Lumières audibles

"Lumières Audibles" : extraits de presse :

"The most exciting work today comes from the french maker Jacques Dudon, whose Photosonic Disk is a marvel of engineering and art : complex, mathematically derived patterns of opaque ink computer-printed on transparent disks give rise to music of extraordinary richness and subtlety."
Bart Hopkin : Experimental Musical Instruments

"... he wrings an impressive variety of sounds from his instrument : drones, chants, swept electronic filters, clarinets, and restless breathy clouds of partials seem to emerge from his disks. But most interesting here is the blurring and unification of timbre and tuning. Theorists like Matthews, Pierce, Carlos, and Sethares have explored ways to achieve this unity, but Dudon has built it into his instrument.
Carter Scholz : 1/1 the Journal of the just intonation network

"Lumières Audibles" is remarkable, both for the quality of the timbres, extremely evanescent and organic-sounding, and the artistry of the compositions."
Brian Mc Laren : Tuning

"... a music that takes both dissonance and melody into something totally otherworldy. Even if you forget how it's created and judge it for what it is, it's still intriguing in itself !"
Alan Freeman : Audion

"What is amazing is the degree of control he holds over the sounds produced through this process ..."
René van Peer : Experimental Musical Instruments

"I am very impressed by the beauty and versatility of the photosonic discs ..."
Robert Rich, just-intonation composer

"Ce disque manifeste la présence musicale de cette façon nouvelle de contrôler le son que Jacques Dudon a développé - Et cette musique est envoûtante" ...
Jean-Claude Risset, computer music composer

Les ondes fractales (extrait du livret du CD) :
" J’ai découvert ces ondes très particulières dès mes premières années d’expérimentation des disques photosoniques.Leurs sonorités, à la fois complexes et transparentes, sont parmi les plus étranges, rappelant celles de timbres inharmoniques ou de souffles. Leur audition s’accompagne souvent d’effets psychiques très puissants, l’oreille y reconnaissant des matières bien précises, paradoxalement sans pouvoir leur attribuer de hauteurs fondamentales déterminées. Cela vient du fait que graphiquement, et par analogie avec les images fractales, ces ondes sont générées par des lois de développement géométriques, mettant en œuvre les même principes organisateurs quelque soit l’échelle à laquelle elles sont observées.La synthèse, sur un disque, d’un bruit blanc, pose un problème mathématique extrêmement intéressant, ne pouvant être résolu par des formes jetées au hasard, ni des ondes de paramètres aléatoires, qui ne sauraient produire que des bourdonnements, alors qu’un bruit blanc est un mélange indifférencié de toutes fréquences. Les ondes fractales sont à ce jour ce que j’ai trouvé de plus approchant pour leur imitation."

Fractal waveforms (excerpt of the "Lumières audibles" booklet) :
" I discovered these very particular waveforms from the beginning of my disk experimentations. Their sonorities, both complex and transparent, are among the oddest, reminding those of inharmonic tones or hisses. Their audition is often accompanied by very powerful psychic effects, the ear recognizing precise textures, paradoxically without being able to give them any determinated fundamental pitches. This comes from the fact that graphically, and by analogy with the fractal images, these waves are generated by laws of geometrical developpment, putting in action the same organizing principles whatever the scale they are being observed at. The synthesis, on a disk, of a white noise, sets a very interesting mathematical problem, which can't be resolved by shapes thrown in a hazardous way, neither by other aleatory parameters, which would only produce a buzz, while a white noise is the undifferenciated mixture of all frequencies. Fractal waveforms are up to this date what I found the most successful for a white noise imitation.
In this CD are explored three of these fractal waveforms, with their related intonations : the "Clar" fractal waveform, and its first developpments, in "Hexagrammes" (track 8) ; the "Phi" fractal waveform, starting point of "Fleurs de lumière" (tracks 1-2-3) ; and the "Mohajira" fractal waveform, at the basis of "Sumer" (tracks 4-5-6-7)."

Pour consulter d'autres articles, retournez au sommaire de l'onglet Synthèse photosonique

Extraits sonores (sound excerpts)

Three 64Kb/s / 22khz quality .mp3 excerpts from the "Lumières audibles" just intonation CD by Jacques Dudon.
(Editions Mondes harmoniques, 1996)

Fleurs de lumière /Tournesols (49"), 1995 (fractal Phi waveform and Surakarta slendro)

Sumer / Je me souviens d'une source (41"), 1992 (polyphony on Mohajira scale)

Hexagrammes (live concert in Aix-en-Provence, 58"), 1989 (played on one single disk with optical filter)

.mp3 musical excerpt of the Phi fractal waveform (Fleurs de Lumière)

.mp3 musical excerpt of Sumer (semi-diatonic Mohajira)

.mp3 musical excerpt of the Clar fractal waveform (Hexagrammes)

to order : AEH - Les Camails 83340 LE THORONET - France

Pour consulter d'autres articles, retournez au sommaire de l'onglet Synthèse photosonique