To the composers and founders of Réseaux: Jean-François Denis, Gilles Gobeil, and Robert Normandeau

In the same way that the eye perceives the changing play of light on various shapes and textures of a given colour, the ear picks out the sparkles and shimmers that the minute variations of related sounds can produce.

“Uneven flattening of the grain, dull and bright areas, changing, gleaming and wavy aspects. Reflections.” These terms, borrowed from visual perception, find their equivalents in sound: instead of changes in space, changes in time. This is further pointed at by an anecdotal element, a sign of the passage of time, that punctuates the sound stream in three places: the beginning, the middle, and the end.

This scintillation was produced by processing much of the material with the SYTER real-time system at Ina-GRM in Paris. Certain characteristics, techniques and types of sound, chosen from the outset of the project because of their latent potentiality, were selected: these were harmonic timbre, accumulation, percussion / resonance, movement (trajectories, whirls), and dynamic contrast — the very things that give sound context and make it shimmer.

— Francis Dhomont [English translation: Tom Carter]

Les moirures du temps [The Shimmering Ripples of Time] was realized in 1999 at the Syter studio of the Ina-GRM (Paris, France) and at the composer’s studio and premiered (under the working title Cosa mentale) on 20 February 1999 as part of the Rien à voir (5) concert series presented by Réseaux. Les moirures du temps was commissioned by Réseaux des arts médiatiques with support from the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA). It won 1st prize in the Musica Nova 1999 International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Prague, Czech Republic).

Premiere

• February 20, 1999, Rien à voir (5): rétrospective 2, La Chapelle — scènes contemporaines, Montréal (Québec)

Awards

• 1st prize, Category A (fixed medium), Musica Nova 1999, Prague (Czech Republic)