Nicole L’Huillier pays homage to Walter Smetak with her CERN’s sonic experiments

Nicole L'Huillier, LA PARACANTORA, 2019, travelling sonic sculpture. Installed at ALMA Observatory, Atacama Desert, Chile

Drawing from her residency at CERN, ESO, and ALMA Observatory, the Chilean artist debuts Escucha para Acelerador de Partículas, Parancatadora y voz

Objetos Musicais, released by Peru’s Buh Records, celebrates Swiss composer and instrument builder Walter Smetak, who pioneered experimental music in Salvador, Brazil. The albumfeatures 13 sound pieces by contemporary artists from South America and Switzerland. It reflects Smetak’s visionary ideas, particularly his Plasticas Sonoras—unconventional instruments that doubled as visually striking sound sculptures.

Walter Smetak with one of this Plasticas Sonoras — Walter Smetak with one of his Plasticas Sonoras. Courtesy Walter Smetak Archive

‘LA PARACANTORA was a way of practicing listening as a means to encounter the multiple realities, temporalities, agencies, and dimensions we inhabit’

In line with Smetak’s spirit of ‘experimental luthiery’, L’Huillier presents Escucha para Acelerador de Partículas, Parancatadora y Voz. This piece resulted from her experimental performances with La PARACANTORA, a travelling sonic sculpture she developed during her Simetría residency at CERN in Geneva, and the ESO astronomy facilities in Chile; Antofagasta, La Silla and the ALMA observatory. Through environmental sensors mapped in real-time into different sounds, La PARACANTORA guides us through a sonic poem in a specific moment in space and time, unveiling the performativity and expressive capacities of non-human agents on their environment.

Nicole L’Huillier with her travelling sonic sculpture LA PARACANTORA, at Paranal Observatory, ESO, Atacama Desert, Chile, 2019

According to L’Huillier, ‘La PARACANTORA is an artifact that helped me explore CERN from different sensitivities and engage with the performative conditions of our reality(s) via its sonic dimension. It became a bridge with the unknown, the invisible, and the cosmic mysteries that both laboratories explore every day. This experiment was a way of practicing listening as a means to encounter the multiple realities, temporalities, agencies, and dimensions we inhabit’

Curated by Luis Alvarado and Chico Dub, Objetos Musicais represents a community of artists working at the intersection of sound art, experimental music, and DIY ethics. The project is part of Incidencias Sonoras, supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Simetría was a residency program developed by Arts at CERN and Corporación Chilena de Video, supported by Pro Helvetia and the Ministry of Culture, Art, and Heritage of Chile.