"Musica Mosaica undertakes an experimental exploration of sounds, viewed not merely as simple acoustic phenomena, but as truly living realities. From this perspective, experimentation is by no means a convenient metaphor used to illustrate an intuitive or informal approach. On the contrary, it is meant literally — deliberate, almost scientific: each musical piece becomes a small laboratory where sounds are observed as animated entities, with their own morphology, with impulses that bring them closer or push them apart, and with an intensity that makes them vibrate, grow or fade. Xavier García Bardón and Emmanuel Gonay readily refer to a ‘vivarium’ to describe this artificial yet carefully constructed space, a recreated environment where these sonic beings are placed, moved and confronted with each other, allowing us to observe how they react, develop, transform and disappear.

From this perspective, the act of composing is less about shaping material from scratch than about accompanying — i.e. "instaurating” — a living process. It involves adding, linking, separating or layering sound elements in order to follow the movement through which they seem, almost on their own, to generate an autonomous universe. Like any experiment, this research begins with collecting and creating the materials that will compose this sound laboratory. We too often forget that scientists, in the context of an experiment, never discover the reality with which they are dealing. They provoke the elements they intend to study, placing them in artificial situations, pushing them to express new dimensions, testing them in environments they construct. We only discover to the extent of the situations we create.

Experimental sciences emerged in the early 17th century, partly as a result of Galileo’s creation of an unprecedented apparatus designed to observe uniformly accelerated motion with precision. Since this type of motion, in its pure and precise form, does not exist in nature, he had to provoke it in order to observe it. Galileo therefore designed an artifact: an inclined plane on which he rolled a ball. Bells were placed along the track, set to ring at regular time intervals. Craftsmen were hired to shape the wooden structure so as to obtain the most regular surface and the smoothest metal ball. Galileo also called upon observers. The experimental apparatus was in place: a slope, a moving object, measuring instruments. And an aspect of nature appeared.

Musica Mosaica readily subscribes to this vision of experimentation as a practice of constructing an artificial system. They seek out their sounds, like the materials from which they will be able to compose a sound world. These materials, already profoundly modified, which they create at different times — sometimes very far apart — are stored, as a botanist would assemble a herbarium, taking care of their uniqueness and their potential. In this sense, they reap in proportion to the interventions they implement.

For each piece, Musica Mosaica draws from these patiently accumulated collections, reanimates these sonic beings caught in distinct temporalities, brings them into relation, and confronts them with others to observe the unexpected effects they produce and the new dimensions they acquire through their interaction. Furthermore, any experimentation requires experimental protocols, rules — however minimal — that enable an experiment to proceed and, within this constrained space, allow for forms of improvisation that make space for the multiple contingencies of situations. The protocols may vary, and perhaps the type of protocol does not matter here, as long as a constraint is established, shared and negotiated, and allows each participant to intervene and co‐shape the sonic space as it comes into being.

One of their most consistent practices involves the use of a metronome, a common and classic device in modern Western musical tradition, which they subvert, as they are in no way seeking to establish a common rhythm, but rather a means of multiplying it. Establishing sound materials, inventing protocols and articulating sequences are the three constitutive gestures of these small sound laboratories they attempt to create. If each piece is indeed, as Emmanuel and Xavier say, a narrative, this narrative is constructed directly from the sound materials and through the articulation between sequences. Experimentation therefore involves an irreducible element of improvisation, but within an entirely constructed artificial space: the whole challenge lies in following, listening to and adjusting to the shifting flow through which these sound worlds are constructed in real time, much like fragile ecosystems whose unfolding must be accompanied rather than directed." — Didier Debaise