An Interview with Peter Sinclair
About Peter Sinclair: Peter Sinclair (PhD, HDR) is a sound artist and professor of sound art practice at Aix-en Provence Art academy (ESAAIX). He is internationally renowned for his sound installations as well as for his work on collaborative and participative environments. His artistic experimentations use networked games, mobile media, data sonification and live audio streaming. He is codirector of Locus Sonus Vitae a research group supported by the French Ministry for Culture and ESAAIX. On 18th October 2023, Peter Sinclair gave a seminar as part of the Sensing the Forest Seminar Series.
«Art and research remain a tricky subject in the French university system (even more so than in the UK), and it has sometimes been difficult, working with hard science groups, to establish an equal dialogue and attribute value to the artistic research.»
What are you working on at the moment?
Various things related to sound capture and transmission. In relation to the Sensing the Forest seminar, the main project of interest is Locus Sonus Vitae, open microphone project, that has been streaming live soundscapes from around the globe for the past 18 years or so, and its extension through the European project Acoustic Commons.
What is your background?
I grew up on the Suffolk coast of England (Walberswick). After leaving high school I studied for five years at the l’Ecole des Beaux Arts (Art Academy) of Nîmes in the south of France. I then followed a mixed career exhibiting sound installations and performing experimental sound works. I became a member of the teaching faculty of ESAAIX (Ecole Superieur d’Art d’Aix-En-Provence) in 1995 where I founded a sound department. In 2005 I subsequently co-founded Locus Sonus with the artist and composer Jerome Joy (ENSAN La villa Arson in Nice) with support from the French ministry for culture. I went on to obtain my PhD from CRISAP, LCC, UAL (University of the Arts London). Since then, I have been developing our research with Locus Sonus in interdisciplinary collaborations between ESAAIX, different Laboratories attached to Aix Marseille University, and other artistic and research organizations. Locus Sonus has now been extended to include multiple research themes and has been renamed Locus Sonus Vitae.
How did you start/become interested in sound art and producing sound installations?
At a very early age, as soon as I discovered how to hack loudspeakers at the age of 10 or 11. Growing up in the 70’s the musicians I was interested in had been through art school (e.g. Brian Eno, David Bowie, … ). Coming from an artistic background it seemed a natural choice to enroll, where I immediately engaged in sound-based performance and developed a practice of building musical machines from found objects – After college, I continued to experiment with more sophisticated machinery and when computers became affordable enough to mess with started to spend a lot of time programming (with the early versions of Max).
How is your artistic/scientific work generally perceived? Have you encountered any unexpected impact or reaction from your work?
Artistically speaking I have always navigated between different milieux, including contemporary art, performance, experimental music, and net art, which tends to make me a bit of a maverick in all these fields.
Art and research remain a tricky subject in the French university system (even more so than in the UK), and it has sometimes been difficult, working with hard science groups, to establish an equal dialogue and attribute value to the artistic research.
«The evolution of listening practices is the main “result” of our research, this implemented by experimentation conducted by artists and musicians, but we also have close ties with an anthropological research group with whom we are investigating ways of perceiving the terrain through listening methods.»
What is the meaning of community in your work?
Open Microphone Project, Locus Stream, is entirely founded on the existence of a community who set up, maintain, and exploit the audio streams in different ways. Acoustic Commons, as its name suggests takes this shared aspect of the project as its main objective. I am very interested in the Deleuzien Idea of dispositif (following Foucault) which implies that all systems have multiple threads and objectives and that these are continuously evolving and interacting. Concretely, this means that people participate in Locustream in different ways and for different reasons but the common whole, benefits them all in some way.
What are the artistic, technological, or scientific research methods that inform your work? To what extent (and how) is audio/sound/music relevant to your work?
All the work I am involved in is sound based, and for us technology and development play a large part in our activity since we provide the technical solutions for would be participants, increasingly extended by the expertise and experience of several of the more permanent members of the community. The evolution of listening practices is the main “result” of our research, this implemented by experimentation conducted by artists and musicians, but we also have close ties with an anthropological research group with whom we are investigating ways of perceiving the terrain through listening methods, see La recherche par l’écoute (research through listening). We are also becoming increasingly involved with bio-acousticians.
«I think that carefully listening to an environment is a way of increasing awareness (probably more so than looking at it) – whether that is remote listening or some other form such as deep listening.»
To what extent do you see your work, and more extensively, the use of artistic methods, contributing to raising awareness of global crises such as climate change?
Generally speaking, and without being evangelical, I think that carefully listening to an environment is a way of increasing awareness (probably more so than looking at it) – whether that is remote listening or some other form such as deep listening. Most contemporary streaming services, on the contrary, have a tendency to immerse you in your own personal world of carefully selected media. Another ecological aspect of Locustream and Acoustic Commons, is that we are increasingly collaborating with nature reserves and other protected areas where our microphones can allow researchers and the public to access otherwise unapproachable sites.
«Part of the artist’s role is, in my opinion, to mistreat, test or *detourner* technologies that are developed for purely commercial ends.»
How is technology impacting your work? Do you see technology shaping your creative process or the other way around?
I see it as a reiterative process. I also believe that it is important to keep some critical distance and think through what technological evolutions imply. Part of the artist’s role is, in my opinion, to mistreat, test or detourner technologies that are developed for purely commercial ends.
How do you see creative AI impacting your practice/work? Is this a topic that interests you or worries you?
We, (Dr Hugo Scurto) have recently been experimenting with the using the open microphones to develop deep learning models that can generate a “fictitious” stream. This evokes several aesthetic questions that we feel are worthy of reflection. I don’t think that creative AI represents a threat to art, since artists will always find a way to mess with it. I do however worry about the more general societal changes that AI is bringing with it.
Any final thoughts or comments?
More information about Locus Sonus Vitae here:
https://locusonus.org
More information about Acoustic Commons here:
https://acousticommons.net