Yes, it’s really cool, it’s the nearest park from my home, when you are living next to Avenue Louise, it’s good to have a place like this to chill. The trees are really beautiful. They are big. They look old.

How are you?

Yeah, you took the train, just for this?

Ah, cool.

You are from Antwerp?

Ah, born there?

Ok, cool.

Yes, to record!

O shit. I hope I won’t say n’ importe quoi.

Yeah, but no, I will switch of that record mindset, don’t worry.

Good, good. I went to France this weekend to do my first concert, since, ehm, I don’t know, one year? So it was pretty intense and really cool.

In Notre-Dames-des-Landes. There is ZAD, I don’t know if you ever heard of it?

It’s a group of people living in a territory near to Nantes. Since many years, they are occupying a place where there was a project to build an airport. They fought against that project. They are really passionate. It’s a beautiful place, it’s in the middle of nature.

Yes, many houses and communal places of the community living there were destroyed. And, as I know some people who are living there, we were invited for some kind of festival. They organise events concerning the place, the agriculture,… while trying to push out people who try to put concrete everywhere. It’s a kind of social resistance. We went with some friends from Brussels for the festival, but it was pretty intense because they are engaged in this community, and you feel what the resistance is about, it’s big stuff.

Yes, it was totally free. So yes, when you arrive, you are like: am I dreaming?

It’s coming slowly, but it’s coming. And you, you will play soon?

Yeah, you’re doing other stuff.

I understand. Everything went very fast, suddenly I’m playing again and I’m like, o, I like this, I missed this.

I’m going to do something tomorrow in Brasserie Atlas. They put an acousmonium with 50 speakers in place.

When you have like many many speakers around you. We have a mixtable with 46 channels to spacialise the music. I prepared a 10 minute piece which I’m going to play there.

It’s something I’ve been working on for a long time so now …

You can do that, when you are crazy and strong. But I’m working on a stereo track, there are many possibilities to then send that to different speakers and then you have the sound traveling around.

Yes. I was in my studio. And there is not so much light in there, so it’s hard to stay focused when you see that outside, it’s a beautiful day, and you’re like, geeking on the computer.

With music, I’ve been trying to stop using a computer, it’s a project. I don’t know if I will manage, because I really depend on it. I know my skills with that machine, so it’s hard to go out, but I’m tired of screens sometimes. First I’m doing graphic 3D works and then I move on to do music behind the same screen.

Exactly. All the time in the screen. So I’ve been trying to translate what I’m doing with my computer to other machines. But will take a lot of time to arrive at the point I imagine. I don’t know.

You’re using only computer too?

Oh, it’s not that far from each other. Well, it’s totally different in terms of interfaces, but, you’re talking about like inspiration and ideas?

Both start with nothing. In 3D you have like this surface. These axes, the X, Y, Z,.. It’s a space with nothing. And everything starts with a geometric simple shape. So, maybe there is an analogy to music, when you have nothing, and you add matter, and sculpt it. You sculpt something really simple into something complex. With music and sound it can be almost the same. You start with nothing, what I’m doing now, is not much with beats and rhythms, it is pretty narrative, evolutive, .. I think it relates to creating a world in 3D.

Yes, you can really go far. The way you can go inside and outside something you created. Even a sphere. It’s pretty complex. It’s interesting. I don’t know.

Oooh.

Yes, animation is something, pff, it takes lots of time. You can solve problems having better equipment, like with everything, that's a shame. I mean, the more you have, the faster you will work. It's really expensive to have these kinds of equipment, unfortunately, it's about money. That’s not cool.

That's a shame. I would like it to be easier to do the stuff I've been trying. The animation I did for you and Lotte, it was a total stretch, I had never done something like that.

Yeah. So I was like, oh, cool. Like, the first works I did, videos that were like 5 minutes, took me like 1,5 month to make. If you want to make a complex movement, it takes a lot of time.

Haha, yeah. It’s too much craziness, they are really geeks.

Of course I’m like, wow, how do they do that? But so many people are working on that. Hundred persons in a team for making walk a naturally a character.

Yes, in textures, particles, movements,… It’s pretty fascinating. It’s a world I would’ve never thought of to be in. I started to learn 3D to print objects for a music instrument project, and then I discovered that I could do images. I always did like drawings and visual art, but I didn’t think I would get into this infinite 3D world.

When I was in school in France, I started doing sound art, getting into music with friends.. I started working with ceramics to create aerophones.

Whistles. I was really touched by the pre-hispanic instruments from my country, Mexico, when I discovered them. I found them so beautiful and dove in the world of these instruments. There were so many different kinds. It took my attention and I discovered how to build them in ceramics and I started making installations and performances with them.

One moment, I saw this pre hispanic instrument that works with water, maybe you saw it on the internet. They call it the whistling vessels. The instrument has two vessels, water containers, that are connected. In one of them is a whistle. So when you move the instrument, the water inside passes through the conduct, and it pushes the air, so the whistling sounds. The system is pretty fascinating, really simple in a way, but at the same time: how do they do that??

Well, they were, of course, like many things in the country, destroyed. And there are no iconographic sources, nothing very exact has been written down, but there are theories. Archeologists think they were used in very private ceremonies, like funerals. And many of the instruments have sexual and erotic symbols on them so they might relate to sexual rituals, and another theory is, as they are a water container, maybe they were used to drink from in ayahuasca ceremonies. In these ceremonies, there’s always music, some archeologists suggest that people might drink the drug while it produces a sound.

I will do a residency in Oosterwijk in the Netherlands. You know it?

I love how nobody knows a thing about this place. I am gonna be there all summer. It is the European center for ceramics, I applied a few years ago and now is the time to go. I m going from July until October.

I remember an installation I did with whistles in school. In the school, they had an old metal atelier they didn’t use anymore, but they had a circuit of compressed air in the building. I plugged different plastic tubes onto the air circuit, it became a kind of organ, whistles with different tones with constant air pressed through. The frequencies were bouncing everywhere and it was pretty beautiful. You could stay there and listen. I made a recording of one hour. Didn’t do anything, just recorded it, the music was making itself.