And it is important to emphasise that, right from the start of the project, the artist was seeking to materialise, in the form of a visual and auditory presence, something invisible (the electrical system) and something inaudible (the residual noise produced by the electrical system being imperceptible). Starting with this immateriality, an architectural complex was to rise up in space – monumentally, spectacularly.
This complex machinery – from recording to playback – could have been thought of as movements to and from the exhibition space, and the volume of the installation as its auditory-architectural extension, in other words the materialisation of its acoustic-electric network, visible and redeployed. This hypothesis was backed up by the 3-D images of the installation, whose symbolic charge ostensibly overturned the hierarchical relationship of the building to the work. The visual index was thus significant; it vindicated the interpretation of the project as a reconstruction of a place, but it implied replacing the hypothesis of the setup as a prolongation or prosthesis of the place by that of the place as a prolongation or prosthesis of the setup. The images did not, in fact, provide a way of dissociating the installation from the space, or the construction from the building. One had the strange feeling of the space having been smoothed out in toto by a thought process. In these images, the imposing columns were white, as was the gallery. These elements were thus chromatically matched with those that entered into the composition of the installation, which were also, invariably, white. This whiteness irradiated the architecture (except for the floor, which was grey), indicating the domination of the space by the setup at its centre, to the point of an inversion: the space became a sort of vanishing line for the work, or at any rate it seemed totally integrated into a circuit, a kind of circulation whose nerve centre was the work itself. This visual impression of smoothing-out, which was not dissociable from the 3-D effect of the images, qualified the comings and goings between the space and the setup. It was not just that the contribution of the architecture to the sound-emission system was acoustically operative; something like a double movement was embedded in the heart of the statement. The auditory capture of the place, and its treatment by anamorphosis, was linked to the emission of sound by two architectural structures: the central setup and the overall volumes. As we shall see, this system of relays, associated with deferred phenomena due to time lags between the emission, projection and reception of the sound, activated the setup as a network, an electrical circuit, which effectuated a direct return to its source, the electrical system that innervated the building.
Stopping short of any symbolism, and yet going beyond the variations in the chromatic treatment of their different constituent elements, the 3-D imagery yielded a second significant clue about the nature of Broccolichi's object. It illustrated, simply, a prototype. The prototypic nature of this object had different facets, firstly because the images, as concrete stages in its elaboration, constituted neither the definitive sketch of a plan nor an ideal object to be realised (as a model would do). They instantiated a moment in the creation of the object, a section through its evolution. A large acoustic system was presented, whose form and components appeared modulable. The images showed the potential development of an object to be created: a "prototype object", or rather "prototype objects", because, further to the initial observation, the artist's intention was to create several objects. Some of the images showed the cavities, acoustic screens and reflectors, with their technical characteristics and dimensions. Others also included the loudspeakers. And then there were those in which assemblages formed a more complete system, with elements placed in relation to one another, and sometimes in context, in the modelled exhibition space.
This montage technique defined the prototype object as a combination of parts in modules, and a combination of modules in a setup, each of whose components added its respective functions to a network (of transmitters, audio receivers, etc.). Each model was infused by the same dynamic. And the overall construction was aimed at the amplification of sounds. Two complementary structures were then developed into a superstructure: the motor (the three modules) was enclosed in a sort of hull (the acoustic screens). And a final remark (though not the least crucial) should be added, for the comprehension of the modus operandi of Dial-O-Map 25°, namely that the sound heard in capc was to be controlled by the artist from Nice, where he lives, for the duration of the exhibition. It would not be a question of "playing" a score in a live performance, but of activating and maintaining a programme, as well as acting on the parameters of the programming and transmission (as regards the choice of the sound files to be played through the modules, their speed and intensity, and thus their volume, etc.). In auditory terms, the remote control of the object was a natural part of its prototypical dimension. It would be inherently difficult, since the artist would not be able to predict the precise effects of his choices, given his physical absence from the reception site. The computer-controlled management of the audio transmission not being directly perceptible to him, the control process would necessarily be somewhat aporetic.
Apart from any problematic of assemblage or development that could equally be applied to a description of an industrial construction process, Broccolichi selected the prototype "regime" of his object on essentially aesthetic grounds, as dictated by its modes of operation. It would exist only in the excess of its profile (which would take over the circulatory space at the ground level), its amplificatory power (it could, in a sense, either go into standby mode, producing only an electrical silence, or, on the contrary, attain a level of aural intolerability), or its dysfunctions (with the risk of being too effective, or not effective enough, in relation to the ambient acoustics). There would be no perfect (nor any wholly unacceptable) regulation of this object, because with the prototype, any idea of regulation would cancel itself out, giving way to that of deregulation. In this respect, the prototypical regime stood opposed to the processive regime, as the imperturbable mechanics of the process, its self-regulation, stood opposed to the prototype, with its starts and stops, variations and accidents (as part of a protocol, in this case), possible manipulations and interventions, risks of failure, malfunctionings, interruptions, etc. Between the "not working" and the "working too well", this regime respected a logic of the event, and confrontation, as the processive regime took part in the immanence of its own development.
In activating this prototype, the artist would not be performing a score. Following the method chosen for the production of the installation's different material parts, he composed a programme derived from a montage of pre-recorded sound files that he filtered, stretched, compressed, and finally assembled with a view to continuous transmission. Composing a programme is not, of course, enough in itself to activate a setup; the information also has to be transmitted from one point to another, in this case from source to emission. The computer that controlled the programme, and allowed the artist to carry out the different operations, was to be an integral part of the installation, whose general mode of operation would be instrumental. In this sense, one might suggest that Broccolichi would be playing an instrument rather than a piece.