To download the SURROUND 5.1 version of Line 2°, click here.
Line 2° | sound piece (8min00) | formats: 5.1, binaural and stereo
"Combining poetic and sonic devices to create a fictional universe"
Produced for my final project at the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA), Line 2° is an original sound piece exploring the notion of #2degrees.
This slogan from the 2016 COP21 was the guiding theme of a creative assessment where the only restriction was to use exclusively self-recorded or created sounds. My angle was to devise a social science fiction that places listeners in a near-future universe resembling reality but deeply affected by the disruptions of climate change. Over the course of a journey on the Paris Metro, a young female dreamer maps a city transformed by temperatures that have soared far beyond the 2°C threshold. Station announcements, chattering passengers and the extreme weather conditions that punctuate this journey resonate with the words of a poem I composed for the project. The poem, Through the prism of two degrees, darkens the tone of the narrative, reminding us that climate change is ever closer than we imagine.
This experiment in sound poetry required me to conduct field recording in several places that give context to Line 2°. The Metro ride is the structural backbone of the piece, so I recorded a journey all the way down the Line 6 in Paris, using the Double ORTF configuration to offer a quadrophonic surround sound. To complement this main soundscape, I added some natural backgrounds in 5.0 surround, which melt into the transport sounds to generate an altered reality. For instance, I played with the mix of sea sounds and the Metro platform to give the effect of rising water.
To add depth to the piece, I wanted the voices of Nina Batlaj, Claudia Roussel-Ortega and Raphaël Brito to enter into the sonic world by means of readings, exchanges, announcements and melodic vocal exercises.
In the final mix all sound layers are spread in a 5.1 sound system. This wider, immersive space extends the reach of the piece beyond the real world and its ignorance of the environment. With its poetic approach and fine balance of realism and surrealism, Line 2° is an invitation to rethink our perceptions of the climate.
Original text (French)
À travers le prisme des deux degrés
written by Mathias Arrignon
C’est avec la tête lourde, pleine de reproches
Que mon esprit ressasse la fin qui nous est proche.
Car aujourd'hui est devenu le lendemain,
Celui qui nous semblait tellement éthéré
Que nous l’avons délibérément ignoré,
Sans voir les aléas sur notre destin commun.
Notre négligence révèle des sillons
Issus du foyer de l’effet papillon,
Dans lesquelles les métros s’enlisent.
Ils mettent en onde les vocalises,
Non pas d’une voyageuse dans sa lamentation,
Mais d’une songeuse en pleine contemplation.
Tandis que le planisphère est divisée en deux,
Entre le règne de la canicule éternelle,
Four où tout se calcine dans un épais voile grisailleux,
Et celui de la pollution pérenne, avec ses nuages dans le ciel,
Errer dans les cavités métropolitaines est devenu un loisir.
Les passagers suivent des voies familières
Où les rails croisent un passé qui nous emplit de souvenirs.
Une belle époque où les deux degrés n’importunaient pas notre ère…
Banqueroute, scandales politiques et belligérance internationale,
Ne font plus la une et les gros titres des trames éditoriales.
La logosphère se questionne et babille sur son nouvel atmosphère.
Géo-ingénierie, data-centers, énergies infinis et fontes glacières
Sont les débats modernes auxquelles nous faisons face,
Avec le marché de l’écologie qui monte à la surface.
De nos jours, les averses ne sont plus perçues
Comme des goutes d’eau imbibant les tissus.
Tout ce que nous offre la pluie par ses pulsations
N’est qu’une suite de corrosion et d’oxydation
Afin de nous rappeler que le ciel se venge,
Peu à peu de la ville qui le dérange.
En métro, on va d’un point A vers un point B
Avec un itinéraire simple et courbée,
Rien de saisissant pour un voyageur urbain.
Pourtant qui aurait cru que la notion d’aqua alta,
Puisse franchir les limites des ilots vénitiens,
En transformant les quais en un véritable delta.
Tout se noie dans une suite de flux et de reflux,
Avec des cumulus d’écume qui dans un vrai chahut
Nous font voguer vers les confins de ce circuit ferré.
On commence à rêver et à espérer
Que ce qui se cache en haut de ces escaliers mécaniques
Soit un hameau de sérénité dénué de panique.
Mais c’est par une simple quinte de toux
Que s’efface ce fantasme si doux.
Through the prism of two degrees
It’s with a heavy head, full of reproaches
That my mind turns over the end that approaches.
Because today has become tomorrow,
The day that once seemed so unlikely
That, turning our heads, we ignored it deliberately,
Blind to the dangers of our collective destiny.
Our carelessness reveals the fissures
That snowball into fault lines,
In which the metros grind to a halt.
Inside vibrate the sounds,
Not of a traveller’s complaint,
But of a dreamer's contemplation.
As the planisphere splits in two,
Between the reign of the eternal heatwave,
Furnace that chars all beneath its thick grey veil,
And that of perpetual pollution, the sky dense with clouds,
Roaming the city's underground has become a leisure activity.
Passengers wind their familiar ways
Down rails that trace a past existing only in memory:
A golden age where two degrees weren't the problem of the day.
Bankruptcy, political scandals and international aggression
No longer make the front page or the headlines in the papers.
The echo chamber echoes and new weather becomes news.
Geoengineering, data centres, infinite energy and melting icecaps
Are the modern debates now daily confronting us,
With an environmental market rising like the sea’s surface.
Nowadays a downpour is no longer seen
As drops of water drenching clothes that had been clean.
The drumming of the rain in every pulsation
Is a mere sequel to the old corrosion and oxidisation,
A reminder of how, little by little,
The sky takes revenge on the insults of the city.
In the metro we move from point A to point B
On a smooth and simple trajectory,
Nothing to startle the accustomed urban voyager.
Yet who would have believed that the famous aqua alta
Could flow beyond Venetian islands,
To transform underground platforms into deltas.
All things drown in a sequence of ebb and flow,
Beneath a foaming smog that in a whirl of commotion
Sends us sailing to the fringes of this network of railroads.
We begin to dream and vainly to hope
That what hides at the top of these steep escalators
Might be a clearing of calm in the panic that surrounds us.
But a fresh bout of coughing
Puts an end to the daydream.
