tan. Amidst violently cut-to-1/24-of-a-second montage, slowly-drawn landscapes that allude to Tarkovsky, and a dense deluge of text obsessively layered like a Naumen-Beckettian dirge". This weighted mediation on man's relationship with his environment was premiered live at the Institute of Environmental Art & Design's International Environmental Art Festival in Onahama Performance Live, Iwaki, Japan, October 2003.

The music score uses the recordings of a concert with Numb at Roppongi Zone. The Numb-vs-Charles collaboration was planned to be released on a CD by Headz (Tokyo) but for unknown reason has not been released.

Kai has done a large number of works during her stay in Tokyo (2002-2005) and this is one of the collaborations with Christophe Charles. 





2003
pre-texts

duration: 16'42

PRE-TEXTS: RE-FORMULATED STRUCTURES
, a work in 3 movements by Kai Syng Tan, premiered as a 17-minute live performance at the Musashino Art University Open House 2003, with music (live audio mix, by Christophe Charles), text (rendered by 2 live performers) & image (video projection). Ready for other live gigs/ Japan tour in stadiums, rock-band style. Other formations/modes of presentation of the work include a 3-projection installation (5 minute loop each), single screen looped installation (at the Tokyo Tower, Kyoto Tower, Eiffel Tower, Singapore Changi Airport and Merlion at Sentosa etc) at as well as single-channel projection at cinemas.  


"On preliminaries/ preludes/ preoccupations/ presumptions/ prepositions/ presence/ presentation & non re-presentation/ present/ perfect tenses/ Levels of imitation/ another copy of copy of another copy /severe themes & acute variations of yellownessness/ (a)typical dis-eases/ defiance & stubbornly resisting & refusing to be properly determined & defined/ unwillingness to subject & subjugate itself to interpretation/ shaped as yet another formless & structureless structure in the epidemic proliferation of systemless systems of to day." (Kai Syng Tan)





2003
re:distillation

duration: 11'41
from compilation CD readapt
label: +cross (Osaka)
reconstruction of the DISTILLATION CD by Kako Yuzo
2002
FREQUENCitY: jizai>nextpoint>mari>dorobo>zone

duration: 24'

A 24 minute composition from the FREQUENCitY series curated by
Steve Bates for orf kunstradio

"Glocken von Henning Christiansen, Samples von Hoon, Gitarre von Jinmo und Soundscapes aus Calcutta, Hangzhou, Puri, Senegal und Taegu. Material für den Beitrag von Christophe Charles zu "FREQUENCity" sind die farbigen Soundscapes der  Märkte und Strassen aus verschiedenen asiatischen  und afrikanischen Städten. Dabei verfolgt er den Rhythmus der Städte, der manchmal "real" ist, wie  das rhythmische Schlagen eines Hammers oder der  Lärm von Kolbenmotoren, manchmal aber auch abstrakt, wenn Christophe Charles etwa Töne und Klänge von Musikinstrumenten sampelt oder Sounscape-Frequenzen filtert und neu komponiert. Sehr  unterschiedlich in ihrer Wellenlänge, reflektieren  sie doch alle das "Auf und Ab" eines urbanen Lebens. Diese bipolare Situation findet ihren konkreten  Ausdruck in der Verwendung kontrastierender  Sound-Elemente: hohe und tiefe Tonlagen, dichte und  lose Texturen, schnelle und langsame Wechsel, die in  einem weiten und transparenten Klangraum zusammenfliessen."
(Kunstradio website)

« Radio, at its best, projects the life of a city. It communicates the passions and concerns of its inhabitants. Radio is fully switched on when it is a social tool. When it builds culture. It does this by engaging the community in a dynamic collaborative where the listener is active participant.

There must be a distinction made between commercial radio and public or community radio. While the latter is vital as a vehicle for public discourse, commercial radio, exists primarily for the trade of goods. Public access radio has the potential to be an organic tool of a community and it is here where my interest lies.

Integral to radio and something that often separates it from other art-making practices, is its multiplicity of voices. This capability and the fact that radio exists alongside our daily activities gives it unique potential as a tool for development, dynamic art production and dissemination. People listen to radio at work, while preparing meals, lying in bed, working in the garden, driving in cars.

This project asks artists to consider the notion that radio be a conduit that transmits the movement of a city, its ebb and flow, its noise and its melody, its church bells, speeches, transmissions, barking dogs, parades. In this series, artists will use city sounds to create and perform works that reflect a social reality.

Cage and Schaefer have asked us to think of these sounds as part of an ongoing composition. With this in mind, I move through the city differently, ears open wide, not always searching, but always discovering. The ringing bell of a shovel scraping concrete, the haunting sound of a siren in the distance.

How do these sounds feel projected back to us through the radio? What does this information tell us of ourselves?
 Contemporary online radio projects are creating new spaces for collaboration and network building and for the first time in radio's history - visual content. For FREQUENCitY, artists will develop their work within this new model of online broadcasting where content continues to expand and new systems of interaction and production are developed.

FREQUENCitY will archive these works created for broadcast and will feature an ongoing stream of archived files that listeners can contribute to. » )
(Steve Bates
)



2002
undirected/frequencies

duration: 2'00"
from compilation CD Frequencies [Hz]
publisher: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
curated by Carsten Nicolai

フランクフルトを拠点に活動する、アート、インターメディア集合体、Exhibitionsがその展示会等でイ ンスタレーションに使用したサウンドを2分 ずつ全28曲収録したもの。

« The series of concerts staged on occasion of the exhibition Frequencies [Hz] Audio-Visual Spaces Frankfurt, February - April 2002, documents the exhibited artists work with sound in space as a performative enunciation of their practice. It also introduces a range of other artists and musicians who work in similar contexts and who relate to the exhibiting artists´ use of sound as a core element of their installational work. All artists involved have contributed to developing a new language of electronic sound and continue to push the limits of art and music production. The exhibition and the concert series provide a platform for exploration and experience of different approaches to sound and art. » http://www.raster-noton.de/catalog/ltd008.html

Artists include: Achim Wollscheid/Mark Behrens, Alva Noto, Christophe Charles, Con, CM Von Hausswolff, Cyclo., Ekkehard Ehlers, Errorsmith, Farmersmanual, Frank Bretschneider, Hecker, Mainpal Inv., Markus Schmickler, Merzbow, Monolake, Opiate, Pan Sonic, Pita, Pomassl, Random Industries, Richard Chartier, Ryoki Ikeda, Senking, Snd, Steinbrüchel, Stephan Mathieu, Thomas Köner, and Ultra-red.

Christophe Charles' contribution is an excerpt from the concert given at the Schirn Kunsthalle on March 8th, 2002, edited to fit exactly the 2 minute window of the compilation CD.


2002
undirected/float

duration: 14'47"
compilation CD Floating Foundations
label: Subrosa (Belgium)

In a thematic exploration of the plasticity of sound, five various artists add their malleable constructions to floating foundation vol. 1. With a bit of an architectural bent, these elegant edifices are built as subdued, rambling abstractions most worthy of wandering through.

Roughly ruffling layers of janek schaefer's droning electronic dustclouds experience "Lithospheric Shifts" (8:02) into steamier (the rumblier) realms. main : : robert hampson scatters bits of digital debris about the everchanging (sometimes startlingly so) backdrop of sprawling "Hysteresis"; often-eerie planes of alternate existence subtly waver only to be chewed up and spat out in a sudden fit of DSP.

Streaming half-music/half-atmosphere soundscenes overlap, merge and morph in christophe charles' "Undirected float" (14:47). Undirected? Hardly... this surreally meandering piece is another masterly display of unpredictable explorations. In what would have otherwise been an obscure footnote, "Salty Lemonade for Falling Water" by stephen vitiello includes field recordings from the World Trade Center (the day after Hurricane Floyd); this and several other sources simply drift in a spacious sprawl, with a few outbursts of weird highs.

kurt ralske closes the 57.5 minute disc with "Au.Taste" where almost-choral strands hover in blurred layers which shift, split and recombine in serenely thrumming flows.

Aptly titled floating foundation vol. 1 provides a walk-through tour of five smartly-constructed avant-garde projects whose experimental flairs are never obtrusive. B.

2001
Voyager


permanent installation at
Tokyo-Narita International Airport,

Terminal 1, Central Atrium.
duration: 4'00 each

This artwork was realized through the collaboration between three artists of different fields: graphics (Hasegawa Satoshi), light (Osaka Takuro), and sound (Christophe Charles). During the day, the hanging sculpture reflects the colors of sunlight. At certain points, the atrium becomes dark and constellations appear together with sound, inviting travellers to a surreal space tour.

« Art work installed at the New Tokyo International Airport has a function to enrich its cultural environment and its value as a gateway to other countries. The art work needs to have innovative expressions that reflects our contemporary values as well as the universal appeal that supersedes any particular time frame. It is also important to incorporate and integrate globalism and Japaneseness within the art work. Given this, Town Art selected two internationally renowned Japanese artists, Takuro Osaka and Hitoshi Hasegawa, and one foreign artist who resides in Japan, Christophe Charles to collaborate on the art work to be installed on the main building of the terminal one. The theme of the art work is "Cosmos."

The word, "Cosmos" inherits the concept of "order," "universe," and "the outer space." Three artists' creativity and collaboration visualize the "outer space" as a manifestation of order and harmony. Space, the universal that has been there forever, and that will be there forever, is represented by the combination of visuals and sound effects. The magnificent "COSMOS" is realized. "COSMOS" utilizes different kinds of lights--natural light, artificial light, and black light-- and soundscape to make itself truly multi-faced in time. When the skylight is closed, you hear the sound effects, black lights light up, and murals on the 4th and the 5th floor become visible. Inspired and accompanied by the sound effects, various colors of light dynamically shines through the hanging sculpture at the center. The site itself becomes the 3D art work in which various elements resonate and intertwine. »




2001
verena (april)


duration: 15'49
from "april remixes" by Hanno Yoshihiro
label: Subrosa (Belgium)
https://yoshihirohanno.bandcamp.com/track/verena-christophe-charles-remix
reworking of the "April" CD by Hanno Yoshihiro, using samples of several tracks and merging them together with new sounds into a new composition.

« This CD released by the label Sub Rosa in June 2001 combines two limited-edition albums by Yoshihiro Hanno: the complete April Music (Canvas 1) and a selection of tracks from the album of remixes that followed (Canvas 2). Hanno's original tracks are interspersed with reinterpretations by Oval, Hidenobu Ito, and Christophe Charles. The repetition factor is almost negligible, as the remixers mostly worked on the entire album instead of one specific track (Hidenobu's "Lab Suite Remix" being the exception). Hanno's compositions tend to be dreamy, airborne, and add vocals (Aki Kudo), piano (Esu=Sakamoto Ryuichi), and guitar (Ko Tsuchiya) to the electronics one expects from the artist behind the Multiphonic Ensemble. The remixers' job is almost seamless, their pieces molded in the composer's cast. Oval's glitchy identity is detectable, of course, but not in an intrusive way, and if Charles' construction is somehow more complicated and challenging, it is not at the album's expense. Hanno's own "Trapezoid" brings a delightful noisier touch halfway through the album while still staying true to the general lush mood. April Remixes is not as cutting-edge as some releases on Sub Rosa can be, but it provides a very satisfying and enjoyable listening experience. » 
François Couture, http://www.allmusic.com

Composed by Yoshihiro Hanno (aka Multiphonic Ensemble) and remixed by Oval, Hibenobu Ito and Christophe Charles.

Between 1997 and 2002, under his own name or with Multiphonic Ensemble, Yoshihiro Hanno released four records on Sub Rosa. April Remixes is the third one, published in 2001. This record combines two limited edition albums by Hanno: April Music (April Music On Canvas #1), and highlights from the subsequent remix album.

2001
verena_on canvas

duration: 15'49
from "april remixes" by Hanno Yoshihiro
label: Cirque (Tokyo)

reworking of the "April" CD by Hanno Yoshihiro, using samples of several tracks and merging them together with new sounds into a new composition - same as above.


2001
undirected/hoon


duration: 7'36
from unfinished#2
remix of the hoon CD
by Hanno Yoshihiro and Sakamoto Ryuichi (ESU)
label: code (Tokyo)
unfinished #2 CD contributors: Ikeda Ryoji, David Toop, Tetsu Inoue, Christophe Charles, Hanno Yoshihiro, ESU.

「codeから生まれた音楽プロジェクト、hoon。メンバーのESUとクラブ・ミュージック/音響/映画音楽 ク リエイターとして活躍中の半野喜弘が従来の 「音楽」の枠を超えた、新しい音楽を創造。その音源は、codeの機関誌『unifinished#1』に付録 のCDに収録されています。 『unifinished#2』では、池田亮司、デヴィッド・トゥープ、テツ・イノウエ、クリストフ・シャルル らのミュージシャンにhoonフレンズとし てリミックスを依頼し、hoonの世界観を広げました。 」

unfinished#2 contents:
坂本龍一ブラジル写真「ryuichi in rio」、インタビュー: 宮内勝典(作家)/松井章圭(極真空手館長)/久司道夫(マクロビオテック)/フラン ク・ドレイク(宇宙学者)/羽仁カンタ(A SEED JAPAN)/ 日下一正(経済産業省)、鼎談: 村上龍(作家)× 塩崎恭久(国会議員)× 坂本龍一、code report: 地域通貨レポート / コモディティーズ(日用品)ストーリー etc.

季刊 アンフィニッシュド unfinished #2
[編集] code (後藤繁雄、坂本龍一、中島英樹、空里香)
[アートディレクション&デザイン] 中島英樹
[発行所] code 
[シリーズ] unfinished
[発行年] 2001年 通巻2号
[言語] 日本語、英語 
[フォーマット] A5|ソフトカバー 
[ボリューム] 136頁
[サイズ] 220mm × 148mm × 17mm
[構成] 1冊 
[付属] CD


2001
kura

from compilation CD Radical Fashion
publisher: Victoria & Albert Museum (London)
curated by David Toop

"Music is integral to the culture of fashion and many designers collavorate with musicians or use sound on the catwalk. The sound in this exhibition has been specially commnissioned and selected by composer and curator David Toop. The composers contributing to Radical Fashion are at the forefront of digital musics and sound art. In their different ways they are exploring new forms in technology, sonf writing or composition: all exemplify the geographical and stylistic fluidity of contemporary music."

Radical Fashion frontpage sound by christophe charles
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/rad_fash/flash.html



2001
"World Peace Economy" - Henning Christiansen

duration: 65'24"

49th Biennale of Venice, performance "World Peace Economy VI" by Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Henning Christiansen on the roof of the Danish Pavillion, with Christophe Charles, Bjørn Nørgaard, Ute Wassermann, and two tuba players.


" To get rid of art - eller begrebet ANTI-KUNST - det er noget jeg har været optaget af lige siden begyndelsen af tresserne. Efter Musikkonservatoriet og en musikertilværelse (som klarinettist) fik jeg nok af det. Jeg tænkte meget over det konventionelle som stikker så dybt i kunsten. Så kom Nam June Paik og Arthur Köpcke op på scenen til mig - og meget blev forandret. "
(from http://www.academicbooks.dk/derestauration/henning-christiansen/ursula-reuter-christiansen/9788721017569 )


2001
Layeral Intersect #3

duration: 30'00"
format: collaboration CD Layeral Intersect #3
label: Deadtech/Anechoic (SanFrancisco)
project by Kim Cascone

a soundmix of:
markus schmickler
christophe charles
carl stone
stephan mathieu

The "Layeral Intersect" project is a series of CD releases whose process of creation was inspired by the work of the late artist Gordon Matta-Clark. Matta-Clark would take imperiled or dilapidated buildings in fringe urban areas and using little more than a chain-saw createnew spaces within them...spaces that might have possibly been implied by the architect and which Matta-Clark would expose. In a similar fashion, composer Kim Cascone has created new works from disparate bits of music that previously had quite different purposes: unpublished tracks, individual samples, rough studies, location recordings, etc were sent to Cascone which he then turned into recombinant compositions. The "Layeral Intersect" series is produced by a collaborative effort of Deadtech and Anechoic.

2000
kura 60 seconds loop

duration: 60 seconds
from compilation CD Sound Anthology
publisher: Leonardo Computer Music Journal, Volume 24
curated by Kim Cascone

2000
improvisation (live at Podewil 27/09/99)

duration: 10'24"
from compilation CD Sampling Rage
label: X-tract (Podewil, Berlin)

A live collaboration with Steve Roden & Brandon LaBelle:
10 minute excerpt of the concert chosen by Dieter Scheyhing.

« Christophe Charles (F, J) electronics- Boris D. Hegenbart (D) soundcatching, processing- Brandon LaBelle (USA) electronics, found-sounds- Steve Roden (USA) electronics, parabolic heater, pedals, sampler- Terre Thaemlitz (USA, J) electronics. This CD is the result of the MontagsMusik series of the same name at Podewil (1998/99). The live and studio recordings of material performed at Podewil showcase the creative possibilities opened up by the use of samplers and computers as musical instruments. In their new pieces, the musicians embark on the microscopic analysis and modulation of sound sources through sampling and sound-manipulation, at times involving "cannibalistic" feedback in which the sampler refers back to itself. »

« The Podewil label x-tract started 2001 with the aim to bring cutting-edge music into new contexts and to create a link between different music scenes. It ranges from experimental electronic music to Iannis Xenakis, noise and sound art. The crossover of different genres puts musicians and composers into new contexts. x-tract traces the current change in the perception of music and its production with regard to new developments in sound technology and the dissolution of the borderlines between genres. Digital and instrumental sound is brought into discourse within a new dimension and under popular and contemporary aspects. Well-known artists of electronic music compose for instrumental ensembles, non-European music is being transposed into experimental European contexts.x-tract renounces current terminology. Pleasure in the unwieldy!»


2000
undirected/contact

duration: 18'53"
reconstruction of the recording of a concert with Brandon LaBelle at FREE SPACE 3 (Tsumura Kousuke), Tokyo, February 2000.

This is an unreleased track performed as a solo sound performance with images by Ishidate Yoko and Nibo during the concert "oval and friends", at CAY (spiral), Aoyama, Tokyo, 2001.

2000
kura

duration: 5'00"
from compilation CD + book Sound Art - Sound as media
label: ICC (Tokyo)

Exhibition curated by Hatanaka Minoru with David Toop & Max Eastley, Carsten Nicolai, Ikeda Ryoji, Carl Michael von Hauswolff, Christophe Charles -  concerts by Terre Thaemlitz, Jane Dowe, Ikue Mori, Disinformation, David Toop & Max Eastley, Carsten Nicolai, Pol Mahlow & Nakahara Masaya, Christophe Charles et al.

2000
verena


duration: 7'28
from compilation CD Maschinelle Strategien
label: Mille Plateaux / Ritornell

"Verena" was inspired from "Verena Vogelzymphon op.194", a composition by Henning Christiansen (released on CD by Edition Bernd Klüser 1991), which uses samples of canary birds
in Henning's farm: "am anfang war nicht das wort, sondern ein zwitchern."

2000
re-constant

duration: 8'20
from compilation CD magnetic roman
label: +cross (Osaka)

reconstruction of the constant.consult track by Kako Yuzo
2000
Contemporary Music Festival 2000 "Undirected"
Visual Brains+Christophe Charles

現代音楽協会80周年記念祭 2000.3.26 @Shere Mex
映 像:Visual Brains(風間 正+大津はつね)
音楽:クリストフ・シャルル
Christophe Charles & Visual Brains (Sei Kazama + Hatsune Ohtsu)

2000
ear as eye

duration:
from compilation CD Fuji
label: Cha-bashira (Tokyo) / A-Musik (Köln)
Christophe Charles' remix of a live concert together with Steve Roden & Brandon LaBelle
(1998, Kobe Design University).

 « A compilation for the start of this label project with mainly Japanese music including tracks by: Kuknacke, L?K?O, Miyahara Hidekazu, Hidalgo?, Hair Stylistics, AOA, Computer Soup, Why Sheep?, Susumu Yokota, Christophe Charles/Brandon Labelle/Steve Roden, Rax Karal, Noise Ramones, Tapes Klar!, Woodman, QofQ,, Vagamoron, American Cherry, Tennessees, yanee hat, Smurf Otokogumi, Evil Moisture, Rudolf Eb.er, Hado Ho, Nagata Kazunao, OM, Pol Mahlow, Moodman. Originally conceived of as the start of the joint label Fuji Rekodsu by Cha-Bashira and A-Musik; no other releases and label discontinued. Supported by ¿Los Apson? (Tokyo). »


1999
The Planet I  - 惑星 I

duration: about 140'
label : there (Kawaguchi, Japan)

Live performance at Kid Ailack Art Hall, on January 24, 1999, by Christophe Charles, Kaneko Jutok, Mukai Chie, Muronoi Yoko, Takahashi Ikuro.

1- Untitled    15:11 (video mp4, 167MB)
2- Untitled    5:17
3- Untitled    14:24
4- Untitled    23:06
5- Untitled    34:56
6- Untitled    46:57

Christophe Charles: Computer, Lighting (tracks: 1, 4, 6)
Kaneko Jutok: Guitar, Vocals (tracks: 3, 4, 5)
Mukai Chie: Erhu, Voice, Percussion (tracks: 4, 6)
Yoko Muronoi: Dance (tracks: 1, 2, 5, 6)
Takahashi Ikuro: Percussion (tracks: 2, 4, 5, 6)

Concert Planning:
Chie Mukai
Photography/Video: Noriko Seo
Artwork: Okuno Kazuhiro



[ click for larger image]
1999
Henning Christiansen
"Polar Cirkel - Nord Licht"

"Polar Circle - Nord Licht (blau - grün - rot - gelb - weiss - schwarz)" / "Northern Lights (blue - green - red - yellow - white - black)" ) is a performance by Henning Christiansen, Bjørn Nørgaard and Christophe Charles, at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany on October 17th 1999.

Sound by Henning Christiansen and Christophe Charles.


1999
shim-ke

duration: 8'00"
from compilation CD + LP Modulation & Transformation 4
label: Mille Plateaux (Frankfurt)

«The fourth collection in the Modulation & Transformation series testifies precisely how powerfully Mille Plateaux has positioned themselves within the growing world of electronic music. While many labels cash in on the genre's growing popularity, this Frankfurt-based label refuses to compromise its brand of challenging electronic music, instead heading increasingly further towards unparalleled artistic heights. The 36 songs on this wide-ranging collection capture many of Europe's foremost avant-garde electronic music composers such as Gas, Thomas Heckman, and Thomas Brinkman in addition to a few non-Europeans such as Paul Miller. The result captures a multitude of previously unconceivable ideas, directions that past musicians had never dreamt of. For example, when Wolfgang Voigt concludes the first album as Freiland on "Blau," the result feels near apocalyptic with its painfully distorted, shotgun blast-sounding bass beats pounding underneath a series of primitive synth melodies. To the average listener, this song is sheer noise, nothing but a banging cacophony. Yet to the more curious listener, a mysterious allure lies beneath this catastrophic demolition; only those in search of fresh ideas and sounds can find the inner beauty of songs such as this. Keep in mind that this is just one example of many. Sure, there are times when even the most open-minded listeners will scratch their head, pondering a particular song's value. Yet for the most part, these brave composers should be trusted by the listener. One may find little melody or rhythm here, but ambition is plentiful.»
1998
undirected / dok


from "undirected/dok", part two of a soundfile exchange between oval / Markus Popp and christophe charles- sounds by christophe charles, oval & Henning Christiansen- all (de)compositions / reconstructions by christophe charles  (Mille Plateaux / Ritornell, 1998)

« The composer's notes accompanying this beautiful experimental CD explain how his music is made of constantly changing sequences. He uses a randomized computer sampling technique that means that the music has no repetition, it is always unfolding in an organic way. When he decided to document this computer music system in action, it must have presented a harrowing process deciding which of these permutations to immortalize on record. Hence, the composer has contained CD-ROM data, with the same randomizing software for the Macintosh included with the audio CD. It is possible to play this CD on the ROM drive, and the listener will never hear the same combination of musical elements. It is not, however, imperative to use this interactive software to fully hear this CD; as a conventional audio CD it is a beautiful record on complex electronic music. Its beguiling ambience sometimes gives way to academic sterility, as with much of the music of the Ritornell and Mille Plateaux labels. But before this minimalism becomes tedium, the composer morphs one event into another - making it a seamless, constantly transforming soundscape. Christophe Charles has produced records in collaboration with another digital experimenter, Oval, as well as a prior CD, Undirected, which often brought him comparisons to Brian Eno, although this music is far more complex than Music for Airports as its sound sources are more varied. From street noise, dogs barking, synthesizers, and sundry field recordings of Eastern instruments, all of these sounds are given a discreet computer treatment rendering them musical, thus transforming them into a futuristic audio cinema.» (Sylvie Harrison, http://www.all,music.com)

kura (duration: 4'58): using the recording of a performance with Kazakura Sho (1994), "kura" has been reconstructed several times. This version (4.0) uses seven oval samples. The sound samples are filtered and stretched in various ways in order to emphasize depth in space. Some of the layers have been filtered so that they become hidden or even inaudible, but are nevertheless to be perceived behind.

shim-ke (duration: 5'01): A piece originally composed for Shim Cheul Jong's performance "Ke" (dog) in 1994, with samples from Ginza and Shinjuku. The human becomes a dog and a human again. The track is merged with a reconstruction of "Unter den Linden" (1986), a piece based on the recording of a silo and various metal objects. "Unter den Linden" doesn't refer to the Berlin avenue, but to a certain Alsace landscape in 1870 where German bombs are about to fall. A 10 minute version of shim.ke has been released on "Modulation & Transformation #4" (mp61). No oval sample here, but the use of loops refers to a certain oval method.

other details here
undirected/dok




1998
yukei 幽契

duration: 20'00"
format: VHS video tape / DVD
label: Kirensha (貞練舎, Yamanashi-Japan)

Sound composition with the voice of Maro Akaji (麿赤兒) reading his poem Yukei (幽契), made for a photomovie by Nara Kouji (奈良幸治). Other musics
(N-11, NNN/N-11) by Samamoto Ryuichi (坂本龍一).

N-11 (music: Sakamoto Ryuichi)
■Yukei (voice: Maro Akaji; music: Christophe Charles with samples from Henning Christiansen "In Vino Veritas")
■NNN/N-11 (music: Sakamoto Ryuichi)

First - Last : deux points extrêmes mais les mêmes et la même violence.

Des textes mystérieux en japonais qui vont s'estompant.
Lentement, un transporteur surgit du rien comme un cri modulé entre les deux bombes…  Deux bombes ou bien deux témoins muets comme morts dans l'horreur fixe ?

Pluie blanche de caractères japonais  - kana et kanji - Et, entre les deux poèmes comme deux totems, revient un samouraï farouche. Des corps chutent comme si c'était au fond des enfers. D'autres sont distendus,  peut-être des tortues de mer comme celles qui naissent sur le sable aux Galapagos et sont ensuite poursuivies par de grands oiseaux ou des monstres globuleux qui s'en emparent et les dévorent. Un coelacanthe  semble surgir du fond des eaux puis le prêcheur lui-même avec ses longs cheveux noirs,  le prêcheur au regard farouche. Son mouvement est décomposé, hâché menu . Et les deux témoins deviennent supports de poème. Soudain en avant d'une grotte se dessine le visage d'Einstein et peut-être bientôt celui d’Oppenheimer.

Un homme nu , le sexe irradié,  surgit et s’essaie à voler comme Icare et il danse dans l'espace vide. D'autres se joignent à lui de la même façon :  hommes nus, sexe irradié, avec un mouvement symphonique en arrière fond. Splendeur des images de crucifixion. Un escargot surgit cornes pointées au-dehors, descendant le long du corps à la manière des futuristes qui peignaient les moments différents du mouvement comme Carra ou Balla.

Et l'on retourne aux monstres qui s'accouplent : des batraciens immenses, des scarabées qui avancent. Très belles compositions liant le prêcheur à des morts avec une lecture graphique des textes en en japonais, colonnes de signes qui finissent par isoler de nouveau les deux bombes. Et la vidéo se poursuit sur une vision du bord de mer sous la grotte avec des photos en fondu enchaîné, comme si les bombes surgissaient de nouveau dans la mer, sur les galets.

Dans la rue d'une ville japonaise le prêcheur -- sa remorque vide - nous conduit sur un marché. Et ce sont des scènes d'un marché nocturne où une mère à l'enfant dans la carriole et une armée des tireurs de carriole surgissent du fond de l’écran . Morne répétition qui vient du fond de scène tandis que se dressent deux champignons parallèlement aux deux bombes atomiques. On retourne ensuite aux images intermédiaires et la silhouette du pêcheur disparaît. Le mot Garden clignote puis  s'arrête et l'ensemble de l'écran devient tout noir.

C'est là une composition très efficace : ce côté répétitif et quasiment fatal de l'horreur de la bombe, de l'horreur de la violence. Mais René Girard ne dit-il pas que dans l'acte de violence il y a chez la victime elle-même une sorte de violence qui répond . Et la dualité des bombes ne recouvrirait  peut-être pas seulement les deux bombes d’Hiroshima et de Nagasaki mais aussi la violence dans l'histoire subie et imposée, parfois par les mêmes. Quoi qu'il en soit, ce qui ressort ici c'est l'impression rendue à la fois par les hachures de la vidéo et par le côté répétitif de la musique qui accompagne les cris des hommes,  la voix d'homme qui chante. Et même à travers les sons émis par les hommes, il y a une violence sourde qui martèle l'arrière fond de l'écran et qui marque, elle aussi, l'arrière-fond de l'espace. Puissance forte de ces images qui se succèdent avec un caractère de nécessité et nous font retourner à la fin aux images du début comme s'il y avait une sorte de cercle vicieux de cette violence une fois qu'elle avait été lancée sur la terre. De même que la terre est ronde , il était fatal que la violence revienne sur elle-même, le lanceur à son tour devenant la victime. C'est probablement une réflexion picturale et une réflexion de vidéastes sur l'éternel retour ou plutôt sur le caractère inéluctable de ce re-surgissement de la violence à épisodes réguliers dans le monde. Et contre cela, la lutte de toutes les femmes, et de toutes les filles dès lors qu'elles ont été mères. Elles ont besoin de protéger leurs petits. Elles ont besoin de lutter contre toutes ces forces de mort qu'apporte la guerre, contre tous les grands malheurs que nous promet l'avènement du XXIe siècle.

C'est donc un hommage dans la mesure où la vidéo est extrêmement composée extrêmement recherchée, un hommage structuré sur des éléments graphiques ou sonores répétitifs, mais qui ne procurent jamais d'ennui aux spectateurs . Ils suivent, emportés tandis qu’apparaît la vision de ceux qui nous sont chers et qui sont morts. Et c'est comme si nous voulions conserver le contact avec eux à travers ces images.
Comme si nous le conservions.

Eveline Caduc

1997
sound shadow
Excerpt from the 4 channel sound site specific installation for the ambit of the Cloister as part of site-specific audiovisual immersive installation by Christophe Charles and Ritsuko Endo in 1997.

https://www.agosto-foundation.org/christophe-charles-ritsuko-endo-sound-shadow

Recorded and mastered by Christophe Charles
released 2021

"Sound defines space more than visual elements do. When visual objects, graphic shapes or images are at a dead angle, their meaning disappears. They need a physical place to exist. In the case of virtual images, this physical space is a screen. The following passage explains Marshall McLuhan’s approach: 'Before Man knew scripture, he was living in 'the space of the ear.' The ear was then more important to him than the eye.' (Marshall McLuhan and Edmond Carpenter, The Ear and the Eye, 1967). The education of three thousand years led to a separation from sentiments and emotions, but the latest media technology recalls these original sentiments and emotions. Sound helps to construct the space which lies physically in front of one’s eyes, or the virtual space which spreads in the mind. Given that the acoustic space helps to restore one’s perceptions and emotions, re-visualizing and re-construction of this space in the visual sense (which uses sounds as a material), has become the main concept underlying my installation work.
The installation work at the cloister is based on the light which passes through it, and the physical material of the drawing which intercepts the light. The drawing features sign-like forms. It is the visualization of the time axis of the sound composition of Christophe Charles. The notation of sound proposes many kinds of forms according to personal and circumstantial (environmental) elements. Charles samples the sound of the place where the music is to be played. The concrete sounds appear as notation of the place where the work has been installed, that is as the shadow of the stones of the cloister’s corridor. A form which does not feature any color has a much lighter existence than a picture frame. It involves the air, the place, and the natural light. Staying and working in Plasy led to the development of a sense of air which exceeds simple visual expression. The temper of the installation is due to the particularity of the place where it happened. This work does not intend to separate the visual world and the acoustic world, nor to define a relation of superiority or inferiority between them. In insists on the importance of their unlimited coexistence."

Endo Ritsuko, 1997
"The Japanese went to Plasy with very defined ideas for their contributions, almost all of them using electric devices. When we went to buy the Sony amplifier I had requested, Miloš told me, looking at some video clips produced by Sony TV: 'This is the culture supported by Sony.' I answered that we need amplifiers to show them that it is possible to do something completely different with the same equipment. Endo Ritsuko made an installation in the Cloister with big pictures hung in front of the high windows of its ambit that caught the afternoon sun, and I made sound experiments over three days in order to record music which would fit the corridor’s reverberation. The monastery’s guard told me in German that it was a nice sound. I do not know if he was comparing it to the bass lines of the heavy metal rock that was audible from the upper floor, polluting the soundscape of the Cloister. Endo’s work would be imagined after he heard the sounds I chose to "fit" the architecture, to "face" the sun as much as the heavy metal bass lines, and thus to show that the loudspeaker does not need to only serve annoying rock music or government propaganda."
Christophe Charles, 1997


Christophe Charles was the initiator of the joint venture between the Center for Metamedia Plasy and the Gallery Surge in Tokio who curated the expedition of Japanes artists to Czech Republic.
Two CD players and four speakers (in four corners of the corridors) created a spatial sonic environment. The ambient installation was running during the opening hours for 14 days after the symposium ended.
(Christoph was as well one of the first artists who came to Plasy equipped with a laptop computer. I think it was the PowerBook 3400c - manufactured by Apple Computer in 1997 - then considered the swiftest laptop in the world. It used the PowerPC 603e processor running at speeds of up to 240 MHz, featuring  PCI architecture, EDO memory, a 64-bit wide, 40 MHz Internal bus. It was also the first PowerBook to feature a PC card slot capable of being used as a  zoomed video port and it provided the possiblity to edit audio recordings on-site).


Echo's Bones

Selected archival files, recorded between 1993 and 1999 at Plasy Monastery, in the chapels of St. Benedict, St. Bernard, in the corridors, or around the premises. The resonant acoustics of chapels and the serene light invite visitors to interact with the space: their breath and even the softest noises and movements dissolve into the sonic reflections — as if opening a dialogue with an aural, airborne being, repeating that she hears — maybe the lonely and curious nymph Echo?

The title of the album refers to the ancient Greek love story: Echo was a mountain nymph, an oread, living in Cithaeron Mountains. Cithaeron was a king, or a mountain god, and was famous as a player on a lyre ( cithara). Godnes Hera, to punish poor Echo for some reason, deprived her of speech, and acoustic communication, except for the ability to repeat the last words of another. As a result, Echo's amorous affection, because being rejected by handsome Narcissus, her body slowly begins disappear and her flesh wastes away. Finally, only her sound and bones were left; her disembodied acousmatic voice floating above olive trees and meadows.

And Echo's bones, they say, turned into white limestone, or into pebbles. Meanwhile Narcissus drowned, because he tried to kiss his own mouth in mirroring water level. And his sisters mourned "having clipped their shining tresses, laid them on his corpse: and all the Dryads mourned: and Echo made lament anew. And these would have upraised his funeral pyre, and waved the flaming torch, and made his bier; but as they turned their eyes where he had been, alas he was not there! And in his body's place a sweet flower grew, golden and white, the white around the gold." (Ovidius, Metamorphoses).

Echo's bones spread all around the hills of Kithairon (Κιθαιρών) on the green grass, among the flowers, as a graphic score for the disembodied voice repeating the last word… alas, only if there was a sound nearby. Usually the landscape remained silent.
--

Selected and arranged by Miloš Vojtěchovský zvukac et centrum.cz














1997
uncolored (channel 1&2)
uncolored (channel 1&2)

duration: 10'00" each
Unreleased tracks produced for a 4-channel sound installation for a tea ceremony and a demonstration of ikebana in Tokyo, 1997. 

1997
feld_c

duration: 8'45
reconstruction of feld, from CD microstoria_snd, 1996

from
CD & LP microstoria_reprovisers
label: Mille Plateaux (Frankfurt) / Thrill Jockey (Chicago)

1997
undirected_1986-1996

duration: 56'58
solo CD undirected 1986-1996
label: Mille Plateaux (Frankfurt)

«This CD by electronic composer Christophe Charles was a groundbreaking release in 1996, not only from the perspective that it contains post-ambient music of the finest variety, but that the audio CD is enhanced with a sophisticated music software program for the Mac. This implement is apparently an integral part of the composition process for Charles, who has collaborated with another revolutionary computer music composer, Oval, on subsequent recordings. Those familiar with the sleepy and tenuous glitch music of Oval will find much enjoyment here. This music is less repetitious, as it is based on a series of "Chance Composition" techniques informed by the music of John Cage and Brian Eno's chance or "Systems Music" strategies. It recalls early electronic music in some ways, and is more in line with academic music than ambient or dance. When released in 1996, this CD fell by the wayside, somewhat foreshadowed by label mates Oval and Alec Empire, who gave Mille Plateaux its identity as the quintessential IDM label. With Undirected, this really is a music of "one thousand plateaus" Å\ the mutations and transformations of layered field recordings and processed instrumentation fold within each other in a most artful fashion, at times cinematic in the images it conjures. This album, which tracks ten years of work, is not a compilation so much as a showcase of a very refined and singular aesthetic. It's recommended to those interested in the more adventurous side of computer music. Its follow-up, Undirected/Dok, is a more radical transgression on the theme, and is a highly regarded work on the prestigious Ritornell label.» (Sylvie Harrison, http://www.allmusic.com)

“A great example of music in its abstract form. Normally concrete music becomes concretely representational of a particular situation by using different signals. Abstract music is a simulation of the universal ‘Rauschen’. What defines music today is no longer self evident. Western music of the 20th century has added unprocessed sound and noises until it is an impossible task to define anything as purely musical or unmusical. The organization of sound is no longer a fixed organization, but rather process or operation. 'Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us; when we listen to it, we find it fascinating' (John Cage). The CD invoices a cosmic flow and changes all surroundings of the listener. Coming and going. ‘Sounds from many natural places of the world are crossing in a wonderful way, processed sound and natural sounds are superimposed' (Shiomi Mieko). A masterpiece, 60 min." (from the Forced Exposure catalog

This CD-plus has two parts: a 60 minutes audio part, which notation is printed on the cover, and a data part, which elements are explained here. The audio part consists in several pieces composed between 1986 and 1996. They were gathered on five CDs: "circle" (1986-1994, non published), "dog" (1993-1994, non published), "next point" (1992-1993, Gallery Ham, Nagoya), "deposition yokohama" (1993-1994, Yokohama Museum) and "statics" (1995, CCI recordings, Tôkyô). They appear on "undirected" in the "ready-made" order of these CDs, which is related to the alphabetic order of their name ("circle", "dog"), or the order of their performance ("next point", "deposition yokohama").

These recorded compositions are mixed with samples banks triggered by a Max patcher on the same model as the "undirected.usnd". However, it didn't use the "usnd" object, but was connected to the MIDI-in (program changes, pitch, velocity, duration, controllers, etc.) of a Kurzweil/Young Chang K-2000RJ™. These banks were chosen according to their size (to fit the 16MB RAM of the K2000) and their presence in the pieces: they feature sound samples of former compositions, and new samples which appear according to the alphabetic proximity of their name ("ginza", "glocken", "gong", "hafen", etc.).

The 1996 "undirected" composition intends to make clear how the compositional principles of all these pieces are interrelated.

broadcast:
convex TV (Berlin), 1997
WBKH (San Francisco),1997
Tokyo FM "New Wind From Asia" (Tokyo), 1997

1997
oval/dok

collaboration CD oval/dok
label: Thrill Jockey (Chicago) / Tokuma Japan (Tokyo)

part one of a soundfile exchange between oval and christophe charles-

sounds by christophe charles & oval-
all compositions by oval-

cd graphic design by christophe charles & Endo Ritsuko (US and Japanese releases: two different versions, see Adrian Shaughhnessy & Julian House: "Sampler - Contemporary Music Graphics", Laurence King Publishing, London, 1999, p.37)

3- dekon - Rekon anything
4- Bloc
8- vitra desk

«Recorded in collaboration with Tokyo-based artist Christophe Charles, Dok continues Oval's manipulation of digital technology with typically innovative results. Beginning with Charles' field recordings of various ringing bells assembled from around the world, these static peals mutate into fluid, linear songs, complete with rhythm indices and bass tones; through extensive processing, beautifully organic music is somehow created, and like previous Oval releases, Dok forces listeners to reassess everything they believe to be true about the nature of sonic shape and form.» (Jason Ankeny, http://www.allmusic.com)


Amazon.com's Best of 1998
«In a year that saw the release of many fabulous archival 78s and field recordings, it's great to hear music that creates new, vibrant art from similar, contemporary source material. With Dok, Oval music ceases to be about manipulating existing CDs and instead is made from the manipulation of field/travel recordings by Tokyo-based artist Christophe Charles. Markus Popp's software does some pretty, narcoleptic, nifty things to the source material, recordings of bells heard in public spaces throughout the world.» --Mike McGonigal

From Amazon.com
A collaborative experiment between Oval's Markus Popp (he of Berlin) and academic sound-seeker Christophe Charles (he of Tokyo), Dok examines the relationship between space and structure at its most fundamental crux. On previous releases Oval proved themselves the Christian Marclay of the digital age; manually "treating" compact discs with scratches and cuts, then documenting and manipulating the naturally occurring results. On Dok Popp puts this modus operandi to a polarizing test. Rather than using linear, rhythmically constructed music as his sound source, he draws on a series of Charles's field recordings of bell sounds--almost entirely devoid of structure or rhythm--from around the world. Popp's intention here is to present the Oval aesthetic as a fluid, adaptable means to a consistently musical end. The result, while less melodic than previous Oval offerings, maintains the sublime appeal of an underwater dream. Dok ambitiously asks us to reassess the parameters of music itself, but theory and practice rarely find such gorgeous intersection. --Matt Hanks

«Although Oval are perhaps more well-known for how they make their music than for the music they actually make, the German experimental electronic trio have provided an intriguing update of some elements of avant-garde composition in combination with techniques of digital sound design, resulting in some of the most original, if somewhat challenging electronic music of the contemporary scene. Originally composed of Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, and Frank Metzger, Oval gradually became the work of just Popp, with Metzger providing most of the visual and design work. The bulk of Popp's work, released through the Force Inc.-related Mille Plateaux label, incorporates elements of what could be described as "prepared compact disc" ― manually marred and scarified CDs played and sampled for the resultant, somewhat randomly patterned rhythmic clicking. Layered together with subtle, sparse melodies and quirky electronics, the results are often as oddly musical as they are just plain odd. Popp brought this approach to bare on the first full-length Oval releases ― Wohnton, Systemische and 94 Diskont ― as well as a number of compilation tracks. Although a rung below marginal in their home country and even more obscure in the States, Oval's remixes of Chicago post-rock group Tortoise brought them in contact with American audiences; both Systemische and 94 Diskont, as well as Markus Popp's work as Microstoria (with Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner) were reissued domestically by Thrill Jockey in 1996. One year later, the Dok LP featured Oval's collaboration with Christophe Charles. After 1999's Szenario EP, Popp and co. returned in 2000 with Ovalprocess.» (Sean Cooper, http://www.allmusic.com)

The Wire (3/98, p.59) - "...patched together from soundfiles supplied by computer composer Christophe Charles....It is [the sound of] software: a malignant system champing its way through familiar signs, and languages, leaving only disfigured traces."

1997
undirected9702

duration: 10'00"
WDR、Prix Ars Acustica

This is a mix of several released and unreleased pieces : shimke (long version), statics, undirected/continuum, and Kalkutta Kreis (the last piece of the undirected 1986-1996 CD). I have also used a recording made at the Fukuoka Museum of Art during a performance with
Neo Dada Organizer Kazakura Sho and his baloon in 1994, which is at the basis of the undirected/dok track: kura, and several other pieces.

1996
Valhalla - Henning Christiansen
duration: 57'46"

"Storage Area - Beuys' Pit - 75 Years - Valhalla" ("Lagerplatz - Beuys Pit - 75 Jahre - Walhalla") is a six hour performance that H. C. held together with Bjørn Nørgaard, Christophe Charles and Gordon W. Sharfness at Prater Biergarten in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, Germany, on August 11th 1996.


Sound by Henning Christiansen and Christophe Charles

1996
undirected/continuum

duration: 9'39
from compilation CD In Memoriam Gilles Deleuze
label: Mille Plateaux

« The pioneering German experimental/electro label Mille Plateaux was founded on inspiration from French social philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his book A Thousand Plateaus, so the label organized this two-disc tribute featuring a veritable roll call of the top techno subversives in Germany, Britain and America. The tracks are all exclusives, from the likes of Atom Heart, Gas, J. Burger, Oval, Mouse on Mars, Scanner, Ian Pooley, Jim O'Rourke, FX Randomiz, Chris & Cosey, Gas, Christophe Charles and Kerosene. With an attractive 30-page booklet including the writings of Deleuze, In Memoriam Gilles Deleuze: Folds & Rhizomes is a near-crucial collection for fans of the philosophy or the music. » John Bush

1995
undirected/stationary

duration: 8'04
from compilatioon CD "statics" (1995),
edited by Ikeda Ryoji

with Darrin Verhagen,
Akira Yamamichi, Ryoji Ikeda, Jim O'Rourke, Kazuhiko Kinami, Alan Lamb, Christophe Charles, Paul Schutze, David Toop, Andrew Lagowski + Toru Yamanaka.

1994
deposition yokohama

duration: 52'00
from solo CD deposition yokohama
CD-catalog solo exhibition at Yokohama Museum Art Gallery

Comments about Deposition Yokohama :
Henning Christiansen:
I am sitting listening to your Deposition Yokohama. The dogs are belling- soundscape around- I like it very much. It is really transport of sound (I am sitting on Møn- Mond- Moon). It has a very good flow and changes my surroundings- Coming and going. Yes, you are on a good way (and don't need Donizetti).  (1994-12-29, Møn, Denmark)
Dick Higgins:
Lucky Yokohama! Sounds super. You should get it distributed here! (1995-01-28, Barrytown, USA)
Richard Kostelanetz:
I finally heard the CD, which has the undirected, non-hierarchical quality that is truly Cagean. (1995-02-12, New-York)
Florence Vatan:
I had the impression to penetrate a soundscape which was both interior (to the body) and exterior, probably because of the resonances and movement of the sounds which I imagined (?), besides the human and urban marks, inhaled and exhaled by Void, dilated or retained, sharpened on blades of silence, and vibrating at their contact (1995-02, Chicago)
Uehara Kazuo:
I could feel a very delicate world and your rich sensitivity (1992-02-13, Chiba, Japan)
Malcolm Goldstein:
Sorry that I couldn't experience within the installation setting, but I have enjoyed "playing" it- like creating my own realization by shifting from number to number in various sequences. (As well as hearing it through as in your sequence!). (1995-02-22, Montréal)
Matsumoto Toshio:
I was invited in a fascinating cosmos of meditation, which was very exciting. It is a pity that I couldn't see the installation (1995-02-27, Kyôto)-
Isshue Haruakira:
I was listening to your CD, and I thought "What a clear development!". As usual, your sentiments are well transmitted. (…) I hope that everybody wakes up for the "trans-artistic"! (1995-03-17, Chiba, Japan)
Éliane Radigue:
J'ai pris tout ce temps pour vous écrire et vous dire tout le bien de ce que je pense de votre travail, car j'avais besoin d'en pénétrer la profondeur. J'aime toujours et encore plus votre musique, à la délicatesse subtile qui m'avait enchantée dans votre premier CD, s'ajoute ici une puissance et une richesse sonore qui révèle un sacré tempérament !" (1995-04-02, Paris)
Eero Tarasti:
I am very impressed by your new experiences in music and images. You are really at the avant-garde in this domain. (1995-04-22, Helsinki)-

1994
Henning Christiansen
- PANDORA'S NEW BOX

This performance was held in two places in 1994:

In spring at Akademie Schloß Solitude in Stuttgart (Germany), featuring Christophe Charles (electronics), Ursula Reuter Christiansen (voice), Juri Madono (voice), David Moss (voice, electronics, percussions), Mary Oliver (violin) and Vilém Wagner (violin).

In July at P3 (Yotsuya, Tokyo, Japan), featuring Christophe Charles (electronics), Ursula Reuter Christiansen (voice), David Moss (voice, electronics, percussions), Vilém Wagner (violin) and Ute Wassermann (voice, devices) - organized by Arion-Edo Foundation and Christophe Charles.

1994
Ancient Chant

duration: 9'35"
collaboration CD Juri & Lisa - Things are Quite Silent
label: SSE Communications (Tokyo)

Track composed by Christophe Charles using samples of Juri's voice, stones and bells, processed through digital reverb.

1993
macbeth

duration: 4'51
from Furudate Tetsuo's Macbeth
label: SSE Communications (Tokyo)

Performed
by Christophe Charles (soundscape) & Juri (reading). One take, no overdub, no preparation.

1993
macbeth_live

duration: 6'28
from "Blank Tapes"
label: SSE Communications (Tokyo)

Performed live by Juri (voice), Reiko A. (voice), Furudate Tetsuo (voice, guitar), Suzuki Yuko (voice), Pneuma (keyboards), Christophe Charles (electronics).

1993
next point for Kazakura Sho

duration: 9'59"
Short version of the unreleased recording of a performance with Kazakura Shô at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, organized by curator Kuroda Raiji.

I have collaborated with legendary performer Kazakura Shô (founder of Neo Dada Organizers) eight times: during the Megalopolis Aborigines Tour in 1992 (Berlin, Gent, Eindhoven, Nice), at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in 1993, at NIPAF Tokyo and Nagano in 1995, and at the Neo Dada Exhibition(「ネオダダ一断面」展)in Oita in 1995. Except for the Nagano performance where he used piano strings attached through the theater, he used each time his black balloon.

This recording has been used in several compositions, in particular kura from undirected/dok and other compilations.



1993
let it hold itself up

two compositions on a solo CD
published by Gallery HAM (Nagoya)

next_point
duration: 21'17

joyamai
duration: 38'24

from "let it hold itself up" liner notes:

These compositions have no beginning or end, and are not based on any kind of storyboard: they are conceived to be looped and heard continuously in a specific environment. Each sound stands heard for itself, and no one covers or eliminates another. The sounds contained in these compositions also permit sounds of the environment happening in real time to be heard simultaneously. By hearing these compositions, the listener is led to pay more attention to the sounds which are not featured in the composition: I am looking for the possibility to make  all sounds audible, by the use of specific time structures.

comments about let hold itself up:
Henning Christiansen:
I got next point (let it hold itself up CD) and I have heard it three times- and agree and like. I am also proud of you, because I hear it as your first big form, as a symphonic feeling and of course I like that you use some of my ideas. I think that even from Calcutta sound piece I told you that the form was important, even if it was not in the Calcutta piece. It was interesting to hear, but for other reasons, as an essay about Calcutta in soundscape. But now in next point you have found a form that is very good for you so that you can "let the music hold itself up" for you and for me. I sit down and followed your travel in sound in my room, far away in Denmark. It is always a problem to work with a CD, or tape or other sound sources which have to get alive in another place. But this CD music comes over. There are certain signals who tells us that it is normal music: The instruments and it is necessary to send it back in music sometimes… for a while. But next point is to get it out, to leave instrumental sounds- I have done it, but I had to go back again and use that sound many times. I am happy to hear that you understand what I mean with next point. I think I told you my opinion: that the most important thing today is the form, not the sound, we can use "jeden Geraüsch" (any sound). (…) Let us hold us up! (1993-07-26, Møn, Denmark)
Heidi Paris and Peter Gente (Merve Verlag):
You reached a new musical dimension, which appears more stronger through the interesting recording technique. When I play the music here, the sounds stand at very different places. The loudspeakers as sound sources have disappeared, at last! Congratulations and thousand of thanks for the new listening experience. (1993-07-29, Berlin)
Shiomi Mieko:
Sounds from many different places of the world are crossing in a very interesting way, processed sounds and natural sounds are superimposed, this is very pleasant as a spatial counterpoint. In your sound work, visual and audible could be linked. (1993-09-10, Ôsaka)
Carl Stone:
My comment is simple: the music on your CD is wonderful, I have enjoyed listening to it many times. I realize that, as you say, there is no storyboard (this statement can be taken in several different ways), but for me the music is very rich and filmic, a kind of cinema sonore. Bravo. I wonder if you would have any objection to my broadcasting your compositions on a radio series I produce here in California. Again my thanks for your thoughtfulness and congratulations again for your fine work. (1993-09-15, Los Angeles)
Laura Kuhn:
It was with great pleasure that I yesterday listen to the CD you so kindly sent ("let it hold itself up"). I find it quite beautiful. It was only after I'd listened that I read your extensive "liner" notes, and was greatly intrigued. (…) Your use of the quote from Cage's Silence from Meister Eckhart is beautiful. Do you know (and you must, given your own work) that Cage changed his view about this some 20 years later, embracing the idea of Marshal McLuhan that modern souls are "…conveniently electronic (omniattentive)." (1993-10-21, Phoenix)
Éliane Radigue:
It is both refined and subtle, it has a very great power, profoundness and presence, that is, a very great happiness… (1993-10-25, Paris)
Anne Cauquelin:
I listened yesterday to the rite of the birds and the ritual of the human, that was very beautiful in the atelier where I was painting landscapes (which are not) in length, and in series. (1993-10-25, Paris)
Martha Grabócz:
Congratulations, this is very pleasant to listen to! The changes of musical "subjects" come according to a good rhythm, a good pulse: they are neither too long nor too short. I have been analyzing a lot of contemporary these days, and it was a real pleasure and refreshment to listen to your recording. The text is well written too. (Paris, 1993-10-26)
Alexina Duchamp:
Thank you very much for sending me your CD in hommage to John. I have nice memories of you and your father visiting me when John was here. (1993-11-17, Villiers-sous-Grez)

comments about "let it hold itself up" in original language here



1990
sampler 1986-1990

silo サイロ
unter den linden 菩提樹の下
fanbai 梵 唄
impulse music インパルス音楽

performed and recorded in Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain from 1986 to 1990.

Steeple & Globe - COS distribution
(Okazaki Toyohiro, Ichinomiya, Japan, 1990)






1989
from circle
Track recorded at Gallery Naito (Nagoya) in 1988, from the sound installation "From Circle From Sound" (two persons exhibition with painter Ahn Sung Keum), and published on the cassette-tape of the exhibition "Der gute Ton zum schönen Bild" at Kunsthaus Hamburg (January 1989), organized, curated and edited by Ernst Krezter (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg).

The installation was made of 15 bamboos standing in the gallery from floor to ceiling. Contact microphones were attached to the bamboos, linked to a pitch/delay controller which transformed the sounds coming from cassette tapes. Furin (wind bells) were attached to the bamboos and because of the air conditioning, were hitting the bamboos irregularly. 

1986
der hirt auf dem felsen

duration: 18'01"

Unreleased track used in the last part of « undirected 1986-1996 ».

Music for the performance
der hirt auf dem felsen at the exhibition vidéo et multimédia organized by Soungui Kim at La vieille charité (Marseille, France) in Summer 1986, with John Cage, Nam June Paik, Daniel Charles, Philip Corner, Gerard Frémy, Claus Böhmler, Ernst Kretzer, Henning Christiansen, Mike Hentz, Ute Wassermann, Tilman Küntzel,  et al.

video by Soungui Kim


Notation: ink on book paper, 1991

1986
kalkutta kreis

duration: 6'30"

Unreleased track used in the last part of « undirected 1986-1996 ». recorded in Kolkota, Puri and Hamburg, edited with advices from Henning Christiansen in Hamburg, exhibited at
vidéo et multimédia exhibition organized by Soungui Kim at La vieille charité (Marseille, France) in Summer 1986.

Letter from John Cage about
der hirt auf dem felsen and kalkutta kreis :

What I said as I recall is that you sustained your music very well. That is, you let it hold itself up. I found it a pleasure to listen to. Thank you, John (from John Cage, 101 West Street (5B)- New York, New York 10011. to Christophe Charles, 6 rue Cart, 94160 Saint-Mandé, France. July 29th, 1986)


Notation: pencil on paper, 1986



Notation: ink on book paper, 1990



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