Festival Archipel 2018, Genève - Souliers mécaniques

Arno Fabre: Les Souliers

Mechanical shoes

Archipel has always been mindful of ways to rethink musical representation. How could a traditional concert suit an art form that continually reinvents its forms and now its tools? The 2018 edition will offer many escapes from the concert halls. Arno Fabre's plastic and sound displays cast a humorous look at human biomechanics. Presented throughout the whole duration of the festival at the Museum of Art and History are creations by Tinguely and Max-MSP (famous computer-assisted composition software): six

talking robots on wheels mingle with us in the Salle Tinguely. Undeniably human, they are talkative and versatile, murmur in our ears, then leave. In the English painters' room, an orchestra of thirty articulated legs wearing shoes plays a digital score of stamping, soles rubbing on the ground, heels clacking and kicks into the sky; the physiological mimicry showcases a choreography of sound. These legs are what make us human and what make the machine a new biped.