Cocoon
Behind the moniker Cocoon hides Christophe Demarthe, lead singer of Clair Obscur, one of the French leading groups of the post-punk scene of the 80s, and today co-founder of the Acoustic Cameras project. Cocoon is a global project mixing indifferently electronic music, video, photo, text, performance. One of its red threads could be «displacement». Displacement of an individual by another, in the private sphere as in the public sphere, in a desired way as in a constrained way. Another red thread would be the extension of Clair Obscur’s attempt to move the frames of representation and reception. Since its creation in 2004, Cocoon has performed in numerous festivals: Le Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou, Villette Numérique, L’Ososphère, Interstice, Emo-Son, Qwartz Awards, Nuit Blanche… He has collaborated with visual artists Pierre Beloüin, Ludovic Chemarin©, P. Nicolas Ledoux, Ultralab, choreographers and theatre directors Anne Juren, Annie Dorsen, Agata Maszkiewicz, Superamas.
Clair Obscur
Among all groups which animated the French Cold Wave and Industrial scene of the 80s, Clair Obscur is certainly one of those which radiated furthest outside the boundaries of France. Several of their records have been published by British labels like All the Madmen (the live The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1986) or Cathexis Recordings (the 12″ single Smurf in the Gulag, the same year), and one of their act of glory is to be part of the compilation From Torture To Conscience of the mythical label N.E.R. alongside with Current 93, In The Nursery or Death In June (1984). From Killing Joke to The Nits, from Le Cirque d’Hiver de Paris (1982) to the Wiener Festwochen (1991), the bands with which they played, and the venues and places that they performed are a fantastic testimony to the richness of this group which is so difficult to classify. Founded in Creil in 1981 by Thierry Damerval (bass guitar), Christophe (vocals) et Nicolas Demarthe (guitar), Clair Obscur drew immediately attention with a home made audio tape (re-released on the album Play), a 7″ single magnificently designed (Santa Maria) and several 12″ singles. From the most tribal cold wave to chamber music, from industrial music to dance music (unless these two are synonymous), their musical approach is eminently atmospheric and embraces a surprising variety of styles, giving birth to iconoclastic scenic transcriptions. By recreating a domestic place on stage or by organizing a fake TV game, Clair Obscur explore universes close to theatre or performance, which can be found in In Out, published in 1988 on V.I.S.A. with the help of France Culture. After the releases of the albums Sans titre, 1992, Rock (1994) and Nulle Aide… (recorded under the name CO2, for « Clair Obscur 2nd Generation », in 1999), the end of the 90s saw the group hibernate. Christophe Demarthe mainly worked on his project Cocoon, an ambitious multimedia work released on Optical Sound. Since March 2004, Clair Obscur has been reactivated by Nicolas and Christophe Demarthe, and their albums Play and In Out (…) re-released by the label Infrastition. / David Sanson / excerpt from the compilation Echo Location, Optical Sound, 2005.
Commissioned Music
Christophe Demarthe is a composer and sound designer based in Paris. For many years he has been working at the border of sound and visual arts, creating music and sound architectures for theatre, dance, visual arts, film, radio, television, fashion. In his commissioned work Christophe Demarthe proceeds in small steps, by subtle intuitions, through an incessant game of back and forth between the project under construction and his sound work. Since 2010 he has been producing soundtracks for dance productions in France and abroad (Superamas, Anne Juren, Annie Dorsen, Agata Maszkiewicz). He started his first artistic collaborations in the 90s with the radio director Jean Couturier (France Culture) and the theatre director Bruno Lajara (501 Blues). In the 2000s, while continuing his work for radio and theatre, he started composing for TV films. Since 2007 he has regularly cooperated with visual artists Pierre Beloüin, Ludovic Chemarin(c), P. Nicolas Ledoux, Ultralab for sound, interactive and video installations. Christophe Demarthe started his musical career as co-founder and lead singer of Clair Obscur, one of the first groups in the 80s which made connections between music, visual arts, dance and theatre. In 2004 he created Cocoon, a global project mixing indifferently electronic music, video, text and performance. Today he is still diversifying his activities with the launching of Acoustic Cameras, an online collection inviting sound artists to compose pieces for live webcams located throughout the planet.
Acoustic Cameras
Acoustic Cameras invites composers and sound artists to annex the real-time flow of webcams located in various places around the world. The flow of webcams is intercepted but not modified. The artist is invited to deliver a sound piece or piece of music related to this flow; This sound piece acting as a modification of reality. The resulting work is the encounter of a recorded sound piece and the live capture of a fluctuating landscape. Depending on the season, depending on weather, depending on time of day or night, the camera sweeps continuously the filmed location (seaside, city or mountain) and writes in real time the film of the artist's music. Music or sound design, by monopolizing the filmed landscape, soon takes on a narrative, dramatic dimension, according to the principles of film music. At the slight difference that here the film is written simultaneously. Stay tuned ! Acoustic Cameras expands continually, regularly enriched with new works of artists. A proposal by Christophe Demarthe, co-edited by Optical Sound (Pierre Beloüin & P. Nicolas Ledoux) and la manufacture des Cactées (Didier Hochart & Thierry Weyd). Graphic design ABM Studio. Development Didier Hochart.