Biography(ies)

Montreal sound artist Chantal Dumas has been exploring the medium of sound for over 25 years. Her work takes the form of narration and soundscapes, compositions, listening tours and installations.

The years have brought to light a thematic recurrence (space, time, territory, nature, elsewhere) underlining an environmental awareness that is combined with a marked interest in listening. Cartography thus naturally intervenes in this context as a structuring element of some of his proposals.

Dumas has resided at the Studio du Québec in New York (CALQ-2011) and the Studio des Récollets in Paris (CALQ-2016). She has received the Opus Prize – Concert in electroacoustic music (2009 Qc) and the Bohemia (Czech Republic) and Phonurgia Nova (Fr) prizes in radio. Her work has been widely broadcast on European public radios and foreign festivals. In recent years, she has broadened her palette by collaborating on various projects as a sound designer. Her recent productions include a commission from DeutschlandFunk Kultur, Oscillations planétaires which evokes the geological world. The album was a finalist for the Prix Opus 2019-20: Album of the Year. She regularly collaborates with authors to name a few Simon Dumas and Nicole Brassard for the multidisciplinary show Le désert mauve, a free adaptation of Nicole Brossard’s novel, Rhizome production, Amélie Prévost, Sylvain Campeau, Chantal Neveu and Fortner Anderson are among them. There is also Roxham, a project on migration by photographer Michel Huneault, produced by the NFB Interactive Web.

CHANTAL DUMAS – SOUND CREATION RESIDENCY

25.10 — 19.11 / 2021

86400 Seconds Time Zones by Chantal Dumas for the virtual sound immersion platform

86400 Seconds Time Zones is a participatory sound work that deals with the flow of time perceived through the human voice. Composed from the voices of 138 people counting the 86400 seconds of a day in 32 languages and dialects, the piece unfolds at the rhythm of the second. The work is the result of a challenging and singular performance by an ensemble of protagonists, aged between 6 and 78, who verbally beat time for each interval of 100 digits.

First presented in our sound window during the 2013 edition of the Espace [IM] Media Triennial, the work is reworked here to be broadcast in a virtual immersive sound space. Through the combination of sound and visuals, all of the material in the work experiences a new iteration. In this way, the circulation through the time zones projected on the earth in revolution, puts in perspective a temporal cut in which the human evolves daily. And, above all, it highlights the richness of languages, their color and rhythm, as well as the unique personality of each counter.

With the participation of Guillaume Lévesque