Night 2 -
Bloc_2

Christian Bouchard (ca)

Christian Bouchard creates unique and captivating sonic worlds through the fluid assemblage of soundscapes, experimental electronics, glitch, and acousmatic art. His musical style can be described as a thrilling interplay where energetic moments with nervous overtones are counterbalanced by moments of suspension. For some, this may be a musical universe free of reference points where one can get lost, but where one can also let oneself be carried away without worrying about form.

Christian Bouchard studied electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal under Yves Daoust. He practices music for theater, film, installation music, and more recently, ambient music. He is a founding member (with Christian Calon, Mario Gauthier, and Monique Jean) of the live electroacoustic quartet Theresa Transistor. His music has won composition awards in various national and international competitions. His most recent album IV, on empreintes DIGITALes, was named album of the year at the Prix Opus in 2025. Christian Bouchard also works as a sound recordist in cinema.

Program 
Spirale plastique (2024) 20’04”

Remember the ocean of plastic? It was a hot topic several years ago, Go see it today. The horror... But from a sound perspective, imagine plunging microphones into it to hear the different textures, shapes, and sizes of plastic swirling around: pellets, bags, bottles, containers, always rotating in the same direction at different speeds. Let's swirl together in this plasticized, recyclable, compostable, and listenable suite.

Produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Robert Schwarz (au)

Robert Schwarz incorporates a background in computer music, sound studies, and architecture into his installations, live performances, and recorded music. By approaching acoustic phenomena that are usually hidden from our perception, and through the subtle interplay of field recordings and sound synthesis, he creates abstract structures that suggest deep, dissociative states of listening and encourage a critical examination of established listening practices.

Schwarz has released critically acclaimed albums for Superpang, Gruenrekorder, ETAT, and ALTER, and developed a series of walk-in sculptures in Los Angeles, Brussels, and Vienna. He has presented works at institutions and festivals such as the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, Kunsthalle Wien, Tokyo Arts and Space, CTM Berlin, Skaņu Mežs, and Musikprotokoll. Schwarz was selected for the 2023/24 year of the SHAPE+ Platform for innovative music and audiovisual art and is co-founder and curator of the PARKEN festival in Vienna.

Program
Stridulation 1-14  30’00” (2024-2025)

Robert Schwarz will present a condensed live version of his latest album Stridulations 1–14, specially arranged for Akousma’s acousmonium. Through solitary chirps and roaring synchrony, insects and arthropods communicate via “stridulations,” the diverse calls produced by rasping friction between two chitinous body parts.
On Stridulations 1–14, Vienna-based sound artist Robert Schwarz offers a speculative resynthesis of these calls in tandem with ethological field recordings of real-world insect life. Continuing themes introduced in Schwarz’s previous release Clear Cues (ETAT, 2022) and partly derived from a 2023 composition commissioned by ORF’s Musikprotokoll, Stridulations 1–14 investigates the audible characteristics of entomological communication, with particular focus on the spatio-temporal sonic patterns emerging from swarm behaviour and synchrony.
Grounded in two decades of field recording, Schwarz guides listeners through richly textured, abstract sonic entities that invite a dissociative listening state. Constantly shifting the boundary between natural and synthetic, Stridulations 1–14 follows an internal logic informed by intraspecies acoustic communication, crafting a stirring, disorienting sound environment that opens alternative perspectives on the relationships between humans, animals, and machines.

We thank the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Québec Office in Berlin for making the artist’s stay in Montréal possible.