The word utopia comes from greek word topos, that means place, space. Therefore, an utopia is an imaginary space. The notion of space is central in the medium of sound. It’s maybe explained by the psychoacoustic rôle of the faculty hearing, which is to access informations about the surrounding space. John Cage already brought this idea within his Imaginary Landscapes, at the very early beginning of the electroacoustic medium. Terrains vagues tries so to create three utopias that can be seen as soundscapes: 1- Plage blanche (white beach), 2- Chambre noire (Black room), 3- Zone grise (Grey zone). White + black = grey. It is based on the dialectic model. The first and the third spaces are exterior lands, and the second propose an interiority (EXT-INT-EXT). The piece wants to be a travel through those three mental and imaginary spaces and put in opposition water and liquid sounds with electronic sounds, as a metaphor of the ‘’liquid society’’, which is a sociological concept explaining our decades. On the other hand, water is the symbol of life origin, so the contrast between those water sounds and the electronics ones recall the hypertechnological era of humanity. The glaciers melting and the waterfloods to come remember us of the destruction power of water upon electronic devices. Paradoxically, our electricity in Quebec is made from water streams (hydro-electricity).

Source: 2017