Control Room is a light and sound installation that puts you, the viewer, in the control room of an imaginary facility, immersing you in a sound space with an array of outsized red warning lights facing you.

A flux of ambient sounds, previously recorded at L’Alsace newspaper’s printing shop in Mulhouse, is automatically transcribed into a choreography of lights. The muffled rhythmic hammering, creaking, rumbling of rotary presses, the purring of motors, interspersed with strident voices, animates and controls the intensity of the red lights flashing on every side.

Contrary to any expectations raised by its title, there are no levers or controls at the viewer’s disposal in the Control Room. Rather, you bear witness as breaking waves of mechanical sound take control of the light system, whose intermittent flickerings and dazzling glare may call to mind a discotheque - or a forge in hell.

First shown on 19 March 2009 at La Filature Scène nationale de Mulhouse dans le cadre du festival TRANS(E) 09

Conception, execution, music by Cécile Babiole / Software and electronics Soixante circuits / Sound engineer Eric Ropars / Our thanks to L’Alsace newspaper / A coproduction of La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse and les Ondes / with the support of l’Atelier sonore

Translated by Eric Rosencrantz