Canadian Producer France Jobin Transforms, Manipulates, and Recycle's the Sounds of Everyday Life
“The thing that jumped out at me are the subtleties I am able to achieve while processing field recordings.”
Canadian composer and installation artist France Jobin has created ambient music and surround sound concepts for over 20 years and her work has been shown in formal and unconventional spaces; be it on stage for Montreal's Mutek, Berlin’s Transmediale or Museolaboratorio in Citta' Sant'Angelo, and the EMPAC Concert Hall in Troy, New York.
As technology accelerates so does its power to enhance the music making process, and Jobin, exploring these fields, peaks and dimensions, sees her own productions sitting deep within a macrocosm of ambient academia and sound art.
"I use field recordings that I manipulate using only plugins that come with the software...a minimal aesthetic in the larger sense of the word. The manner in which I will be able to transform and manipulate sounds will inform my process of composing for either an album, sound installation or a live performance and exploring new software is always interesting because it sends one down a different path. Dialling through Bitwig’s resonator banks, reverb, blur effects and frequency shifters, to distortion presets and the system’s modulation abilities, the thing that jumped out at me are the subtleties I am able to achieve while processing field recordings."
"I enjoy using the architecture to ‘play’ the space in order to accentuate its properties. Architecture, the materials used in its construction - a space’s size and shape - all effect how deeper listening can be appreciated."
One of France Jobin's recent installation work is for example Inter/sperse: an eight-channel, 11-room, site-specific sound installation for Italy’s Museolaboratorio.
“My audio art is distinguished by its minimalist approach to sound environments at the intersection of analog and digital,” Jobin says. “Although we experience an endless stream of diverse sounds, we are conditioned to tune them out, I transform, manipulate and recycle sounds of everyday life to represent them in a new light.”
Jobin recently completed an artist residency for MESS (Melbourne’s Modular synth archive and workshop), an initiative of the Australian audio-visual artist Robin Fox and sound researcher Byron J Scullin, that is offering artists the possibility to record and produce their music in a fully functioning sound production workshop, holding one of the most unique, eclectic and historically significant collections of electronic instruments in the world.
“I had access to incredible vintage and modular synths, which prompted me to explore how to connect them,” Jobin explains. “Manipulating the modular synths with Bitwig was a great discovery that sent me down a rabbit hole of creativity that will continue in my own studio.”
“Each of us has a unique identity-sensitivity; it is our job to develop and hone our skills in order to communicate as clearly and directly our ‘music personality’,” Jobin says. “It is the artist’s creative personality which will shine through.”
