à travers un verger is a sound environment which consists of two
auditive layers.  the outer layer is represented by field recordings
of mostly rural origins and with a static characteristics, projected
indirectly into the space by four to eight loudspeakers.

the inner layer is formed by recordings of five short text excerpts from
“à travers un verger”, written by swiss writer philippe jaccottet.
the texts are read in their original french language, each by five
different female voices.  these five times five recordings are
combined in an algorithmic live composition formed out of primary,
secondary and tertiary occurences of the texts with different
probabilities each cycle.  the texts are projected via headphones into
a binaural virtual soundscape, in which the voices seem to come from
different directions around the listener's head.

conceptually, the outer layer of à travers un verger is “global” and
audible by all listeners at the same time, while the inner one forms a
“private”, intimate soundsphere.  in fact, since headphones with an
open transducer principle are used, the inner and the outer auditive
layers blend into each other.  a simplistic view to à travers un verger
might read the installation as an attempt to embed jaccottet's
words back into the landscapes where they once arose from.

philippe jaccottet: à travers un verger, fata morgana, paris, 1975

hyperkult 19, leuphana university of lüneburg, july 8–10, 2010