Céleste Boursier-Mougenot (b. 1961, Nice) trained as a musician and composer and for some twenty years has been using a wide range of situations and ob- jects to create pieces that reveal their potential for music. The various materials he uses in his sculp- tures and installations generate mostly unrecord- ed sound forms that he refers to as being ‘alive’, providing a new take on the notion of the musical score. Each piece enters into a relationship with the architectural and environmental features of its setting and forms a framework with-in which a unique listening experience can take place.

Placed on the surface of the canal, “Opencage” takes the form of a cube-shaped aviary contain- ing a network of metal coathangers and bowls of seeds. Wild birds are free to enter and leave as they please. Contact microphones in the cage pick up the slightest sound produced by the coathanger mobile, which is set in motion by the birds or trembles in the wind and rain. These movements form a continuous background sound of varying intensity. Processed by a programme that produces a continuous harmonic bass, these different random movements create constantly changing musical sonorities.