To Jean-François Denis and Claude Schryer

“As soon as we become immobile, we are elsewhere: we dream in a vast world. Immensity is the movement of immobile man, immensity is one of the dynamicaspects of peaceful daydreaming.”
Bachelard, The Poetics of space

Space.
Open, intimate, confused spaces. Broken spaces, whirling,
Indecisive edges of the space.
Space-refuge, enclosed, maternal, space of reminiscence and associations.
Tumult or murmur in the space of a thousand reflections:
Escape.
The flight engenders a vertigo of multiple elsewheres.
Here… There…

Attempted encounter of heterogeneous elements related by two criteria: one is sonic and denotative (the place of sound in space), the other symbolic and connotative (reffering to the theme of wandering), both alluding to movment. These criteria determine the form and are its cement. The multiplicity of materials embody the ideas of “space” and “mobility”. This work integrates into its structure active elements of spacialization which have a semantic value.

F.D.

This piece was realized at the composer’s studio in Montréal in 1989 and was premiered on November 11th, 1989 during the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) festival in Banff (Alberta, Canada). It was commissioned by Claude Schryer for the Banff Centre for the Arts and realised with the assistance of the Canada Council.

Espace/Escape was awarded a mention at the “Prix Ars Electronica 1993”, at the “Stockholm Electronic Arts Award 1993” and was selected by the 1991 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Montréal.

Compact disc “Mouvances-Métaphores” produced by empreintes DIGITALes (IMED-9107/08-CD).