OUT OF THE TECHNO-COCOON [WIP / 2024 - 2026] - IMMERSIVE LIVE PERFORMANCE

"OUT OF THE TECHNO-COCOON" is an immersive live performance by Amelie Nilles questioning our relationship as human beings with intrusive technology on one hand, and with less accessible nature on the other, by contrasting two distinctly different listening spaces : that of the metropolis and that of nature.The concept of the 'techno-cocoon' is developed by French writer Alain Damasio : « The techno-cocoon is a comforting sphere that nurtures us and sometimes does us good. The techno-cocon protects and shelters us, but its sphere also confines us. [...] I feel like we have slowly inserted ourselves into a kind of fiber optic chrysalis and that we interact with the world mainly through smartphones, screens, and laptops. »Amelie Nilles performs within a multichannel speaker system, symbolizing this techno-cocoon in which both the artist and the audience are trapped. The performance expresses the urgency to break free, conveyed through her voice and the spatial manipulation of sound.
The dress worn by Amelie Nilles, designed by French artist Angèle Lepolard, resembles a shedding skin, with custom-made textile controllers attached like chrysalises. These are directly integrated into both the dress and the scenography.So far, Amelie Nilles has presented "OOTTC [E1]"— a very first version of the project, performed without the textile controllers — in several venues across Europe: at the V-F-X Festival in Ljubljana [SI] and DNA in Grenoble [FR] in May 2024, at Karmen Camina in Strasbourg [FR] in June 2024, at Hellerau in Dresden [DE] in November, and finally at Stadtwerkstatt in Linz [AT] in December 2024.Current duration : 45'Amelie Nilles: concept, artistic direction, sound, spatialisation, controllers
Angèle Lepolard: fashion design and scenography collaboration
Tangible Music Lab: support in prototyping the textile controllers and integrating them into the dress

Eve’s garden [2023] — A multichannel-sound hybrid experience

With her the immersive project « Eve’s garden », Amelie Nilles invites the listener to enter into a kind of magical garden of sounds, where everything is possible. The artist can be seen as a crazy new Eve who just ate a weird fruit, coming from a noisy - huge - impersonal city, seeking solace by fashioning her own intimate sanctuary of sound. Organic textures, field-recordings, vocals, and deconstructed rhythms converge to create a sonic landscape that yearns for a nature absent within urban environments, yet unmistakably influenced by its presence. Within this immersive space, the artist assumes the dual roles of a space's master and a vulnerable captive. She can act on the sound and spatialisation with her MIDI controllers or with sensors, but at times, finds herself overwhelmed, vanishing into the very depths of the listening experience. She embraces freedom, a state that encompasses choices, fears, dangers, as well as moments of profound joy and intensity. The audience is immersed within this organic and ever-evolving environment, traversing from enchanting places to darker ones. A delicate equilibrium is maintained, as we teeter between control and destruction, never fully succumbing to extremes.The space is physically bounded by the multichannel speaker-system. The audience is inside the space and free to stand or sit down. The lights play an important role as it has to enhance the feeling of immersion without disturbing the audience from listening to the music.Amelie Nilles presented « Eve’s garden » on an OTTOsonics’ dome of 40 speakers at KLANGfestival in Austria on July, 1st 2023, with visual artist Zhi Zhi.Duration : 30'Photo credits : Philippe Gerlach & Pia Heuemer
Dress : Angèle Lepolard

When I swim alone in the ocean [2022] — Ambisonics sound installation

When I swim alone in the ocean, lasting 30 minutes, tends to transcribe what we can feel in a natural environment (a kind of contemplation) during a solitary walk in the forest, or when swimming alone in the ocean. The important notion here is that we leave aside our daily routine, for the time of a bath in the ocean or a walk alone in the forest, to come back to it filled with new energies.This piece was specifically designed for the OTTOsonics’ 2 layers speakers system (1 Ambisonics sphere closer and 1 Ambisonics dome further) to work on the creation of her immersive sound installation When I swim alone in the ocean, using the IEM Plug-in Suite, with a public presentation on October 29th, 2022, in Ottensheim [AT].Amelie Nilles experimented with the OTTOsonics’ particular sound system, trying to explore the possibilities of this two layers of speakers, with more of an aesthetic approach than technical, to play a lot with the distances, the proximity and sometimes intrusion of the sound, the « in the head » feeling. The audience listened to the piece in the dark, to let the people create their own images, and to put them a bit in danger.Duration : 30'

>> OTTOSONICS <<

DIONYSIAN SKIN by Filippos Sakagian [2023] - transmedia live performance

DIONYSIAN SKIN unfolds like a death liturgy, a dark and intense theatrical rite that breaks away from the traditional stage setting. Rather than being confined to a specific performance area, the ceremony takes place directly among the audience, inviting them to move and become fully immersed in the act. The use of intense sensory stimulation as well as live sound spatialization, enhances the audience's experience and makes them feel as though they are an integral part of the mortuary rite.Premiered on 16.09.22 as a part of IRCAM Cursus 2022, at 3537, Paris [FR]Duration : 30'

Filippos Sakagian : Concept, Artistic direction, Live electronics, sound spatialization, Live lighting design
Dafin Antoniadou : Choreography, main Performer
Amelie Nilles : Artistic Advisor, Performer
Frederik Bous, Céline Bouscarle & Safia Zimouche : Performers

A croqué le fruit étrange (2021) — EP

Amelie Nilles’ EP A croqué le fruit étrange (’Has taken a bite of the strange fruit’ in English) was released on November 19th, 2021 in vinyls and tapes on Planisphère label. It is a very personal EP, which gathers all the influences of artist : electronic music, concrete music and jazz.
The voice is intimate, central, but also considered as a material in the same way as the other sounds. It is stretched, looped, reversed, reduced to the size of a grain, destroyed, in order to constitute a sound texture or to replace an instrument, to suggest a word, to give birth to a rhythm…It is the result of her desire for experimentation and freedom. It is both beautiful and ugly, sweet and sharp, smooth and unstructured, pop and weird. And a thousand other things. Amélie really thinks in terms of environments while composing music ; every single track is a new imaginary world in which the artist does feel free.>> read a review written by Vincent Meurisse for Igloo Magazine <<

All tracks produced and arranged by Amelie Nilles
Additional production by Filippos Sakagian on tracks 2, 3, 4
Vocals by Amelie Nilles
Lyrics by Abel Meeropol (track 1), Irving Mills (track 2), Billie Holiday & Arthur Herzog Jr. (track 3), Minos Matsas (track 4) and Amélie Nilles (track 5)
Originally composed by Abel Meeropol in 1937 (track 1), Duke Ellington & Juan Tizol in 1936 (track 2), Billie Holiday & Arthur Herzog Jr. in 1944 (track 3), Spiros Peristeris in 1936 (track 4), Amelie Nilles in 2019 (track 5)Mixed & mastered by Esteban Margulis
Artwork and vinyl layout by FRKTL
PLNSPHR009
℗ & © - Planisphere 2021
Distributed by Kuroneko
Manufacturing by Kuroneko Phonogram Manufacture

ACOUSMATIC 360 [2019] - radio podcast

Creation, writing, and production of a two-part sound report, each 28 minutes long, documenting the challenges of a tour of spatialised electronic music regarding the general audience, based on the project Acousmatic 360 by Molécule, Radio France, Miala, and L-Acoustics.Production period : April to November 2019
Publication date : January 2020 on the Hyperradio website.Total duration : 60'

>> Listen to ACOUSMATIC 360 : DANS LES COULISSES D’UN CONCERT EN SON SPATIALISÉ (part1) <<

>> Listen to ACOUSMATIC 360 : APRÈS UN CONCERT EN SON SPATIALISÉ (part2) <<

Sauvage by Léonore Mercier [2019] — Artistic documentary

An immersion into the free wanderings of the wild horses of Galicia. Plunged into their psychological and sonic environment, we breathe in harmony with them. The horse, a prey animal, has retained its survival instinct, with fear as an innate mechanism. This instinct will soon be challenged: captured, they are forced to take part in a local tradition, the 'Rapa das Bestas' (the shearing of the beasts).Direction, camera, sound composition, editing: Léonore Mercier
Second camera: Baptiste Hervy
Stereophonic & Ambisonic sound recording: Amélie Nilles
Mixing: Jules Jasko
Color grading: Alexandre Westphal
Credits design: Jeremy Rosenstein
Production: Paraiso ProductionOfficial Selection for the 2024 César Awards in the Best Documentary Short Film category

IMMERSION SONORE [2017] - event

Programming and organising the spatialised electronic music event Immersion Sonore, in the Auditorium of Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris Nord (MSH), on 20 speakers and 2 subwoofers, on December 7th, 2017. This event aimed to gather on the same stage different kind of electronic music and different kind of spatialisation techniques, for an event dedicated to the spatial dimension of music.Amelie Nilles also performed live combining two sound field reproduction techniques : Ambisonics (with the HOA library developed by the CICM) and WFS by Sonic Emotion. She was wearing an interface (smartphone with a special app) on the left arm to control the effects on her voice. Quentin Nivromont was also assisting her to control the electronic real-time with machines.Line-up :
Jérémie Nicolas - Les sons seuls - acousmatic piece (octophonic)
Jean-François Ducher - Cinq souffles de Tchernobyl - for saxophone and real-time electronic (octophonic, using HOA library in Max/MSP)
Capob - live-electronics (octophonic)
Cauchemar Merveilleux (excerpt) by Léonore Mercier and Arthur H - radiophonic piece designed for WFS by Sonic Emotion
Amelie Nilles - Laïka project - live-electronics (HOA & WFS by Sonic Emotion)
Matthieu Ruben - Cherenkov - live-electronics (octophonic, using HOA library in Max/MSP)Event in partnership with Sonic Emotion , Euphonia , CICM and Paris VIII University

Lecturer [From 2019 - Now]
immersive sound technologies and artistic practices

Lately :20-21.11.24 : State of the Art of Immersive Sound [FR], IMMER-SON discussion panel, Ateliers Art-Sciences, organized by CEA, Grenoble, France11.11.24 : SPATIAL AUDIO — AN INTRODUCTION : multichannel speaker systems, the notion of immersion, artistic challenges [ENG], Institut Français de Bulgarie, Sofia, Bulgaria07.09.24 : Artist talk about the creative process when working with multichannel speaker systems [ENG], JKU, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria- For workshop or lecture inquiries on spatial sound, feel free to get in touch -