Les Æthers
Claire Williams (FR)
Les Æthers
Installation

Computers and smartphones and all the other incarnations of our modern technologies carry our electromagnetic doubles from one end of the planet to the other. They sometimes wander without limit in the atmosphere: we have all become mediums. To the cosmic waves and gamma rays that saturate the void through which we communicate, human voices are added, personal messages, collective discussions, essential information, anecdotes.
It was in the second half of the 19th century that the invisible began to be seen. Chemists, physicists, engineers, inventors, mediums, theosophists and other men of science collectively plunged into a great bath of substances distinct from matter, and yet no less real. This medium, which some called the “ether” and others “fluid” or “body,” was traversed by forces, by effluvia, waves emanating from animate or inanimate beings: cosmic rays, human thoughts, the vital fluxes of plants, the energy of mediums, the voices of the dead. To these, nowadays, are added satellite and wifi data, radio waves and phone conversations. Each in their own way, chemists, physicists, engineers, inventors, mediums, doctors and theosophist – sometimes together – imagined apparatuses for detecting and harnessing all these forces. In doing so, they appropriated apparatuses that had just been invented or discovered new ones that would sometimes be finalised and produced for other purposes: biometer, dynamometer, stenometer, stereometer, psychoscope, necrophone, psychophone, perpetual motion machines, phonograph, telegraph, telephone – all these apparatuses are composite assemblages of measuring instruments. They make no secret of the fact that they are shaped by the forces they detect just as much as they shape them.
They make the forces tangible by translating their effects into the form of photographic images, traced graphs, movements of objects, strange sounds, etc.

This episode from 19th-century science offers unexplored possibilities for conveying the density of the “void” through which we communicate. Ondoscope reopens it in order to imagine other relations to what we do not see.

Deborah Levy

Sophie Braun, Patricia Lefebvre, Association Jonckheere, Wasquehal amateur radio club, Pierre Lelay, Sébastien Cabour, Cyprien Quairiat, Cindy Coutant, Julien Poidevin, Deborah Levy, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, the teaching staff at Le Fresnoy.

Claire Williams
Claire Williams France
Promotion André S. Labarthe

Claire Williams is an artist based in Brussels. Her main mediums are sound, textile and electronics. Her works explore our relation to the world of the invisible. They construct apparatuses and devices which pick up imperceptible or inaudible date from our electromagnetic spectrum. These interactions are expressed in the play of languages – through sound, textiles, digital media or touch.

Cursus

Master à l'Ecole National Supérieur des Art Visuels de La Cambre (Bruxelles) en Design Textile

    • Université de Lille Lieux de vie étudiante, de travail, d'échanges et de culture, les campus sont le cœur vivant de l'Université. Ils portent l'ensemble des services dédiés à la formation, à l'orientation, à l'insertion professionnelle mais aussi ceux qui s'inscrivent dans le registre de la vie quotidienne (obtention d'un logement, d'une bourse, restauration, santé, prise en compte du handicap...). Enfin ce sont sur ces espaces que s'expriment la culture et la vie associative, si précieuses pour l'expression et la formation citoyenne des étudiants.

Source: http://www.univ-lille.fr/vie-des-campus/
    • Jonckheere -  les amis de l'observatoire de Lille L'association Jonckheere, les amis de l'observatoire de Lille a été fondée en juin 2004.
    • Ososphère L’Ososphère est née à Strasbourg en 1998, des réflexions des créateurs de La Laiterie, salle de musiques actuelles, et de leur envie de proposer une manifestation culturelle qui explore de nouvelles formes artistiques pour activer le rapport des habitants à la ville et au territoire.
    • Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains est né de la volonté du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication d’implanter dans le nord de la France, un établissement supérieur d’enseignement artistique d’un type nouveau, pôle d’excellence d’envergure nationale et internationale, dont les références furent exprimées par quelques formules telles que « un IRCAM des arts plastiques » ou encore « une villa Médicis high-tech ».

Sa pédagogie, principalement fondée sur la production d’œuvres de toute sorte dont le point commun est l’intégration de techniques audiovisuelles professionnelles, en fait un lieu de production, d’expérimentation et de diffusion totalement inédit.

Source: http://www.lefresnoy.net/fr/Le-Fresnoy/presentation