Project

Ensemble Cairn and Lucas Fagin began collaborating in 2015, when the composer wrote the piece Psychedelic which was to be recorded for the Alla Breve radio series hosted by Radio France. The piece, written for 7 musicians of the ensemble, brings together so-called “pop music” and “contemporary music” on the basis of three well identified objects: Ligeti (Kammerkonzert), Pink Floyd (On the run, from the album Dark side of the moon), and a hypnotic painting by Victor Vasarely. In a shared desire to further develop this approach, Lucas Fagin is presently willing to write an extended version of this piece, both in time and space, in conjunction with plastic artist Tom Huet : Overlight.

Overlight, a visual and musical immersive experience

Sharing a taste for distortions, optical illusions and geometric eccentricities, both artists wish their encounter to achieve a radical endeavour. Inspired by the troubling universe of Science Fiction, their work aims at altering perception and disorienting the senses of the audience – using both a unique and hypnotic musical composition, and a psychedelic visual device. Their ambition is to create an entirely new universe, a radiant and multidimensional “Psi-Fi”.

Programme

In Overlight, Lucas Fagin and Tom Huet feel the heritage of Op Art, style of visual arts focusing on the fallibility of the human eye through optical illusions. Their work takes visual reference in the figures of Victor Vasarely and Julio Le Parc; in addition, the musical research conducted by Ligeti, the Pink Floyds or even KraftWerk infuse the stage and musical design of this project.

For this new piece, Lucas Fagin wishes to deepen the connection to rock and electronic music initiated with Psychedelic, through systematic amplification of the instruments. Shifting to more electric colours, it enables the piece to enter a new musical realm. All instruments will be transformed by analog tools borrowed from rock and pop music: distortion pedals, delay and phaser pedals etc... Electric guitars, synthesizers and percussions inspired by techno street drums (ordinary objects used by street performers to play electronic music) will be put forward in his music, referencing psychedelic art, hallucinations and other paradoxes. By this means, the composer wishes to transfigure gestures commonly used in popular music to write a vital kind of music, profoundly attached to present times.

The meta-reality that the artists are wishing to create will be completed by a scenic installation comprising three light devices. Between the musical composition and the kinetic and hypnotic light devices, the audience will partake in a collective hallucination, a narcotic journey through unstable, dynamic and perpetually moving forms.