ÉRICK D'ORION
Forge 13
2013
Biography
A resident of Quebec City since 1993, Érick d'Orion is a sound artist specializing in installations and new media, as well as a composer, self-taught musician, curator and sound designer for the performing arts. Focusing his research on digital maximalism, he engages in practices closely related to noise music, musique concrète, free jazz and electroacoustic music. The artist is a member of the morceaux_de_machines duo, the BOLD trio and the Napalm Jazz trio, as well as numerous ad hoc groups. He has performed in concert with such renowned artists as Evan Parker, Martin Tétreault, Otomo Yoshihide, Robin Fox, Ilpo Väisänen, Diane Labrosse, Alexandre St-Onge, Bernard Falaise, Sam Shalabi, Günter Müller, eRikm and Christof Migone. The artist has also composed music and designed sound environments for film, theatre, dance and new media projects.
About the work
Between 1995 and 2000, Aimé Dontigny, Philémon Girouard and I hosted a weekly radio program called Napalm Jazz for CKIA FM, formerly situated in a building that housed the various organizations of the Méduse cooperative. Every Sunday evening, from ten to midnight, we let ourselves get carried away in a “delirium,” mixing rap and free jazz and throwing in some poetry and other literary discoveries. We gradually abandoned the classic radio format (reading texts, introducing musical works, playing records), using the studio as an “instrument,” or rather as a creative device, making use of the scratches, playing several records at the same time, or using the microphone as a vector of interference. We thus went from the experience of simply broadcasting to that of creating, adopting a method of exploration and investigation with no other aim but to amuse ourselves, to make discoveries, to find a kind of release, an outlet.
And then something major happened that forever turned our lives upside down: we received a phone call (e-mail was then in its infancy) from a certain Jocelyn Robert, the artistic director of an organization that we knew little or nothing about: Avatar. We learned that our “approach” was in keeping with the field of sound art. What a surprise! And that we were invited to take part in a project called Excavation sonore. We subsequently acquired computers, presented concerts, produced records, performed at festivals. The rest of the story is known, or almost. In brief, Avatar allowed me to become an artist, for better or worse.
Forge 13 is an audio work composed of excerpts from all the sound projects I have undertaken with Avatar since 2000, the year of my first sound excavation.