On tour

The Kaleidophones 

Collection of giant listening sculptures

Each piece of this collection, both a giant sculpture and a device of acoustic exploration, is an original work designed together by the composer Michel Risse and a stage-designing artist, in accordance with specific acoustic requirements. Beyond the visual attraction and curiosity aroused by these astonishing “big ears”, anyone yielding to the temptation of wearing the headphones will discover a world full of surprises; while scanning a hitherto banal world of sounds, each movement of the cornets reveals a thousand new details, just like an acoustic kaleidoscope: a kaleidophone.

Freely inspired by the fantastic acoustic locators designed between the two World Wars to track the enemy aircrafts concealed by clouds or darkness, these sound sculptures significantly increase our stereophonic perception and make it more selective. The soundscape can thus be scanned, cut up, framed by the listener, who will become aware of unexpected, poetical, inexplicable details.

Set up in the public space, the Kaleidophones call to mind scientific observation instruments, sound binoculars for close-up listening, bizarre flowers in the shape of shells, old phonograph receivers, cornucopias, satellite dishes, all of which the visitor can freely direct by hand. Pointed at the soundscape, they invite to a different listening of the city, of nature, and of the whole world in-between.

“A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it”
Marcel Duchamp

Nowadays more than ever, we need to meet other people in a public space, to gather round something which, far beyond our different faiths, makes us spontaneously and unexpectedly feel innocent, close to other people, and at the same time true to ourselves, enjoying our being there, learning new games to be played together.

The kaléidophones are basically giant artworks, set up in the city and symbolizing our active listening of its sounds. Together they build up an “installation”, in the modern sense of contemporary art: an ensemble, a world of their own in which, as we are not in a museum, any passer-by becomes a ”looker” allowed to wander, experience, live, listen freely to the sculptures. Better still, by using them he can listen to the world, and be touched by the sounds. For sounds do touch us – literally.