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About the piece

Title: Nuages
Artist: Daily Tous les jours
Type: Sound art
Material: Sound device components
Location: North Boulder Library, ramp to second story entrance
Year: 2024
View on Public Art Archive >

Outside of the North Boulder Library is the interactive artwork Nuages, meaning “clouds” in French. The award winning Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based studio, Daily tous le jour, completed the artwork in 2024 for the library’s grand opening. Nuages consists of 44 interactive lines connected to 8 speakers that invite visitor engagement. When interacting with the work, participants can step, roll, or jump to create their tune, individually or with others. Melodies waft from the speakers, with warm synths and acoustic instruments inspired by the utopian-like qualities of libraries. Lines are irregularly spaced, with groupings at different distances, inviting visitors to change the way they move; stepping into different characters as they make their way to or from the library. The walker, the shuffler, the dancer, the jumper and the tip-toer, visitors can try out each role, creating music as they go. They can also simply walk right through and they'll create their own soundtrack as well.

The website of Daily tous le jour describes their goal as creating “collective human experiences for public spaces. Strangers need strange moments together.” The studio purposes their interactive and performance art to tell stories that bring communities together in urban settings. Other interactive artworks by the studio feature musical furniture or swings, data aggregation panels, or communicative LED panels. The founders, Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat, who established the studio in 2010, seek to use art to encourage citizens to play an active role in transforming their urban areas.

"You are walking into a place where people of all ages, cultures and walks of life can come together to share resources, ideas and skills and create the world they want to live in. Nuages (French for clouds) is a ritual of entrance, where every step is part of a song; a dance toward a place where anything is possible."

- Daily tous les jours