French Morning, a French online news magazine based in New York City, has featured Stephan Crasneanscki in a May 18 article about the inspiration behind his creation of Soundwalk and why Soundwalk is different from any other audio guide series. The magazine describes Soundwalk’s stages of incubation this way: “Like any great invention, this one began with a madness among friends. Nearly twenty years ago, Stephan Crasneanscki arrived in New York from France to study at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. His French friends regularly visited him in his “dilapidated loft” in the Lower East Side, and, ever the good host, he provided neighborhood guides for them.” Upon deciding to turn these guides into audio walks, consisting of a tape of directions, practical information, and more, the magazine quotes Crasneanscki in remembering, “I had [the listeners] play a role, perform a scavenger hunt or enter friends’ houses, climb up to roofs, take off layers of clothing or buy things.”

Now, with a cache of successes marked by names like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Philippe Starck, and the Louvre, French Morning cites Crasneanscki in continuing to insist upon the importance of the human element at the heart of Soundwalk tours, both existing and in development: “I am not interested in the history of the city in general because there are a million guides for that. What we’re searching for in our Soundwalks is something deeply felt, the thrills of joy and of fear.”

Behind each guide, continues French Morning, are “months and months of editing, timing, assembly and testing.” But, as the city changes, they inquire, in what ways does Soundwalk attempt or not attempt to change along with it?  In response, Crasneanscki states, “Like a flower wilts, places close. I’m not looking to reinvigorate these places; the idea is that when a walk dies, it dies. Happily, certain things will never fade, like the Jewish element of Williamsburg. The force of the Hasidic Jews – it is endurance!”

The article closes in mentioning Soundwalk’s and Ulysses’ Syndrome’s presence at the Universal Shanghai Expo 2010, which we’re also very excited about.

Thanks to French Morning for the coverage!

Download the Lower East Side Soundwalk (mp3)

Download the Williamsburg Hasidic Soundwalks (mp3 or iPhone app)

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Alternatives, a French radio program focused on independent, modern art, presented by Laurence Pierre and broadcast by France Inter, caught up with Philippe Starck at MAC Créteil Thursday, March 18 the night before his debut on stage for LE SON DE NOUS. The interview was broadcast Saturday, March 20th at 8 pm during Alternatives’ live show from MAC Créteil, when Soundwalk’s Stephan Crasneanscki and Label Dalbin’s Eric Dalbin were also interviewed.

Click the audio player to listen to the interview with France Inter’s Alternatives (French only).

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English recap here!

“It is not a spectacle, nor a performance – it’s an adventure… I am not a singer or a composer; I don’t work with sound, so I am completely outside my professional field and, frankly, outside my comfort zone… [one will see] that I’ve put myself out in the open, to a certain extent…with my friends from Soundwalk, who are obviously the best in the world, we tried to organize everything, but it’s a fact that we never know where it will take us. We know why we’re doing it, what the goal is, but what it will really look like, how it is going to feel…will the end result achieve a meaning for the members of the audience…that we do not know.”

So begins the interview, in which Philippe Starck discusses LE SON DU NOUS and his desire to put himself out of his comfort zone to explore the world of sound. He goes on to say that he has always thought of himself as intuitive, but not intelligent, and that in order to compensate for this lack, he tries always to follow the example of the great literary masters and teachers in seeking to understand the world around him and the laws that control it. He describes his interest in the worlds of water and air, and in exploring their benefits – “So,” he says, “we will cause the air to vibrate” in order to produce a sound, “creating a physical sensation of shock, of sound, of compressed air in your chest. I remember several occasions when this has actually taken my breath away.”

“To create, I listen to sound, paying very close attention. The quality of my projects is directly related to the quality of sound and music that I listen to. If I listen to bad music, or bad sounds, I’ll produce a bad project. I use it as a tool, for me it is a vital element.”

Starck also believes it is vital, “to find the love of your life: a man, a woman, a dog, whatever you want. You have to find your place: a zone of comfort, a place you can express yourself. We put in a lot of effort as well, into finding our color, people dress in purple or orange; it’s evident that we always look for these places. Where sound is concerned, there is an extraordinary paradox. All day, we are on the internet, watching television, and listening to the radio, hearing sound, but we don’t try to understand our relationship with it. Why we are always listening to sound? I think I have an answer: we listen to it all day because we are looking for a place. A place where we feel more assured; we are trying to find the sounds closest to us, the sound that is us, the sound of me.”

“I have spent my life doing this. In my search for these sounds I have found three. The first was 30 years ago in Panaji, India: A vagabond was wandering from shop to shop playing a little flute with a guttural sound: I was paralyzed by it and I new right away that the sound was a part of me. It’s inexplicable. After, I encountered my second sound in a very sophisticated product: the infrasound of Laurie Anderson’s electronic violin. It is a vibration that you feel in your heart. The third sound I heard on a Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn, in a Williamsburg café. There was a young girl there, she was extraordinarily ugly, and she was terrifying. And then she let out a scream. It was a scream of such beauty, an astonishing scream. I realized that all her ugliness was the means by which she could create such an incredible sound. I was dumbstruck, there were tears in my eyes, I couldn’t help it, I had found my ultimate sound.”

Starck then discusses the concept of LE SON DU NOUS, and the interactive perspective of the primal scream, which the audience was asked to make in culmination of the show. “There are three levels to the performance: I am the presenter, then there is the fabrication of virtual sound made by the artists that have come together from many parts of the world who record and transform sound. Last, we have material sound made by true sound engineers who can capture the falling of snow and the rustling of paper. We will embark on a journey linked to the history of humanity, through sound.”

“The end of the show is what I find fascinating. We will ask the spectators to become actors, and to call upon their sound. We will do the one thing we can all do together: we will scream. We will scream to find a precise sound, at 10:44 pm at MAC Créteil, creating a sound and a moving, physical experience. I hope it will bring people to the same state I was in when I found my ultimate sound in the café in Williamsburg. Some people will leave happier, some will leave less so, but what I hope is for them to leave in a different state. The sound, we will listen to again and then send, encapsulated, into space as something akin to a recording of the primal scream, the sound made when the world was created.”

When asked about his desire to work with sound Starck replies, “Sound has an advantage over other mediums: it’s immaterial. I live in Paris, high up, across from an enormous flag. I’m fascinated by it and its convolutions. What’s too bad is that we look only at the flag itself and forget that the convolutions are ripples, like fluid, like sound. I have a passion for that which is immaterial, though I’ve fallen into working primarily with material goods, and I that is something I am trying to change in my life.”

Alternatives also spoke with Soundwalk founder Stephan Crasneanscki who recounted the steps leading to this collaboration with Starck. 2004’s Nuit Blanche event marked Soundwalk’s first cooperation with the designer, where Crasneanscki says he experienced Starck’s “enthusiasm and incredible generosity, as well as his intense passion for sound and love for music.” Next, came the creation of 24 Hours: the Starck Mix, a gift for the designer consisting of a mix of music and ambient sound, “constructed as a 24 hour sound-story about Philippe Starck; his whole life in one day.”

The soundtrack for the current project draws from Soundwalk’s audio archives over ten years in the making, for which Crasneanscki and the Soundwalk collective have traveled all over the world. “The idea is to recollect all these sounds and to create an adventure, a story, with sound as the principal actor. It is a journey also, through powerful moments in sound.”

Eric Dalbin, head of the contemporary-creation label, Dalbin, producer of LE SON DU NOUS also spoke of the projects leading up to the collaboration, as well as the novelty of the idea. “Neither Philippe Starck nor Soundwalk had ever ventured into the territory of live performance. It was a real challenge, requiring a lot of reflection. It was a huge pleasure to work with Philippe; he is always brimming with enthusiasm, joy, and has a great sense of humor. His relationship with sound is very real and profound.” Dalbin goes on to say that, “this was a very particular type of performance, because the sound is the star.”

Stephan Crasneanscki and Eric Dalbin also spoke about their future projects, including “Ulysses Voyage“, hertz frequency recordings taken while on the Mediterranean Sea following the voyage of Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey to be presented at the 2010 Universal Exposition in Shanghai, and Collectorserie, an application enabling the purchase and download of video artwork through one’s iphone, which Dalbin refers to as the “democratization of art.”

Photo credit: Yves Malenfer

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