Julien Ottavi

Julien Ottavi is a Nantes based sound artist. He studied sound and photography at the art school of Nantes. Since 1997 Ottavi has developed compositions based on the voice and its transformation by computers. Ottavi acknowledges that his work has been influenced by the sound poetry of Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidseick, Kurt Schwitters and Jaap Blonk. Ottavi also acknowledges the influence of contemporary music citing composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, the Musique concrete composers Pierre Henry, Michel Chion, Luc Ferrari and 'noise' musician-composers such as Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski and Bernard Gunter.

Ottavi is a founding member of Formanex, an electro-acoustic quartet performing graphic scores from the 20th and 21st centuries. Formanex has performed works by Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Jerome Joy, Kasper T. Toeplitz and Ralf Wehowsky.