Cédric Maridet: Sound Art and Spatial Perception

Cédric Maridet, a composer and sound artist, explores how sound can convey knowledge beyond verbal language. For the 2012 Hong Kong Art Fair, he created a sound walk where visitors wore headphones to listen to recordings from galleries worldwide, overlaying distant sonic environments onto the exhibition space. His work 'Auscultation' (2011) at the Creative Media Centre in Hong Kong involved placing microphones on Daniel Libeskind's building to capture its sounds, inspired by René Laennec's stethoscope. His latest exhibition 'Distinct Factures, A Return from Langsdorff' takes an ecological approach, using recordings from Penang National Park in Malaysia to create sound maps, photographs, and videos. Maridet's practice, rooted in musique concrète, treats sound as material to be sculpted, selecting and composing from reality. He questions urban soundscapes, arguing cities are not saturated with noise and advocating for aural awareness, challenging what philosopher Casey O'Callaghan calls 'the tyranny of vision.'