An art exhibition in Lille, France, is immersing visitors in an “endless” audio-visual experience from electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre, thanks to constantly evolving music powered by APG iX8 speakers and a constant organic progression of the visual content.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille (PBA), a public museum dedicated to fine arts, modern art, and antiquities, welcomes thousands of visitors each year to enjoy its collections by Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya, and Delacroix. The sixth edition of its ‘Open Museum Music’ exhibition features EōN, artwork developed by electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre in partnership with digital musical instrument and app creator BLEASS.
The first incarnation of EōN, created by BLEASS under the artistic direction of Jean-Michel Jarre, was an app able to generate endless music and visuals. Dr Alexis André, based at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo, was responsible for EōN’s striking visual content.
For the PBA exhibition, BLEASS’s ‘infinite’ audio engine was scaled up from the size of a smart phone to a wall-mounted 75in Sony 4K Bravia video screen flanked by a pair of APG iX8 speakers, the new compact range dedicated to interior fixed installation. iX8 speakers feature an integral baffle designed to eliminate diffraction and provide a consistent, linear acoustic field, significantly decreasing acoustic feedback even at close range.
“It probably is one of the most exciting creative projects I’ve worked on since Oxygène,” said Jean-Michel Jarre. “I have always wanted to create music that is specific to each listener, capable of constantly evolving in terms of rhythm, tonality, tempo, melody and texture. So here it is. EōN is conceived and composed as a different journey for everyone, with no determined end.”
Vianney Apreleff, BLEASS’s manager, added: “Jean-Michel Jarre’s vision was to present the video screens vertically, to be reminiscent of the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. That gave us the idea to arrange the iX speakers on either side, creating a kind of triptych effect.”
Although the pandemic has limited travel both to and within France – which has, in turn, reduced the number of visitors to the PBA – the exhibition already welcomed thousands of visitors and is scheduled to last until January 10th 2021.
The handheld version of EōN is available on iPhone and iPad via the App Store, with new versions on other operating systems and platforms coming soon.
