ABOUT
THE WORLD AS AN INFINITE MUSIC INSTRUMENT
SOUNDHUNTERS is an interactive documentary experience which aims to capture the world in samples and transform it into music.
FROM NOTES TO NOISE
For a long time, it seemed to be an insurmountable boundary: on one side organised sound, music made up of notes and scores, and on the other noise, which seemed random and arbitrary.
Pierre Schaeffer, the father of musique concrète, invited us to consider music in terms of any sound at all, including voices. His greatest legacy is electronic music.
SOUNDS ARE FOOTPRINTS OF OUR CULTURES
Schaeffer’s vision opened the way to exploring our natural or urban surroundings, recording all languages and manipulating everyday objects: a leaf in the wind, an effervescent aspirin, a Finnish phoneme or coffee being poured into a cup.
Today, every sound can be recorded, hijacked, manipulated and reinvented into an original musical creation.
That is how a soundhunter works.
BECOME A SOUNDHUNTER
The SOUNDHUNTERS transmedia project uses various media to reach the broadest possible audience. Understand, discover, try out, share...
There are three components to the project: a website, a mobile app and a 52-minute TV documentary.
Experience the adventure in three stages: WATCH, REC and CREATE.
WATCH
Four interactive Web documentaries follow four soundhunters as they work. For this project, the professional musicians visited an unknown city. Their mission: to compose a song out of sounds and voices heard in the place.
As you watch these films on the website, sounds from the city are released one at a time, and you can listen to them separately. Once all the sounds have been released, you can access the finished composition, the song of the city.
REC
Do you feel inspired? Then be a soundhunter. As you hunt down sounds, use the mobile/tablet app to record, process and share them.
CREATE
In this social network for soundhunters around the world, you can compose your first tracks, even if you know nothing about music. You can draw on the sounds from the films, your own sounds, and those captured by other soundhunters.
If you want to take things further, feel free to join our exciting competition: all tracks received by 31 August will be considered. The most original contribution will be chosen to accompany the final credits in the TV documentary.
AND FOR MUSIC GEEKS?
From 23 June onwards, those of you with more advanced or professional skills can submit a track via soundhunters.tv/contest. The best tracks will be included on “Zoolook Revisited”, a compilation curated by Jean-Michel Jarre, a pupil of Pierre Schaeffer and still a globally recognised star of electronic pop. “Zoolook Revisited” is the sequel to his “Zoolook” album from 1984.
