Constraints of the Place – The Kindergarten

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“This work by Thomas Tilly aims to depict a sonic environment, the acoustic features of a space – in this instance, a derelict kindergarten located on the campus of the Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis and alongside the Route Nationale 1, which at this point follows the Avenue Lenine. The piece is based on materials recorded in situ and sine waves corresponding to the most resonant frequencies (<1s) measured on site. The sounds generated by the on-site analysis and recording are then played randomly in the actual space of the kindergarten; the sound transmission matrix virtually divides the space into four distinct areas, matching the four areas of acoustic analysis carried out on site. The purpose of the microphone is less to provide a window onto the outside world than to act as an instrument for measuring a resonant space, a wasteland right inside the establishment, a place that was once emblematic of the university's campus policies but is now in a state of neglect, a relic of a bygone era now under scrutiny as a sound expanse.

So what is Thomas Tilly actually measuring here? Possibly what the artist Max Neuhaus calls the ‘character of a place'.
Neuhaus often defines it indirectly, using the example of orality: this character would be, when we listen to someone speak, all that is part of the meaning beyond the words themselves, beyond their grammar: the tone used, the accent, the articulation of syllables, in short all that informs us about what is being said in the very way the words are folded and unfolded. According to Neuhaus, this type of character is found in places linked to other modalities; it relates to the acoustics, partly determined by the geography, architecture and urban planning policies that have shaped the territory, but also its past and present social, cultural and economic activities.

With the invention of sound reproduction in the second half of the 19th century, the secular fantasy of being able to listen to the dead and thereby establish contact with them was reignited. Thomas Tilly's recordings probably tell us nothing about the childhood activities that once enlivened this site, but they do capture the character of the place, the very acoustics of a space haunted by its own resonant frequencies.”

Matthieu Saladin. (Artist with a PhD in aesthetics, specialising in experimental music, lecturer in visual arts at the Paris 8 University)