About

Nicolas Bernier

A multidisciplinary sound artist, Nicolas Bernier creates sound installations and performances, composes live music for choreographies, movies or any moving image medium, and also dabbles with improvisation and video art. Whichever the medium, his artistic concerns remain steady: he seeks balance between cerebral and sensual dimensions, between organic sources and digital processing. His style is one that is stripped from technology's excesses: they serve as a tool – but do not precede the creation process – that is integrated in a global thought, without replacing a sober fine arts aesthetic. Bernier received the prestigious Golden Nica award at Prix Ars Electronica in 2013 for Frequencies. His work has been exhibited in festivals and major cultural centres such as: Sonar in Barcelona, Mutek in Montreal, DotMov Festival in Japan, Transmediale in Berlin, ZKM in Germany, LABoral in Asturias.

Medias

The exhibition

Frequencies (light quanta)

Frequencies (light quanta) is a sound and visual installation based on the smallest measurable value of energy: the quantum. Nicolas Bernier has always been inspired and fascinated by science, the foundations of sound and light creation. The composition explores the metaphorical relationships between basic quantum physics principles and the audiovisual creative process. It stems from hundreds of sound and light fragments that self-develop and bloom randomly. The result: an interplay of reflection and scintillation, depth and geometry, a visual composition in constant evolution, the feeling that one is moving in a poetic and contemplative narrative. Frequencies (light quanta) unites the underlying sounds of audiovisual creation, i.e. crackling and clicks, with light, which relates to quantum physics and photons.

Medias