Immersive sound installation. Work in progress.
Collaborations: Nuclear Knowledges (Sciences Po) and Frédéric Bevilacqua (IRCAM). Photo credit: NASA, INA
Our Things is an immersive sound creation project tracing the history and geography of nuclear explosions on the planet since 1945. It is based on a sonification and spatialization device, translating different characteristics of these explosions.
It responds to the current context of modernization and perpetuation of nuclear arsenals, as well as the possible resumption of testing. These prospects call for renewed attention, when ignorance on the subject grows as the memory of Hiroshima fades. Following on from Isao Hashimoto's installation, 1945-1998, this installation project proposes a complete re-invention of displaying nuclear information, aimed at sharing up-to-date knowledge about the issues at stake in today's military nuclear technologies. In particular, it aims at revealing the environmental alterations generated by the nuclearization of the world, in an accessible and sensitive way.
Like everyone else on the planet, I have to deal with all the visible and invisible "things" that result from nuclear explosions: bombs, holes, craters, burns, waste, particles... At this level, they should be considered as "our things".
This constitutes my starting point for considering the current "negative commons", as referred by Alexandre Monnin, that we are inheriting: the arsenals we are modernizing/perpetuating, with all their technical and logistical realities. Our things, these "ruined ruins" of past explosions, are a trace of the "ruinous ruins" in progress, and, I hope, point the way to another state of the world.
