In November 2023, I was invited by the Musée Mathurin Méheut to create a soundtrack for some of the museum’s paintings. At the end of the torchlight tour, the group of visitors were invited to take part in a sound effects workshop to create sound for the monumental work entitled ‘The Sea’.

Before starting to produce sound, we analysed the sound content of the painting. ‘La Mer’ depicts a large scene of work on the foreshore, with people busy getting boats out of the water, repairing nets, finishing a catch, and so on. You can also see seaside wildlife likely to produce sounds and, of course, the sea. Analysing the sound of a scene we observe in a painting also means imagining the sound of what is not visible in the painting, such as certain human sounds or sounds produced by animals, the sound of the wind, etc. We also talked about the period in which the scene before us was set and its sound environment, imagining what could be heard and also what was not heard at the time.

After this time of analysis, I presented the objects that I had selected and that were on the table. There was wood, minerals, small percussion instruments, rope, a few everyday objects and so on. There were also recording studio microphones, as well as two hydrophones that we used as solid state sound sensors. Then I invited everyone to come and make a sound with the object of their choice.

Creating a sound means first of all producing it and capturing it by positioning the microphone in a particular way in relation to the object, then recording this sound in one of the sixteen loopers that I had prepared in Logelloop. Once each sound had been produced, we modified its pitch, duration and speed to obtain the sound that corresponded to the original intention and better associated it with one of the components of the painting…

Once we had created this sound palette, several pairs mixed them to create the sound for the painting while the rest of the group listened and observed the painting.

It was an amazing evening for each group, who got to experience sound effects, sound creation and mixing in less than two hours!