Acoustic Cameras

Sound annexation project

What is Acoustic Cameras?
Sound and music for live cameras, created by guest artists: composers, poets, sound artists from all countries. Acoustic Cameras was created on January 1, 2016. It is an artistic project in the form of a website (www.acousticcameras.org). To date, more than 100 international artists are participating in this project.

Who is Acoustic Cameras?
A collective of visual, sound and design artists. Its creators and members are Pierre Beloüin, Christophe Demarthe, Didier Hochart, Nicolas Ledoux and Thierry Weyd. They constitute the editorial team.

How does it work?
The invited artist chooses a camera among thousands of live webcams proposed by the editorial team. He/she composes a music and/or a sound piece for this camera. The editorial team aggregates the sound and camera and puts them online.

Which structures carry AC ?
Acoustic Cameras is co-edited by Optical Sound (Pierre Beloüin & P. Nicolas Ledoux) and La manufacture des Cactées (Didier Hochart & Thierry Weyd) on a proposal by Christophe Demarthe. Graphic design : www.abm-studio.com / Development : Didier Hochart.

ACOUSTIC CAMERAS invites composers and sound artists to annex the real-time flow of webcams located in various places around the world.

The flow of webcams is intercepted but not modified. The artist is invited to deliver a sound piece or piece of music related to this flow; This sound piece acting as a modification of reality.

The resulting work is the encounter of a recorded sound piece and the live capture of a fluctuating landscape. Depending on the season, depending on weather, depending on time of day or night, the camera sweeps continuously the filmed location (seaside, city or mountain) and writes in real time the film of the artist's music. Music or sound design, by monopolizing the filmed landscape, soon takes on a narrative, dramatic dimension, according to the principles of film music. At the slight difference that here the film is written simultaneously.

Stay tuned ! Acoustic Cameras expands continually, regularly enriched with new works of artists.

Nico Guerrero

Winding Echoing (Music for two prepared electric guitars)

Norðurárdalur - Borgarbyggð - Island

lat.: 65.46290, long.: -19.26733

About the work

The Icelandic mountains inspired me moving notes through a « bourdon » that seems to tell a story. I didn't want an abstract drone easily linked to a static video.
I used a wood twine to strum slowly and constantly the six strings of the guitar. The sound of the open chord through reverb and filters reminds me of the wind blowing heavily for days across the land. As we can hear notes in the wind, I let my other hand improvise notes hitting the guitar neck. The second guitar enhances the harmonics of the first one with a bell-like sound, a resonant echoing, winding between the frozen and mysterious mountains.

About the artist

Nico Guerrero is a French experimental composer / guitarist based in Paris and Reykjavik. He made an impression with his dark shoegaze Vortex project in the early 90’s. The 1st album (‘Eksaïphnès’ – Les Disques du Soleil et de l’Acier, 2000) laid down already the foundations for the frozen, cosmic and noisy universe that Nico would explore later.

His compositions reach out a certain sonic gigantism with a fairly minimalist instrumentation: a single prepared guitar and obscure electronic alterations, making the strings resonate like a hallucinatory echo of organ clusters. In this very dense space of overtones, almost symphonic, ghost sounds appear.

Nico composed and performed in duet with the New-York composer Rhys Chatham known for his guitar orchestras. He also co-conducted a symphony for the "100 guitars" Chatham ensemble (Le Havre, june 2018). For years he has collaborated with visual and musical artists, Wladd Muta (fr), Aima Lichtblau (it), Nicolas Kunysz (is), Arthur Geffroy (fr) ...

His latest album was recorded Live at the Nordic House Reykjavik in 2018, during the Iceland Airwaves Festival. In may 2020, he started a new musical collaboration with the San Francisco-based label Silent Records and his creator Kim Cascone. Invited in the “Dark Indicator / Guitar & String Drones" Collection (Oct. 23, 2020), a solo album will be released on the US label in spring 2021.

Imbued with esoteric references and devotion to Icelandic volcanic powers, his music is sometimes cold, incantatory, bright or abstract, evoking a deep melancholy and a certain idea of desolation.

Coming soon!

Nico Guerrero

About the work

About the artist