Basile Chassaing is a musician with a background in jazz and improvisation, who studied composition under Jean-Luc Hervé, Roque Rivas (PSPBB), Martin Matalon (CRR 93) and Alessandro Solbiati (CRR de Tours). His work focuses on the connection between music, gesture, space and improvisation and explores various formats: sound and light installations, music using gesture sensors, instrumental and mixed pieces and multidisciplinary projects. In 2019, Chassaing was selected for the Voix Nouvelles Academy (Fondation Royaumont) and in 2020, he won the Gaudeamus award at Senses Working Overtime during Gaudeamus Musiekweek in Utrecht. His music has been performed in France and in Europe (Netherlands, Switzerland, Scotland, Italy) and he has received commissions from the French Ministry of Culture (Aide à l'écriture), Radio France, Gaudeamus Musiekweek (Utrecht), the 2e2m ensemble, the Fondation Royaumont and the Soundtrieb ensemble (Luzern).
Sabina Covarrubias is a composer, multimedia artist and researcher in the field of computer music. Her works explore a wide array of genres: mixed, electroacoustic and visual music. She has also created audiovisual installations, as well as audio-reactive visuals and audio-generative images. Her work in the field of electroacoustic music is characterised by a mastery of spatialisation, sound synthesis and rhythm synthesis techniques and the use of both analogue and modular synthesisers. Her visual music featuring real-time synthesis and image processing based on data extracted from audio analyses has been the subject of comment and analysis in leading periodicals, such as the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press, 2020). In general, her work is recognisable in the way she blends traditional music from Mexico or Senegal with other musical traditions and technologies by using the real-time visualisation of musical elements.
Clara de Asís is a Spanish composer and sound artist who studied film and electroacoustic music. She explores the relationship between acoustics, spatiality, alternative music notation and the phenomenology of listening in works that focus on how sound is perceived and which develop increasingly complex variations without losing their apparent air of simplicity. Her compositions, mainly for small ensembles and as part of collaborations, juxtapose structural precision and vaguer zones. They develop on her interest in research into tone, intonation and the junction between rational and intuitive systems. In parallel to her solo work, she has composed a wide variety of pieces with other musicians and as part of long-term collaborations. She regularly performs in Europe and the USA, presenting her work in the form of concerts and installations. She is also the co-director of independent record label, Discreet Editions.
Simon Girard is a video artist who mainly works as part of the duo Konpyuta, which he cofounded in 2011 with Faustine de Bock. Focusing on live video, the duo performs regularly alongside other artists, such as Meryll Ampe, Richard Francés, HBT, Pointe du Lac and Fatak. In 2014, Girard and de Bock founded Dasein, an audiovisual group that produced two live performances, “Pays sans visage” and “Cygnus x-1”. In 2018, they co-created Quasi Stellar Objects, a series of events based around audiovisual performances (film, analogue, digital) and, exploring the relationship between sound and image, made video clips for bands such as In Aeternam Vale, Wankers United and more recently Chaos E.T. Sexual. Simon Girard is currently working on ATOME, an audiovisual creation for which he has joined forces with musique concrète composer Alexandre Yterce.
Julien Haguenaueralias HBT is a musician and producer of electronic and experimental music and the founder of collective and record label DEMENT3D. He has released several albums and collaborations using the pseudonym HBT (HBTVSK, HBTFM) on various labels, including Dawn Records, Champ Libre, Les Éveillés, Tripalium, Submersive and DEMENT3D. In his music, he creates a strange, hybrid ambience in which noisy, modular synthesisers clash with contemporary piano compositions and mechanical sequences are juxtaposed with spontaneous improvisation. His urgent and often impulsive approach accepts collisions, dissonance and risk-taking on both musical and conceptual levels. A regular performer, he has played concerts in recent years under the pseudonyms HBT and Heartbeat at the Grand Palais (for the closing ceremony of Monumenta 2014), Gaité Lyrique, New Morning, La Station Gare - Des Mines and Le Sucre in Lyon, not forgetting Beijing Sonic (China), Godberd (Montreal) and Ipse (Berlin). He also works on projects combining concerts and performances, which have so far presented in venues such as Le Générateur, Galerie Ygrec, Le Houloc and Meta-Zone-Libre in Marseille.
Guillaume Loizillon is a composer and musician who is drawn to every other media. He works independently of institutions, taking part in numerous new artistic experiences and developments: including electronic music, sound art, improvisation, poetry, installations, cross media productions and net art. He has worked with Bony Bikaye, Merce Cunningham, Jacques Donguy, Esther Ferrer, Fred Frith, Joel Hubaut, Valère Novarina, Costis Triandaphylou, Barney Wilen and Hector Zazou amongst others. A former lecturer at Paris 8 university music faculty and the cofounder of independent record label Trace Label, he currently teaches sound art at Gentilly conservatory.
Federico Rodriguez-Jiménez is a musician, sound artist and educator of Colombian origin, who has been living in France for around ten years. A composer and multi-instrumentalist, his diverse practice crosses several fields, from free improvisation to composing for audiovisual works, in addition to electroacoustic music and sound installations. During his career, he has produced radio programmes for France Culture and done sound design for podcasts by Ecran Sonore. He performs in various musical formations and his compositions have been played in both Latin America and Europe. He is currently holds a creative role and works as an art mediator specialising in sound art at the Lavoir Numérique in Gentilly, where he is in charge of educational content, creations and curating sound art exhibitions.
Sig Valax (whose full name is Sigolène Valax) is a sound artist, who studied electroacoustic composition with Christine Groult at the Pantin Conservatory (DEM). She has composed electroacoustic pieces, created radio podcasts (ARTE Radio) and worked as a sound designer for live performances (Un qui veut Traverser, 2022). Since 2016, she has been creating music for choreographer Anna Gaïotti (Les antécédentes, 2020, A kiss without lips, 2021-22) as part of the Vierge Noir e trio and exploring improvised music with Vierge Noir e, Elek Ember, Seuil Optique, Sauges, Mesce Basse and Lucus Furrina. Sig Valax has trained in various disciplines including hypnosis, energy and shamanic healing, all of which have forged her awareness of the invisible world and opened her eyes to the world of dreams. In Onirochromes, she transposed sound into images using a computer-based process that created textures and colours to match the audio content.
Semiconductor is UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. Over the past twenty five years of collaboration, they have become known for a unique and innovative body of moving image works, sculptures and installations which explore the material nature of our physical world and how we experience it through the lenses of science and technology. Their works bring into tangible experience that which is outside of what is humanly perceivable, confronting the viewer with information which is ordinarily outside of a human scale, both of time and space.
Some of their solo exhibitions include House of Electronic Arts (Basel, Switzerland); City Gallery (Wellington, New Zealand); FACT (Liverpool, England); Axiom Art and Science Gallery (Tokyo, Japan); and the National Center of Contemporary Arts (Santiago, Chile).
Chiyoko Szlavnics is a Canadian composer and visual artist with a Berlin-based practice. She graduated from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music in 1989 and studied privately with the pioneering composer James Tenney from 1993–1997. She went to Germany in 1997 for a year-long Fellowship Grant at Akademie Schloss Solitude and moved to Berlin in 1998.
Chiyoko Szlavnics is primarily known for her musical compositions. She has received many commissions for new works from soloists, ensembles, and festivals specialising in contemporary music. Her compositions have been performed in venues small and large and have often been broadcast on German radio and featured in publications on contemporary music practices. She has also composed several purely electronic works for installation in resonant spaces. Chiyoko Szlavnics's visual artworks have appeared in numerous curated exhibitions on sound-associated visual art in Toronto, London, Barcelona, and Berlin, amongst other cities.
