Sound Design
Alexia Charoud
Alexia Charoud has emerged from London’s electronic landscape with a singular universe. Their work explores the creation of worlds through sound and music in a blend of popular music sonorities with unique experience design, while introducing innovative uses of
technologies.
In 2018, Alexia was awarded the John Leckie Award for innovation in Audio Production as the outcome of their MA in University of Westminster. Over the last years, they have been performing and producing work in numerous contexts across London and Paris, including fashion shows, gallery events, and festivals. Most recently, Alexia showcased their work in venues such as the 4 Quarters, Tola Peckham, Bussey Buildings, Iklektik, Showcase, Sonar+ and La Sorbonne.
They have also worked on sound design for award-winning animation films, and released a contrasting self-produced EP entitled ‘I-Refrain ’.
The Explorer - Alexia Charoud [RCA2020]. —
[Sound On!] A trailer video for The Explorer, blending live footage with animated visualization. The live footage consists of real-time interactions with the installation.
The Explorer / Forest Installation [RCA2020]. — Lock-down had me think of ways to implement this project in everyday life contexts. I chose to set it up in the little forest by my grandfather's house. This video, shot with the means available, shows my grandfather discovering the magical world hidden at the back of his garden...
Overview –
The Explorer is an interactive experience. Disrupting the common affordances of light, it invites you to reveal a hidden soundscape with a torch. As you explore the space around you, a mysterious sonic world emerges, creating an evolving musical piece in which you are both an explorer and a performer.
Concept -
Vision allows us humans to define, fix and manipulate the world around us. Between reliance on vision and positivism, we tend to forget the inherent mystery and the fluidity that lie at the heart of life.
Artist Paul Klee once said: ‘in a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were looking at me, were speaking to me... I was there, listening...’. In opposition to the occidental paradigm, where absolute knowledge allows Man to grasp reality in its entirety, Klee gives a sense of a world that has depth, a world where we are both seeing and seen, hearing and heard. A world where lies, beyond the reach of our perception, a mysterious reality, a possible way into which would be the act of listening.
The Explorer poetically explores this idea of listening to an invisible layer of reality. A reality that is fluid, opaque and magical. An inhabited reality, constantly unfolding, and never graspable as a whole. It challenges the roles of light and vision, and highlights the power of sound to create independent worlds, transpose space and create collective experiences. Anyone, regardless of their language, culture, identity or background, should be able to connect with this piece and other participants involved.
Technology –
The aim of this project was to use technology to create a very simple, intuitive and magical experience. The technology behind The Explorer was developed throughout the course of the confinement, with support from John Wilde and Thomas Deacon. We developed a unique piece of code to send data wirelessly and in real time to Ableton Live. The resulting piece is easy to install, connect, transport and adapt to any type of space or exhibition context.
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The Explorer is an interactive experience. Disrupting the common affordances of light, it invites you to reveal a hidden soundscape with a torch. As you explore the space around you, a mysterious sonic world emerges, creating an evolving musical piece in which you are both an explorer and a performer.
Concept -
Vision allows us humans to define, fix and manipulate the world around us. Between reliance on vision and positivism, we tend to forget the inherent mystery and the fluidity that lie at the heart of life.
Artist Paul Klee once said: ‘in a forest, I have felt many times over that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were looking at me, were speaking to me... I was there, listening...’. In opposition to the occidental paradigm, where absolute knowledge allows Man to grasp reality in its entirety, Klee gives a sense of a world that has depth, a world where we are both seeing and seen, hearing and heard. A world where lies, beyond the reach of our perception, a mysterious reality, a possible way into which would be the act of listening.
The Explorer poetically explores this idea of listening to an invisible layer of reality. A reality that is fluid, opaque and magical. An inhabited reality, constantly unfolding, and never graspable as a whole. It challenges the roles of light and vision, and highlights the power of sound to create independent worlds, transpose space and create collective experiences. Anyone, regardless of their language, culture, identity or background, should be able to connect with this piece and other participants involved.
Technology –
The aim of this project was to use technology to create a very simple, intuitive and magical experience. The technology behind The Explorer was developed throughout the course of the confinement, with support from John Wilde and Thomas Deacon. We developed a unique piece of code to send data wirelessly and in real time to Ableton Live. The resulting piece is easy to install, connect, transport and adapt to any type of space or exhibition context.
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Medium:
Interactive Sound ExperienceSilver Lines - Alexia Charoud (Music Video) — Director: Sammy Selin. Music: Alexia Charoud. Cast: Alexia Charoud, Julia Renning, Lyuqitiao Wang, Yena Park. DOP: Robert Chang Lun Chang Chien. Set Design: Arman Ataman, Christian Pecher, Akvilė Terminaitė. Outfit Design: Manon Planche. Make-up Art: Chloé Zanotti. Animation: Zohar Dvir. Color: Ruudu Ulas. Thanks: Laura Dudek.
Silver Lines is a music video directed by Sammy Selin for the first single of ‘I-Refrain’. This dreamy video follows a space traveler’s surreal journey into an oppressive queen’s land of nightmare magic.
Coming straight from the subconscious, this song confronts two conceptions of the world. One is of a world of depth and existence, of exploration and magic; the other of an alluring dehumanized world of consumerism and instrumentalization. The music production plays with this dichotomy, opposing irresistible industrial beats and beautiful lively synths, amongst which resigned vocals struggle to find meaning. Sammy Selin’s video depicts this tension perfectly, with its twofold color-palette, and the strange relationship between the wandering space traveler and her evil antagonist, ready to turn her into another pawn.
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Coming straight from the subconscious, this song confronts two conceptions of the world. One is of a world of depth and existence, of exploration and magic; the other of an alluring dehumanized world of consumerism and instrumentalization. The music production plays with this dichotomy, opposing irresistible industrial beats and beautiful lively synths, amongst which resigned vocals struggle to find meaning. Sammy Selin’s video depicts this tension perfectly, with its twofold color-palette, and the strange relationship between the wandering space traveler and her evil antagonist, ready to turn her into another pawn.
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Medium:
Music VideoSize:
4"33‘I-Refrain’ is a self-produced EP, and the outcome of a year of research in IED. Meticulously crafted, the lush sound design contributes to the creation of a sonic world in which each sound becomes like a living entity, territorializing the larger musical landscape that we are traveling through. Along with the vocals, they are designed to feel animate: they appear, evolve, take the lead, disappear.
Blending these inhabited soundscapes with catchy phrases and hooks, this work intends to both reimplement magic and meaning within pop music production, and to create a unique musical journey that can speak to anyone regardless of their preferred music genres.
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Blending these inhabited soundscapes with catchy phrases and hooks, this work intends to both reimplement magic and meaning within pop music production, and to create a unique musical journey that can speak to anyone regardless of their preferred music genres.
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Medium:
EPSize:
21"4225 July 2020
17:30 (GMT + 0)
Vimeo
A live presentation of IED Sound Design students' work.