# Sébastien Vaillancourt > Composer, Performer, Sound Artist ## Posts - [Overengineered](https://sebve.com/works/overengineered/): The more precisely we try to recreate the natural, the further we drift from it – without letting it go. Overengineered is an interactive sound sculpture centered on a constructed tree made of PVC pipe loops and coiled speaker cable. Rather than imitating a natural organism, the structure operates as an electromagnetic antenna, continuously emitting signals into its surrounding, creating an invisible and spatially dynamic field. Visitors are invited to explore this field using handheld electromagnetic pickups. As they move through space, fluctuations in signal intensity are revealed as sound, transforming complex geometries into a form of exploration and play. Each […] - [CHROMA](https://sebve.com/works/chroma/): CHROMA is the fruit of a collaboration between composer Sébastien Vaillancourt, videographer Jana Koshy and Ensemble Proton Bern. It is an audio/video piece for live ensemble and electronics that was premiered on 22 April 2025 at the Dampfzentrale in Bern, Switzerland. CHROMA is a sonic excavation, a journey through Earth’s crust, unearthing layers of history, humanity, in all of its shapes and colours. It lifts all voices and all stories from every continent and culture into a shared space where past, present, and all of human expression converge – raw, luminous, and timeless. Credits:Music – Sébastien VaillancourtVideo – Jana KoshyPerformance – […] - [La révolte botanique](https://sebve.com/works/la-revolte-botanique/): The plants begin it. The performer follows. La révolte botanique is a solo performance for living plants, capacitive touch sensing and live electronics. A group of plants is arranged on stage, each one wired as an electrode and lit from within by LEDs. Touching them — a leaf, a stem, the soil — is the only way the piece is played. Contact registers as conductivity, and conductivity is never stable: it shifts with moisture, with pressure, with the state of the plant itself. The same gesture on the same leaf will not produce the same result twice. Sharp pulses rise from […] - [Raisonnance](https://sebve.com/works/raisonnance/): credits:Music – Sébastien VaillancourtPerformance – Jeanne LarrouturouSound – Denim Szram links:https://jeannelarrouturou.comhttps://www.garedunord.ch/de/programm/2800/friendly-takeover-jeanne-larrouturou - [Histoires](https://sebve.com/works/histoires/): Program Note: Stories sometimes move between truth and lies. We, astonished listeners, strive to uncover the truth—or perhaps we only pretend to understand everything. In fact, we waver between skepticism and a conscious surrender to imagination. We become judges of an unstable sense of reality, swept up in a vortex where the boundaries between authenticity and fabrication begin to dissolve. This piece weaves a fabric of authentic stories, a kaleidoscope of my past and present, in which the borders between reality and fiction blur and reality itself takes on an elusive quality. The instruments, as living witnesses, tell these stories drawn […] - [Sound Garden](https://sebve.com/works/sound-garden/): In the murmurs of cells and the voices of the animals, we hear solar energy refracted into sound. Today all living voices […] are animated by the Sun.— David George Haskell, Sounds Wild and Broken (2022) Plants are the first transducers. They take in light and air and convert them into the chemistry every other living thing feeds on — quietly, continuously, in one direction only. Sound Garden inverts that transaction. 16 potted plants stood across an open field, each fitted with a capacitive electrode, a small speaker at its base, and LEDs. Touch a plant and it gives light back […] - [Feux follets](https://sebve.com/works/feux-follets/): credits:Music – Sébastien VaillancourtFlute – Malin SiebernsSound – Igor Stepanov - [Persian Surgery Dervishes](https://sebve.com/works/persian-surgery-dervishes/): credits:Music – Terry RileyProgramming/Performance – Sébastien Vaillancourt watch: - [simplicité](https://sebve.com/works/simplicite/): credits:Music/Mixing/Mastering – Sébastien Vaillancourt listen: simplicité by SebVé - [Trio A](https://sebve.com/works/trio-a/): credits:Music/Sound – Sébastien VaillancourtPerformance – Zoe GordonChoreography – Zoe Gordon / Netta Weiser watch: - [Maximum Intra](https://sebve.com/works/maximum-intra-album/): credits:Music/Performance/Arrangement – Sébastien VaillancourtMixing – Simon Goff (Vox Ton Recording Studio Berlin)Mastering – Norman Nietzsche (Calyx Mastering) listen: Maximum Intra by SebVé - [Live Coding With Max/MSP](https://sebve.com/works/live-coding-with-max-msp/): credits:Music/Performance – Sébastien Vaillancourt links:https://www.moozak.orghttps://www.viennau.comhttps://www.facebook.com/events/311357856286453 watch: - [Xn 2](https://sebve.com/works/xn-2/): credits:Music/Performance – Sébastien VaillancourtSound – Wolfgang Heiniger links:https://www.akademie-der-kuenste.eu/de/projekte/2017/kontakte17/Veranstaltungen/05_konzert_lautsprecherorchester.htm - [Xn](https://sebve.com/works/xn/): credits (acousmatic version):Music/Mixing/Mastering – Sébastien VaillancourtHarp – Mirjam Schröder credits (instrumental version):Music/Sampler – Sébastien VaillancourtHarps – Luise Adler, Elke Paternusch - [Pas de deux](https://sebve.com/works/pas-de-deux/): credits:Music – Sébastien VaillancourtPerformance – Max Steiner Ensemble ## Pages - [Works](https://sebve.com/works2/): Featured Installations Performances Compositions Releases - [Playing an Invisible Field](https://sebve.com/overengineered-artist-talk-de/): Artist Talk Format Abstract “I set out to build a tree. What I have is an antenna.” This talk covers mapping in computer music, more precisely in the context of the complex geometries that electromagnetic fields can yield. The talk is centred on Overengineered, the sound sculpture seen above, built from PVC pipe and speaker cable. Four separate circuits run through its branches, each carrying its own sine tone, and each radiating an electromagnetic field into the space immediately around the wires. Visitors hold electromagnetic pickups and move them through that field. What they hear is the structure of the field […] - [La révolte botanique (2024)](https://sebve.com/la-revolte-botanique-epk/): A live performance for living plants and electronics The Performance Touch a plant, and for once, it touches back. La révolte botanique (The Botanical Revolt) is a solo performance where living plants stand at the center of the stage, wired into a system of capacitive touch sensors and LEDs. As the performer interacts with the plants, the boundary between playing and being played gradually disappears: conductivity changes with moisture, contact, and the plant’s own restless state, and those modulations drive sharp pulses and heavy synth textures. The vegetation stirs, responds, and asserts a will of its own. What began as the […] - [Overengineered (2026)](https://sebve.com/overengineered-epk/): A sound installation by Sébastien Vaillancourt Photos Sounds Nice Exhibition 2026, Basel Capture from the Sounds Nice exhibition | June 2026 @ Gare du Nord (Basel, Switzerland) The Sculpture We wanted to build a tree; we ended up with an antenna. Overengineered began as an attempt to reconstruct something that already exists: a tree. But the more technical precision was applied to the task, the further the result drifted from its model. Branches became PVC pipes. Leaves became coiled speaker cable. What emerged was not a tree, nor an imitation of one, but an idealised, overengineered version of it – an […] - [Works](https://sebve.com/works/) - [Home](https://sebve.com/): Sébastien Vaillancourt Composer, Performer and Sound Artist working at the boundary between the acoustic and the electronic Featured Works Overengineered – InstallationCHROMA – CompositionLa révolte botanique – Live Performance see all works Recent & Upcoming Dates Fall 2026 – Portrait Concert – New York, USAJune 2026 – Sounds Nice Exhibition – Basel, SwitzerlandJune 2026 – Mise-En Festival – New York, USAApril 2026 – Röstibrücke Symposium – Zürich, Switzerland - [Contact](https://sebve.com/contact/): Connect Stream Stay in touch - [About](https://sebve.com/about/): Sébastien Vaillancourt is a Basel-based composer-performer and sound artist whose practice centers on transduction: using electronics and sensing to translate physical gestures into sound and light, and in doing so, to reveal aspects of the world that might otherwise remain imperceptible. Working across acoustic and electronic media, he creates performances and interactive systems in which plants, antennas, motion sensors used on the body, and other unconventional interfaces become instruments. His live-electronics practice explores how these technologies can extend perception, drawing attention to subtle relationships between bodies, materials, and environments. His work has been commissioned by Ensemble Proton Bern, the Akademie der […] ## Optional - [Agent (MCP protocol)](websites-agents.hostinger.com/sebve.com/mcp) [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)