Matthieu Henry co-founded Sweet Scope, a design studio aiming to gently impact spaces through interactive sound installations. Together with Edern Janneau, they seek a rational yet poetic future where dreamlike ideals define functionality. These principles apply through sounds, shapes, and colors refining and stimulating our environment.
Brandstof Performance - Collective musical performance using the Leaning Sounds installation in concert with Sound of Touches to create a soundscape in the gallery space.
Performed on 7 October 2023 at Garage Rotterdam.
Leaning Sounds #2 - The completed series of Leaning Sounds with a revised sound for each of the modules.
The installation is meant as a space to explore and play with intuitively.
2023
Picture: Aad Hoogendoorn
Leaning Sounds - (2021)
Pictures: Juliana Vérastègue Bayle
Model: KyungSeo Min
Leaning Sounds - (2022) Leaning Sounds is an interactive installation inviting the user to apprehend and perceive his environment through the use of sounds by creating a simple harmonic system allowing to play intuitively without requiring a musical background.
Each object is an invitation to interaction, with harmonic sounds being generated as people touch the different copper squares.
This project is a matter of poetry of use. The function of these objects is to emit sounds filling the space and invite the spectators to apprehend the place by means of touch and sounds.
We believe that allowing sound to be a composing element of a space is a useful abstraction. By considering our habitats as places of poetry, Sweet Scope likes to widen the field of our sensory prospects, introducing into spaces a rational yet dreamlike perspective. We aim for the user to discover his environment through the poetic and playful use of sounds. Tones shall become vectors for discovering space, giving meaning and function to shapes that had none before.
Picture: Juliana Vérastègue Bayle
Model: KyungSeo Min
Sound Of Touches - (2022)
Sound Of Touches - (2022)
Sound Of Touches - (2022) Sound Of Touches is an architectural and intuitive device. Through a system of organized proportions, the object emits sounds in accordance with its shape.
It invites the player to musical creation through a sensorial object that stands out from classical synthesizers by its shape, colors, and readability. Through a system of organized proportions, the object emits sounds in accordance with its shape.
The device can be discovered and understood by its simple use, no technical knowledge being required to experience it. The sounds arising from the forms are amplified and distorted. Some are analogous and respond to pressure from a hand or the pluck of a string. Others echo the direct environment in which the instrument is placed, notably by a game of light intensity. Digital sounds are thus directly linked to the real world. The physical architecture of the instrument becomes the unaltered reflection of the sounds it emits, allowing music to be perceived as a living and intuitive game of proportions.
Melodic Gesture - (2021) Picture by Pierre Castignola
Melodic Gesture - (2021) Picture by Pierre Castignola
Models: Fé Ramakers & Matthieu Henry
Melodic Gesture (2021) - The origin of this project is the awareness of a phenomenon observable in many sports and games. In these practices where movements generate sounds, a reciprocal relationship is often observed. The athlete generates sounds through his movements in space and uses these same sounds to assess his own performance. When Ronaldinho manages to hit the crossbar several times in a row, the sound of the ball hitting the frame becomes a witness to his precision but also allows the sport to enter another dimension. The player is not only looking to win, but to create and perform. What he achieves is certainly a sporting performance but above all a sensitive performance. Thus, art and sport are one.
The device I am proposing aims to embody this relationship between gestures and sounds. During this experience, the two players choose to compete or complement each other. Their gestures will be processed and instantly translated into meaningful sounds.
The benchmark game here is table tennis. Each of the movements performed, the trajectory of the ball, its height and its speed, are associated with harmonic musical elements. The result is a symphony of the play where actors can choose to collaborate to emphasize the value of sounds, or to compete using sound cues to perform.
This performance object is a tool for a better understanding of this phenomenon of reciprocity between gestures and sound elements. It allows its players to understand gestures differently. Their movements now make sounds and these sounds respond logically and harmoniously to their movements. For the viewers, gestures now answer to sounds and sounds seems to engender gestures.
(picture by Pierre Castignola)
