And each of the objects that made up this instrumental setup – from the computer to the sound file, and from the reflector, the cavity and the acoustic screen to the architecture as such, with its acoustic properties, but also the listener, with his reconfiguration of the listening experience through movement – would be one of its mediations. The different mediations could certainly be distinguished, both materially (in mechanical, architectural or electrical terms) and functionally (in terms of emission, reception, transmission, compression and filtering). But this would be to overlook their essential unity, which demonstrated a central feature of the setup as a prototype, namely the fact that if a single link failed, the entire chain of mediation was put at risk.
This remark could be applied to many more of Broccolichi's works, involving the emission, transmission and reception of sounds, insofar as they are based on networks of mediation. They are objectified by a nomination which, more than a logic of titles – such as one finds in various other works – seems to hint at a quasi-scientific definition of artistic work, its objects and their functions, their mediations, by virtue of categories and technical criteria. Atlas Lambda, 1991-2003, was "an audiotheque of CDs representing several years of data from radio telescopes. Auditory investigations were carried out on two media: terrestrial waves and interstellar magnetic waves". In this installation, the listener was provided with headphones through which he could listen to any of sixty or so CDs. The Cellules isophoniques, and the Cellules exophoniques had different codes (AI 37, AI 38, AI 39, AI 40). In a presentation of his work, in a chapter entitled "Acoustic performances", the artist gives a description of Cellule isophonique AI 37: "Measurements carried out between the initial energy and the total energy, in line with the NEN 20160 and DIN 55240 norms. Acoustic insulation and very low frequencies. Damping of the sound, and hyperlocalisation according to the amplified spectrum DnAv 39.9 dB – 8.4. Air compression 250 cm2/ml/DN 10 = 37 dB (A), high flow rate modulating at 15 m3/h RA net (A). Resistance to constant strata of stable height and intensity. The isophonic cell ensures an optimal retention of the standing waves and the axial frequencies against the walls of the test cell (Raleigh's rule). The source-air wave bends at each phase of the mass-spring-mass system, whose resonance frequency depends on the surface volume. The floating echos and the losses in irregular curves (TR 100 Hz) correspond to an insulation index of the Helmholz type."
One could not ask for a more precise description of a technical setup, in all its characteristics, arrangements and actions, along with the effects it is intended to produce. And the same type of description could be given for most of the artist's projects, though this would be of little help to those who, like me, are largely unfamiliar with the technical properties and scientific vocabulary of acoustic and auditory phenomena. But then what can we hope to get from this text ? Two essential elements – because there is nothing to prevent us from searching through it for relations of cause and effect. The concrete expression of the different physical properties laid out here signifies the obliteration of the sound produced within the normalised space, so that one can determine an effect (a silence obtained by subtraction) whose material causes are to be found in a series of operations on the auditory frequencies and the acoustic space (insulation, encasing, amplification, damping, etc.). The first of these operations opens up the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the auditory installation, because it brings about a situation and a form in which a causal relationship materialises. It is given in our title: "measurement". But in fact the question of measurement comes through in all of Broccolichi's work.
And the present aesthetic analysis should also include a comment on the term "measurement". The description of the aforementioned Cellule isophonique AI 37 illustrates the concept precisely, as the difference(s) between two energies. "Measuring" does not simply mean calculating the distance between points x and y, but also estimating the levels of intensity that characterise these points. Measurement, thus defined, has to do with topographic grid patterns as much as the amplification of signals, whether audio or visual. And in Broccolichi's installations the two fields have constantly interpenetrated, from Raccorama 4 (eight iodide projectors of white light, a sound setup using two loudspeakers, and drawings done on the floor with powdered mica) to Dial-O-Map 25°.
The main thing, in measurement, is not distance, which can vary arbitrarily. In Broccolichi's work, it can go from the extremely distant, even stellar – for example with the Pitcher Kr 06 project, where a sort of audio probe consisting of a receiver aboard a mini-rocket recorded pure Spherics above the stratosphere, at an altitude of 16,000 metres – to the extremely close, the telluric, as in the Zones d'Ecoute Temporaires, where auditory setups were positioned in sites of intense material-vibratory activity, and bridges and dams were equipped with seismic sensors to record the propagation of very-low-frequency waves.
The most important aspect of measurement is not distance, but the relationship of distance to intensity, in other words degree. Measurement, therefore, is a product of two types of data. The measurement of an auditory signal, for example, is related to intensity – stronger or weaker for volume, higher or lower for frequency – at a greater or lesser distance along the axes of height, width and depth, etc.
Every such measurement aims at the configuration of a space in three dimensions, whose coordinates are acoustic and topological (in the sense of determining thresholds of limits and proximity).
One of the stages in Broccolichi's planning of a work is to draw up a sound map of the space involved, with variations in degree between distances and intensities. In Dial-O-Map 25°, as in other works, his explorations of electromagnetic, hertzian and acoustic fields follow this principle.
So the point is not to survey the static elements of a landscape, but to identify the dynamic elements of a trajectory. Such trajectories can be incorporated into plans or diagrams, which have to be seen as pathways rather than maps. In Broccolichi's hands, they do not take graphic form. The objects of measurement (mostly sounds) are intended, in the course of new transmissions, to re-establish, or re-define, the dimensions of a space and a time.
If the question of thresholds and limits takes up a determinant place in this activity, it is because measurement, as its central operation, stipulates dynamics and divergences of degree. Measurement is fundamental, in that the principles of thresholds and limits are to be found throughout Broccolichi's technical research and aesthetic constructions. With setups that go from the imperceptible to the perceptible, the immaterial to the material, the inaudible to the audible, absence to presence, the subterranean to the surface, his work, in its crossovers, permanently dialecticises the concepts of "threshold" and "limit".
It requires measurement to prolong sound signals, to bring them to our auricles and allow us to hear what our ears cannot detect. But measuring actuates a series of specific operations. The first of these is acquisition, using sensors. Every measurement is an acquisition, a sort of hunt which entails a capture, using recording equipment. Capture is perceptible only through transmission, and the system must include both transmitters and receivers. Finally, every transmission is potentially re-transmissible, which re-initialises the sequence of operations (and re-transmission can lead to further capture through acquisition, etc.).