Cédric Clastres
email: cedric.clastres@g2elab.inpg.fr

Laurent David
email: laurent-m.david@gazdefrance.com

A surplus and welfare analysis of asymmetric regulation 1

Keywords: Energy market, Gas release, Regulation, Optimal released quantities, Efficiency, Welfare JEL Classification : L13, L29, L51, L95

Some European regulators have decided to force competition in their national markets. They have decided to go beyond the second directive and apply asymmetric regulation. Gas release programs and market shares constraints are the two asymmetric decisions imposed to incumbents. When a regulator imposes a gas release program to an incumbent, this operator is compelled to release quantities of its long term contracts to its competitor. In this paper, we will focus on gas release and its impact on welfare, consumer surplus and on the level of released quantities set by regulators.

The aim of a gas release program is to give access to natural gas to competitors. They become actives on the market and are in competition with the incumbent. These programs are time limited. They only help competitors in expecting the development of hubs or new investments in importation infrastructures. If competitors want to stay active after the program, they may find others supply sources to increase security of supply.

The gas release can induce Raising Rival's Costs or "Self-Sabotage" strategies. We use a Cournot model with capacity constraints to answer two questions.

First, we will study the impact of these strategies on consumer surplus and welfare. We will show that there are no impact on consumer surplus but the welfare decreases. The gas release program introduces a transfer of profit between competitor and incumbent, reduces welfare because of the increase in costs of supply, but has no impact on total consumed quantities.

Then, we will suppose that the regulator is setting released quantities maximising welfare. Gas release price is often based on costs plus a bid or a fixed premium. Quantities are set with a less obvious process. We will demonstrate that the regulator must set released quantities :

-that would not be so high if incumbent's supplies are small to avoid Self-Sabotage or RRC strategies;

-as a function of incumbent's supplies if they are in intermediate values to avoid strategies seen above and to optimise quantities sold on the market;

1 We are very grateful to Gaz de France for their financial support and to Pr. J. Percebois, E. Baranes, Y. Smeers, C. Crampes, J-C Poudou and f. Mirabel for their helpful comments, ideas and discussions. The usual caveat applies. The positions expressed in this paper are not official positions of Gaz de France.

1

-at a sufficient level to let the two operators playing their Cournot best reply function.

Finally, we will conclude that the regulator can avoid RRC or Self-Sabotage strategies in maximising the welfare when it decides gas released quantities. Gathering from empirical studies, these quantities should not be so high in order to let a significant difference between the capacities of both competitor and incumbent to avoid collusive behaviours.

Introduction

The european commission has published a lot of directives to open gas and electricity markets to competition [START_REF] Green | US Regulation and Competition Policy among the Energy Utilities[END_REF]). With the deregulation of European energy markets, some regulators have decided to implement asymmetric regulation. Schankerman (1996) defined a symmetric regulation like a regulation that gives to all participants to the market the same rules to make competition. Each of them must receive the same price signal and must respect the same obligations and restrictions. Starting from this definition, we can define an asymmetric regulation as a set of regulation rules that apply to one or some operators. The aim of this regulation is to promote entries of competitors by an easier access to the commodity.

Asymmetric regulations have been implemented by some regulators in several network industries. In telecommunication market, incumbent must serve the local service and long distance call at a regulated price. Competitors could propose a smaller price than incumbent one and it could gain customer with this strategy of cream-skimming. In electricity market, incumbent must release part of their generation capacity. For example, ENEL (3700 MW in the Sourthern Italy macro-zone and 150 MWin the Sicily macro-zone) and EDF (1025 MW by auctions, 736 MW baseload et 289 MW peakload in september 2007) have sold capacities of production in Virtual Power Plants mechanism. In gas market, some regulators have implemented gas release programs. The incumbent must release part of its supplies contracted by long term relations to its competitors (in France, gas release of 45 TWh by auctions and over the counter negociation).

In this paper, we will focus on asymmetric regulation in European gas market. [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF] have shown that incumbent can have incentives to increase its cost of supply to reduce competitor's sales. Doing so, the incumbent increases its profits. in this paper, we will show the impact of gas release program on consumers' surplus and welfare and that this strategy has no impact on consumer surplus but decreases welfare.

European gas release experiences show that gas release prices are often set in line with the incumbent's importation costs, at the weighted average cost of gas or by auctions with ceiling price. Price setting mechanism is known by all participants. Few information is available on gas release proportion setting.

Gas release quantities are set in a less obvious process. We will show that the regulator can set the gas release proportion to maximise welfare. The only condition is to know the incumbent supplies.

2 Presentation, strategies and equilibriums of the Cournot game

We start from Clastres and David's model (2005). An integrated firm has bought a capacity of natural gas K o at unit cost u. This incumbent must offer a proportion α ∈ [0, 1] of its capacity K o to its competitor on the downstream market at a price r. The incumbent is an upstream monopolist. However, because of gas release obligation, it cannot forclore its competitor. The competitor has choice to buy all or part of released quantities. The regulator determines both α and r values. Variables K o , α, u and r are exogenous. Let q o and q e be the quantities respectively sold by the incumbent and its competitor. This Cournot game deals with two constraints. The competitor (or gas release) constraint q e ≤ αK o (C 1 ) stipulates that it cannot sell more than the quantity it got from the incumbent. And the market constraint q e + q o ≤ K o (C 2 ) that applies to both operators which cannot sell more than the incumbent's supplies. The demand function in the final market is a linear one, P (q) = 1 -q. Profits are respectively for the incumbent and the competitor:

Π o (q o , q e , r) = P (q o + q e )q o -uK o + rq e (1)

Π e (q o , q e , r) = P (q o + q e )q e -rq e (2)

Authors found that the optimal solutions of the game are those of the simultaneous optimization program :

   M ax qo Π o (q o , q e , r) = P (q o + q e )q o -K o u + rq e

M ax

qe Π e (q o , q e , r) = P (q o + q e )q e -rq e s/c q e ≤ αK o (λ e )

q e + q o ≤ K o (µ o , µ e ) .
Let λ e be the multiplier value of C 1 . Each firm has a multiplier value associated to C 2 [START_REF] Breton | Equilibria in an asymmetric duopoly facing a security constraint[END_REF]). They are µ e for the competitor and µ o for the incumbent.

To solve this problem, we at first consider constraint C 1 and add in a second step constraint C 2 . Four equilibriums are solutions of this maximization program. They depend on parameters α, K o and r. We can represent these equilibriums in a (K o , α) graph, for a given r. We have all different cases with the variation of r. Finally, we obtain four areas (see figure 1) where one equilibrium can be played by the two firms.

In the zone 1a, the two constraints are actives, so we have

λ e = 1 2 -3 2 αK o - r > 0 and µ κ o = 1 + αK o -2K o > 0.
The incumbent's supplies K o are too small to make the two constraints inactive. The equilibrium is :

q κ e = αK o q κ o = (1 -α)K o . (3)
In the zone 1b, C 1 is active (λ e > 0). Within this zone, α is too small to allow the competitor to play its best-reply function; its best strategy is playing its maximum quantity. The incumbent, because of great values of its supplies, can play its best-reply function; C 2 is inactive. The equilibrium is :

q κ e = αK o q m o = 1 2 -1 2 αK o . ( 4
)
In the zone 2, C 2 is binding. This zone is characterized by a multiplicity of equilibriums [START_REF] Breton | Equilibria in an asymmetric duopoly facing a security constraint[END_REF]). This equilibrium is :

q e = 2K o + µ o -1 q o = 1 -µ o -K o . ( 5
)
with µ o = -3K o + 2 -rµ e and µ e > 0. We select one of these equilibriums by setting µ e = 0. For gas industries, this choice is relevant insofar as the incumbent is in charge of the obligation of supply, the competitor puts no value on relaxing the market constraint. In this area, α is high enough to make C 1 inactive. Nevertheless, C 2 remains active because of the small incumbent's supplies. In zone 3, the two constraints are inactive. The two operators can play their best-reply function. This fourth equilibrium is the classic Cournot one:

q c e = 1 3 -2 3 r q c o = 1 3 + 1 3 r . ( 6
)
All these curves are functions of α, K o and r. They are drawn in a (K o , α) plane for a given gas release price r. If r changes, they all move except µ κ o that is constant in r. If the gas release price increase, then the competitor will buy less gas release quantities. So, the gas release constraint will be inactive for a large range of K o or α values. Curves move towards the origin of axes. We will call (K A o , α A ) the coordinates of A point for a given gas release price r.

Remark 1 All the four zones exist if r ∈ 0, 1 2 . If r ≥ 1 2 , then q c e ≤ 0. In addition, the zones 1a and 1b disappear, and the Cournot equilibrium is not a feasible one. Then, only the zone of multiplicity of equilibriums can be reach. So, we will assume that r ∈ 0, 1 2 . If K o > 2 3 -1 3 r and r > 1 2 , then the competitor does not buy any quantity and the incumbent is in a monopoly configuration. In this case, the regulator does not implement a gas release program. As the gas release price is based on costs u, we can conclude that u will be less than In [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF], we conclude that incumbent could have incentives to increase its costs to improve its profits on final market. These incentives depend on initial conditions (K o , α, u). So, quantities sold on the market could increase or decrease if the equilibrium moves. These changes in quantities affect the consumers' surplus S c = 1 2 q 2 with q = q e + q o and q > 0. Observing this surplus, we can see that more quantities on the market goes with an increasing surplus.

The consumers' surplus is the same when the market constraint C 2 is active :

S κ c = S c = 1 2 (K o ) 2
, with S κ c the surplus in zone 1a and S c the surplus in zone 2. In zone 1a or 2, incumbent could have incentives to increase the gas release price r for a given (K o , α) pair. This increase in costs does not modify consumers' surplus. The increase in incumbent profit is only a trade off with competitor's profit, not with consumers' surplus. Competitor's supply costs increase and its profit are decreasing because it sells less quantity (the gas release quantity is active) at the same market price (market constraint is active) but its supply cost r increases (zone 2 in figure 1).

Lemma 2 As the market constraint is active, then a gas release price increase, linked with less efficient incumbent, does not impact consumers' surplus. The increase in incumbent's profit is only a trade off with competitor's profit.

Acknowledgement 3 The intuition of this lemma is the following. The increase in supply cost does not modify the quantity effect. The two operators still offer to consumer the same global quantity at the same price because the market constraint is always active. Operators' market shares are moving because competitor purchases less gas release quantities, as the gas release price increases. The incumbent sells the remaining of its supply.

If, for a given (K o , α) pair, the market constraint is active, all incumbent's supplies are sold. With this K o level, moving from an equilibrium where the market constraint is active to a Cournot equilibrium (zone 3 in figure 1) deals with consumers' surplus losses. Quantities sold on the market was q κ e + q κ o = K o or q e + q o = K o , depending on the gas release constraint activity. If the equilibrium is the unconstraint Cournot one, then quantities are q c e + q c o < K o . So, the consumer surplus decreases. In the other case, the consumer surplus increases. Incumbent has incentives to be efficient if the equilibrium is the unconstraint Cournot one to increase its profits [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF]). For (K o , α) pairs with K o <2 3 2 and λ e < 0, if the equilibrium is in zone 3 (figure 1), then a decrease in incumbent costs or in gas release price could make the market constraint active. These incentives to efficiency improve the consumer surplus because consumption on the final market will be K o instead of q c e + q c o .

Lemma 4 At the unconstraint Cournot equilibrium with K o < 2 3 , the incumbent has incentives to be efficient. These incentives improve consumers' surplus.

Acknowledgement 5 The intuition is the following. If the incumbent does not sell all its supply, it has incentives to decrease its costs. So, the competitor purchases more gas release quantities, but its sells and the market price decrease. The cost effect overcomes the reduction in final price and quantities it could sell. The incumbent earns more profit with this strategy (profits are decreasing in costs). As the competitor purchases and sells more gas release quantities, the market constraint becomes active. The effect on consumers' surplus is positive.

When the incumbent reduces its costs, so the gas release constraint becomes active for a large range of K o or α values. The equilibrium could be (q κ e , q m o ). In this zone (zone 1b in figure 1), a modification of gas release price could not make the market constraint active because zones 1b and 1a or 2 are complementary ones. Then, the consumer will prefer another equilibrium with higher quantities K o but this equilibrium could not be reach, except if incumbent gas supplies decrease. Furthermore, the (q κ e , q m o ) equilibrium is better than (q c e , q c o ) one for a given (K o , α) pair. If the market constraint is inactive, the reaction function of the incumbent and competitor show that a reduction in incumbent quantities is compensated by a larger increase in competitor sales. The interest of consumer is to be in a context where competitor sales are greater. Competitor sales are maximum when the gas release constraint is active, that means when the equilibrium is (q κ e , q m o ) for a given (K o , α) pair. As a result, an increase in gas release price reduces the consumer's surplus because the gas release constraint becomes inactive. On the other hand, a decrease in gas release price increases competitor's sales that overcomes the diminution effect of incumbent's sales. A lower gas release price improves the consumer's surplus.

Lemma 6 If K o > K A
o , then an increase in gas release price reduces consumer's surplus if the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ), and has no effect if the equilibrium stays (q κ e , q m o ). A lower gas release price improves or has no effect on consumers' surplus if we reach the equilibrium (q κ e , q m o ) or if the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ).

Proof. See annex 1.

Acknowledgement 7 The intuition is the following. An increase in costs reduces the positive effect of quantities lowering the global offer of operators. On the other hand, if the gas release price is running low, the increase in competitor's sales compensates the reduction in incumbent's ones. This effect improves the consumers' surplus. If the competitor purchases all gas release quantities yet, then lowering gas release price only has an effect on operators' profits.

As we have shown it in [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF], if the incumbent has incentives to increases its costs, it does not impact consumers. This strategy has only an impact on competitor's profits.

Proposition 8 The effect of gas release price changes on consumer's surplus is ambiguous and rely on initial conditions of supplies K o and gas release proportion α. Consumers are better of in markets where both supplies and gas release proportions are high. If the market is tight, then an increase in gas release price can reduce consumers' surplus reducing global quantities sold on the market.

Proposition 9 If the gas release constraint is active or both constraints are inactive, an increase in gas release price reduces consumer's surplus if the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ) or if the equilibrium moves from (q κ e , q m o ) to (q c e , q c o ), has no effect on this surplus if the equilibrium is (q κ e , q m o ). Lowering this price in the same context increase the surplus if the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ) or if the equilibrium moves from (q c e , q c o ) to (q κ e , q m o ), has no effect if the equilibrium stays (q κ e , q m o ).

Proof. See annex 1.

Acknowledgement 10 When we study the consumer's surplus, two effects appear. The first effect is the incumbent's cost [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF]). The other effect is a quantity one. If incumbent's supplies are low, the cost effect has no impact because all supplies are sold. If supplies are in medium or high values, then an increase in costs reduces quantities sold on the market and has an impact on welfare. If costs decrease, so the consumers' surplus increase with quantities sold. The efficiency's gain could be profitable for the incumbent; its profits increase despite of the reduction of both its sales and final price.

If we suppose the regulator wants to maximise the consumer's surplus, then it must choose a gas release proportion such as all supplies are sold. If supplies are very high, the proportion must be chosen to let the competitor playing its Cournot strategy.

Gas release and Welfare

Let be W = Π o + Π e + S c = q(1 -1 2 q) -uK o the welfare of the industry3 . So, two effects appear :

• higher are quantities sold on the market, greater will be the welfare4 ;

• if the supply conditions (K o , u) are well negotiated5 , the welfare will be high.

These two effects are complementary ones. If supply conditions are well negotiated, then the competitor must buy more quantities because the gas release price will be lower. So, the probability of equilibriums where gas release constraint or market constraint are actives will increase. When these equilibriums are played, the global quantity is greater than in Cournot zone, for a given level of supply K o . To show the intuition, we start from a given (K o , α) pair such as the equilibrium is the unconstrained Cournot one. If the gas release price decreases, one of the constraints becomes active. We saw that if one constraint becomes active, quantities sold on the market increase 6 . These increases in quantities and in efficiency of supply conditions improve the welfare. On the other hand, for (K o , α) pairs with 1 -3αK o < 0 and K o > K A o , the unconstrained Cournot equilibrium is unique. If r → 0, the limit of the activity of the GR constraint is

1 -3αK o = 0. If (K o , α) are such that 1 -3αK o < 0 and K o > K A
o , so equilibrium is those with constraint inactive, for any GR price r. GR proportion α or incumbent's supplies K o are so high that competitors do not buy all GR quantities. Thus, we have the same conclusion as those in the section of consumers' surplus.

With a high gas release proportion and small supplies, the incumbent could have incentives to increase its supply cost [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF]). This increase could be a less efficient renegotiation of long term supply contract with gas producers. This strategy does not impact sales on the market because the market constraint stays active but damages the welfare as it deteriorates supply conditions and competitors costs [START_REF] Economides | The incentive for non-price discrimination by an input monopolist[END_REF]).

The regulator and gas release proportion choice

As we have seen before, gas release price are often set in line with costs, on non-discriminatory basis. It could be set at an average cost (as in England, Spain or Italy) or by an auction mechanism (Germany, France or Austria) with a ceiling price based on supply costs. Auction bids cannot be below this ceiling price [START_REF] Clastres | An analysis of gas release experience in Europe[END_REF]). If costs or ceiling price are lower, then gas release price could be weak7 and could have an increasing impact on welfare. However, it is very difficult to know how the gas release proportion α is set. We notice that its level is between 3 and 10% of the national natural gas consumption in a country but there is not any further information about it. On the other hand, we have seen that the gas release proportion could increase incentives for the incumbent to be less efficient to increase its profits [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF]). This strategy has no impact on consumers' surplus but reduces the welfare because supply costs increase. The regulator must not set a so high gas release proportion to avoid this strategy for low supplies (K o < 1 2 ). With a lower gas release proportion in a weak natural gas supply context, the regulator keep incentives to efficiency. If supplies are increasing, then incumbent's incentives to be les efficient progressively disappear and become inexistent if we are in the unconstraint Cournot equilibrium, i.e. when K o > 1 2 et µ κ o < 0. When supplies are higher (K o > 1 2 ), the regulator, setting a smaller gas release proportion α such as λ e > 0 et µ κ o < 0, could lead the competition towards the equilibrium (q κ e , q m o ). Thus, the incentives are efficient one. If K o ∈ 1 2 , 2 3 , the regulator could set α as µ κ o > 0.Quantities sold on the market would be greater (all K o supplies are sold) but the incumbent could have incentives to be less efficient, with a negative impact on welfare.

After this short discussion, we assume that regulator wants to maximize the welfare function W seen above and not only the consumer's surplus. We have seen that gas release price is set in line with costs or by an auction mechanism. So, α will be the variable that the regulator could set to maximise welfare. If K o < 1 2 , then all gas release proportion α maximises the welfare because the market constraint is always active. The supply costs are the only variable that affects the welfare. So, the regulator has incentives to set a small α to restore incentives to efficiency. If µ κ o ≥ 0, the regulator sets α as µ κ o = 0. Doing so, all incumbent's profits become decreasing and continuous function in u for u ∈ ]0, 1] . The incumbent has again incentives to renegotiate for the best its supply costs when renegotiation rounds with producers take place along the lifetime of the long term take or pay contract. Setting the gas release proportion α at µ κ o = 0 level for K o < 2 3 , the regulator is certain to maximise welfare 8 and restore incentives for the incumbent to be more efficient to increase its profits. On the other hand, if K o > 2 3 , then, for any gas release price, the equilibrium are (q κ e , q m o ) if λ e > 0 et (q c e , q c o ) if λ e < 0. The regulator decides to set α to achieve the equilibrium (q c e , q c o ) for a given (K o , r) pair. Actually, with an α leading to the equilibrium (q κ e , q m o ) for a given (K o , r) pair, the competitor is constrained. It would like to buy more gas release quantities at price r and it would be possible because all K o supplies are not sold (q κ e + q m o < K o ).The reduction in competitor's sales (it sells q κ e instead of q c e ) is greater than the increase in incumbent's sales (q c o to q m o ). Thus, global quantities sold on the market decrease for a constant K o supply level. This effect reduces welfare. The welfare is greater if regulator chooses a greater gas release proportion α if supplies are high and if the gas release prise could not modify the equilibrium (q c e , q c o ). With a high gas release proportion, the risk of tacit collusion between firms could increase. So, the regulator must be watchful to incentives to collusion setting the gas release proportion. Literature on tacit collusion shows that firms could adopt sustainable collusive behaviours if there exist capacities of production [START_REF] Green | Competition in the British Electricity spot Market[END_REF], [START_REF] Crampes | Capacity Competition in ElectricityMarkets[END_REF]) and if these capacities of production are symmetric (Pénard [1997], Bernheim and Whinston [1990]). So, a high level of gas release price reduces the difference between capacities of production of competitors and incumbent. This reduction increases the sustainabilty of collusion. However, if the regulator sets a small gas release proportion, the difference in capacities always exists and could reduce the risk of collusion [START_REF] Compte | Capacity constraints, mergers and collusion[END_REF], Ivaldi and alii [2003]).

Proposition 11 If supplies are low, K o < 1 2 , the regulator could choose any proportion in ]0, 1] but it does not be so high to keep incumbent incentives to efficiency. If supplies are higher, K o ∈ 1 2 , 2 3 , the regulator maximizes welfare setting a gas release proportion as µ κ o = 0. If supplies are greater, K o > 2 3 , the regulator set a gas release proportion such as λ e < 0.

Proof. See annex 2.

8 All supplies Ko are sold.

Acknowledgement 12 The regulator, setting α, introduces a trade off between incumbent and competitor profits. The welfare is maximum if quantities sold on the market are high and if supplies conditions, i.e. cost u and level K o , are well negotiated. When supplies in a country are low, all contracted quantities are sold. So, to maximize welfare, the only solution for the regulator is to improve incumbent efficiency. More the incumbent is efficient, lower will be the cost of supplies u and the gas release price r. So, the gas release proportion α must not be so high to avoid countervailing incentives : the incumbent could have incentives to increase its costs for high gas release proportions [START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF]). When supplies are in medium values, the regulator could use both the gas release proportion and the efficiency of the incumbent to improve welfare. Its strategy is to assess α as all supplies K o are sold and incumbent has incentives to reduce its costs (α as µ κ o = 0). So, for these values of α, the competitor purchases all gas release quantities and incumbent sells the remaining of its supplies (1-α)K o . As the price on final market is constant and competitor purchases all gas release quantities, the incumbent could improve its profits and the welfare if supply costs decrease. If supplies are high, the regulator sets α to maximise sales on the market and to benefit from incentives to efficiency. The incumbent, in this case, has incentives to be efficient because competition has an impact on its profits. Each unit of supply it could not sell decrease its profits. The regulator could set a gas release proportion greater than in other cases, notably if all supplies K o could be sold.

Conclusion

We have assumed that supplies K o were not very adaptable. On the other hand, we have seen that the incumbent has an influence on gas release price because they are based on supply costs. This costs could be altered if incumbent, in a round of renegotiation of supply long term take or pay contracts, is not efficient. The regulator sets both the gas release proportion and the regulation of gas release price (equal to costs u or to and auction bid with costs as ceiling price below which gas release quantities are not sold).

When supplies are low (blue shaded area in figure 2), regulator, setting a low gas release proportion, increases incumbent incentives to efficiency. This increase in efficiency does not modify global quantities sold on the market, so the consumer surplus is constant, but increase the welfare, because supply conditions are better.

When supplies are higher, so the regulator, setting a gas release proportion as a function of supplies (red line in figure 2), makes the incumbent efficient. All supplies K o are sold, so the consumer surplus is maximum and the welfare increase because of high value of quantities and incumbent efficiency.

If K o ∈ 1 2 , 2
3 , the regulator has a dominant strategy : setting a gas release proportion as µ κ o = 0. The red line (figure 2) could be extended to the intersection point, solution of the system

1 -3αK o = 0 K o = 2 3 .
When supplies are greater, so several screenplays exist. Regulator maximises the welfare and surplus setting α as no constraint is active. Actually, setting a lower value of α, the gas release constraint is active and modifies competitor strategy. It purchases less quantities and this diminution is more important than the increase in incumbent sales. So, the surplus and welfare dropped. Regulator, setting α a higher value of α, maximises surplus and welfare. Effectively, if supplies are in medium values (green shaded area in figure 2), the incumbent has incentives to be efficient. This increase in efficiency reduces the gas release price and the market constraint becomes active. Surplus and welfare increase because of more quantities with low costs sold on the market. If the efficiency cannot be modified, then quantities sold are greater than those which smaller gas release proportion. In the other case, a small gas release proportion makes the gas release constraint active. Competitor purchases fewer quantities that the increase in incumbent's sales does not compensate. Losses in surplus and welfare appear. If K o is greater (yellow shaded area in figure 2), then efficiency increase surplus and welfare. Competitor purchases more quantities (the gas release price is lower) until the gas release constraint becomes active. This increase is greater than the incumbent's sales reduction so, as there are improvements in supply conditions, welfare and surplus are improved. Finally, when gas penetration in primary consumption is weighty (yellow squared area in figure 2), so, for any gas release price r, this case maximises welfare. Competitor purchases greater gas release quantities because the gas release constraint is inactive. Here again, welfare and surplus are improved with quantities and efficiency effects. With our linear demand p(q) = 1 -q, the consumer surplus S c = 1 2 q 2 is an increasing function of q. Consumers prefers if all supplies are sold, so equilibrium in zones Ia or II for a given (K o , α) pair. Quantities in zone Ib are less importants for a given K o (q κ e +q κ o = q e + q o = K o > q κ e +q m o ). However, if the equilibrium is in zone Ia or II, it is not possible to reach zone Ib if r modified. These zones are complementary ones and being in zone Ib depends on initial conditions (K o , α), and on r values.

The incumbent could modify the equilibrium with the negociation of its costs of supply u. It could move from zone Ib to zone III and inversely. However, incentives goes with efficiency. So, we will study if it is possible that consumer surplus is higher in zone Ib rather than in zone III. We will compare consumer surplus in zones Ib and III for all r. Two equilibrium are available :

• The C equilibrium (q c e , q c o ) with S c c = 1 18 (r -2) 2 as consumer surplus;

• the equilibrium with the gas release constraint active (q κ e , q m o ) with S κ,m c = 1 8 (αK o + 1) 2 as consumer surplus.

Moving from (q c e , q c o ) towards (q κ e , q m o ) implies a change in gas release price r, for a given (K o , α) pair. If gas release price decrease, competitor could buy more gas release quantities and to bind the gas release constraint, th incumbent always playing its best reply function. If gas release price increase, the intuition is the contrary one. If we call q o (q e ) = 1 -2q e -r the competitor's Cournot reaction function and q o (q e ) = 1 2 -1 2 q e those of the incumbent, the explanation of equilibrium changes is in th following figure.

The arrow 1 indicates the shift of competitor's Cournot reaction function if r decreases, i,e (q c e , q c o ) towards (q κ e , q m o ). The arrow 2 indicates the same shift but with an increase in r, i,e (q κ e , q m o ) towards (q c e , q c o ). We can distinguish two cases. First, if gas release price variations are too low to modify the equilibrium, then :

• if the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ), an increase (decrease) in gas release price reduces (increases) quantities sold on the market. So, according to reaction functions, if gas release price decreases, the increase in competitor's sales overcomes the decrease in incumbent'ones. Consumers surplus increases. If gas release price increases, so inversely, consumers surplus is decreasing because of competitor's sales are not compensated by incumbent ones.

• We could have the same idea if the equilibrium is (q κ e , q m o ), except that the consumer surplus is invariant in r variations, as quantities are independant in r. The only effect is on operator's profits.

Second case, if gas release price variations could change the equilibrium zone, we could move from (q κ e , q m o ) towards (q c e , q c o ). As we can see in the precedent figure, an increase in r leads to reduction of q e from q κ e towards q c e and an increase in q o from q m o to q c o . A variation of q e is not compensated by variations of q o , so quantities sold on the marcket decrease. So, an increase in gas release price reduces consumer's surplus moving from (q κ e , q m o ) towards (q c e , q c o ). For the same reason, a decrease in gas release price increase consumer's surplus, for a given (K o , α) pair.

8 Annex 2 : Maximisation of Welfare by regulator

The welfare is W = (1 -q)q -uK o + 1 2 q 2 = q -1 2 q 2 -uK o .

If K o < 1 2 , the market constraint is active. So the welfare in independant in α but depends on supply levels K o and on supply costs u.

If K o ∈ 1 2 , 2
3 , all equilibriums are possibles. So we have following quantities and welfares :

• q κ = q = K o ⇒ W κ = W κ,m = K o -1 2 K 2 o -uK o • q κ,m = 1 2 + 1 2 αK o ⇒ W κ,m = 1 2 + 1 2 αK o -1 2 1 2 + 1 2 αK o 2 -uK o = 3 8 + 1 4 αK o -1 8 α 2 K 2 o -uK o • q c = 2 3 -1 3 u ⇒ W c = 2 3 -1 3 u -1 2 2 3 -1 3 u 2 -uK o = 4 9 -1 9 u-1 18 u 2 -uK o
The first and third welfare are independant in α. They depends on supply conditions uK o . But, the second welfare is a function of α. Its maximisation leads to : Ko > 0 ⇔ 2 K o -1 Ko > 0, wrong because K o < 2 3 (the limit of the existence of zone 2 is such as µ o > 0 ⇔ K o < 2-r 3 with the upper limit when r = 0, i,e K o < 2 3 ) so this maximum could not be reached. We are in the increasing part of the welfare. The regulator sets α o to maximise the welfare. We are on the curve µ κ o = 0, with continu and decreasing profit and no incentives to increase costs of supply u.

If K o > 2 3 , so two equilibriums are only available, for all r values. these two equilibriums are (q κ e , q m o ), only the gas release constraint is active, or (q c e , q c o ), the unconstrained Cournot equilibrium. Supplies K o are high enought to make the market constraint inactive. The regulator maximise the welfare setting a gas release proportion such as λ e < 0. For all r, setting a gas release proportion such as λ e > 0, the regulator could constraint competitor. The competitor wishes to buy q c e but, as a lower value of α, it could only buy q κ e . So, quantities sold on the market are lower. If gas release proportion is higher, the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ). Competitor does not buy all gas release quantities, the incumbent plays its Cournot best reply function but the quantities sold on the market are higher. The following figure illustrates this case.

q e (q o ) q o (q e ) q o +q e ≤K o α 1 K o q e q o q o m q e κ κ κ κ

q o c q e c α 2 K o If K o ≥ 2
3 and if gas release price is constant, if the regulator chooses α = α 1 with α 1 such as λ e > 0, so the equilibrium is (q κ e , q m o ). If, the regulator sets α = α 2 with α 2 such as λ e < 0, so the equilibrium is (q c e , q c o ). For the same (K o , r) pair, the gas release constraint is inactive and competitor's quantities, thus total quantities sold on the market, increase. As the incumbent has incentives to be efficient, the cost of supply, and r, could decrease. So, if gas release proportion is such as λ e < 0 with 1 -3αK o > 0, a reduction in r could modify the equilibrium from (q c e , q c o ) to (q κ e , q m o ). Thus, the competitor could move from an equilibrium wherre the gas release constraint is inactive to an equilibrium where it becomes actives, increasing quantities and welfare.

  Figure 1: Four equilibriums zones

Figure

  Figure 2 : Areas of maxima welfare and consumer surplus

  so W κ,m is a concave fucntion of α and α = 1 Ko is the maximum of this function. We are in the equilibrium zone II, whereµ κ o ≤ 0 ⇔ 1 -2K o + αK o ≤ α ⇔ α < α o = 2Ko-1 Ko . If α = 1 Ko could be reach, it must be such as α < α o ⇔ 2K o -1 Ko -1

For K o ≥ 2

, the market constraint is always inactive[START_REF] Clastres | Strategies of an incumbent in a context of Gas Release[END_REF]).

As the demand function is p(q) = 1 -q, q ≤ 1. The welfare is a concave function in q and it is increasing for q ≤ 1.

For the study of quantities and equilibrium, see the precedent section.

A small product uK o must say supply condition are efficients, or mean that the market size is small.

The competitor wants to buy the minimum between its strategy q κ e (the gas release constraint is active) or qe (the market constraint is active).

In an auction mecanism, it depends on bids.


Makis Solomos

Between morphological research and social criticism: notes on the aesthetics of noise in avant-garde music

The present article aims to retrace the history of the progressive increase in the share of noises in the avant-garde music of the 20th-21st centuries, from the proliferation of dissonance and noise at the start of the twentieth century to Agostino Di Scipio's "audible ecosystems". It is possible, schematically, to think of this progression of noise according to two main categories. On the one hand, noise can occur according to a morphological logic. Here, musicians are interested in noise for its sonic, musical potential, for the pleasure that the listener can take in being invaded by complex sounds, interesting from a sonic point of view. The second major way for avant-garde music to generalize noise is criticism, whether it be social, political or other. In this sense, noise replaces the dissonances for which Theodor Adorno, referring to Schoenberg, wrote in his Philosophy of New Music: "The dissonances that frighen them [the listeners] speak of their own situation", implying the condition of the alienated.

The article is divided into five parts. The first evokes the generalization of dissonance in Stravinsky'work or the American "bad boys" of the years 1910-30, before focusing on the bruitists and on Edgar Varèse, who intertwine morphological research and criticism in their generalization of noise. The second part deals with the immediate post-World War II era when, fitting with the logic of technocratic progress that characterizes the avant-garde (serial music and musique concrète in particular), morphological research is predominant. With the years 1960-70, criticism seems to gain the upper hand: the histories of rock, free jazz and, for the avant-garde, of such composers as Luigi Nono or Helmut Lachenmann are evoked. In the fourth part, we acknowledge the generalization of of noise and, ultimately, its trivialization in recent years, and analyze the proposals of Agostino Di Scipio and Hildegard Westerkamp, which form two distinct trends. By way of conclusion, the article goes on to sudy the case of Iannis Xenakis, a composer who successfully interweaves morphological research and critical positioning, in works where background noise or plain noise itself invades the musical fabric.

[…] This music is indeed universal: everyone can hear it , whatever its language, its suffering and its condition, its world and its birth, since it is conditional, prior to any broadcast, to any reception". This description elegantly sums up the great paradigmatic shift that corresponds to the emergence of avant-garde music from the twentieth to twenty-first centuries. Where music, as a rule, consists of "musical" sounds, of harmonic sounds, that is to say of "signals", which "tell" us something (this music claims to be language), avant-garde music blends in with the generalized noise, it is background noise rather than language.

It's not that music, in the traditional sense, doesn't know of noise. Musical noises have existed in music from the past, but are treated separately in one way or another. Thus, in the Middle Ages, theorists see in noise the devil's music: "Countless pictures in manuscripts show us [the] division between celestial music -in general, music of the angels accompanied by the harp or stringed instrumentsand infernal musicmost often noisy, with pipes, drum, and trumpet" (N. Wilkins, 1999: 28; our translation); that's why they noise is passed down to popular music. In baroque music, listeners are fond of which composers integrate in the form of imitative music. Other noises, less stylized, call for a more secret listening; as Michel Chion (2016: 63-64) writes: "The role of noise does not start, as is often thought, with contemporary music. It is already important in the seventeenth century and pertains not only to imitative musical effects. The repeated notes and trills in Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas are notated such that creakings and cracklings might be heard. […] What hides this role of noise from the earand from the eye and mind -of classical musicologists […] is the fact that in the score those effects intended to produce it are marked using the same symbols as the 'notes.'" And noise could be put to many other uses whose logic can still be perceived in romantic music music.

However, it was not until the first avant-garde music of the 20th century that noise was thought of and integrated as such into music. And since then, it has not stopped, noise has invaded the musical fabric, from the earliest musique concrète to Noise, right through to countless musical moments that will be briefly mentioned in this article. We will limit ourselves here to the musical trends that want to be pioneers, new, original, aiming at unheard-of sound worlds, that is to say: "avant-garde", whether the word is used or notby the way, it is to be noted that musicians have rarely used this expression, unlike visual artists. And we will go to current developments, when the term "avant-garde" is no longer used by many people today. Truth be told, we could have adopted the term "experimental" music, which is more fashionable these days, and has been since the 1950s.

To put it simply, the generalization of noise in avant-garde music may be broken down into two main categories. On the one hand, it can occur according to a morphological logic. Here, musicians are interested in noise for its sonic, musical potential, for the pleasure that the listener can take in being invaded by complex sounds, interesting from a sonic point of view. It should be noted that "noise" does not necessarily mean a very loud soundwhich could be dangerous for the listener -, it refers to a sound with non-harmonic spectrum. Avant-garde music likes complexity, with regards both to structures or compositional processes and sounds: in acoustic terms, noises are more complex sounds than the so-called "musical" sounds. Referring to this first way of generalizing noise, the qualifier I quite readily use is « morphological », which I borrow from musique concrète, which is precisely the model for this type of use of noise. I could also have spoken of a "purely musical" use of noiseto

INTRODUCTION

In his beautiful article "Music and background noise", Michel Serres (1972: 191-193; our translation) writes: "Perhaps we should distinguish two kinds of music […]. The first is a signal, a shimmering fabric of signals; it also intends to signify, to communicate a message […]. This music cannot cease to be cultural, marked by the relativities from here and there […] In the second kind of music, precisely that which refuses to trace signs, which tries to erase the signal […] the transmitted message conveys the noise itself [… we are] on the side of the rendering of noise, a universal condition of any exchange. Not the noise which differs from the sound […] but the physical or thermodynamic noise which is a condition of circulation of any message in general and which remains in the absence of any message distinguish it from the second -, but I no longer believe in the expression "purely musical", or at least I don't know what it means anymore, when it is not the sanitized world of the concert hall or the recording studio which, if it constitutes one of the conditions for the existence of music, cannot be identified with music, whose resonances are too complex for it to be restricted to to itself.

The second major way in which avant-garde music generalizes noise is criticismsocial, political, etc. Hugues Dufourt writes that "the growing share that noise takes in art music attests to the emergence of a repressed plebeian element and reveals the guilty conscience of the symbolic authorities" (1999: 9; our translation). This view has often been held even though it should not be taken for grantedthe people's voice is not always noisy, and revolutions like consonant chants like Bella Ciao! This hypothesis is nevertheless operative in many cases if we are talking about criticism or political-social protest in general. In this sense, it extends Theodor Adorno's philosophy of new music. Speaking of Schoenberg, Adorno (2006: 11) wrote: "The dissonances that frighen them [the listeners] speak of their own situation", implying the condition of the alienated. In this sense, in avant-garde music, noise replaces dissonance, which has become too commonplace. Adornian analysis also has the merit of showing that the two ways of generalizing dissonance (and, by extension, noise) are intertwined:

'Dissonances arose as the expression of tension, contradiction and pain. They deposited sediment and became "materialˮ. They were no longer media of subjective expression. Still, they did not thus disavow their origin. They became characters of objective protest. It is precisely the enigmatic happiness of these sounds that, as a result of their transformation into material, dominates the suffering they once announced, and does so by holding it fast. Their negativity remains loyal to utopia: It contains in itself the concealed consonance -hence new music's passionate intolerance of everything reminiscent of consonance' (T.W. Adorno, 2006: 68).

In what follows, I will show how, during the history of musical avant-garde, morphological logic and critical positioning intermingle or exclude each other, in an increasingly pervasive history of musical noise. To do this, I will distinguish several periods: to begin with, the situation before 1945, then the years 1950-60, the years 1960-70 and the present age since the 1980s 1 . A final part will focus on a composer who equally weaves these two great ways of integrating noise into music: Iannis Xenakis.

BEFORE 1945

Before 1945, noise had already entered avant-garde music in several ways, closely combining morphological research and criticism. We think, for a start, of the generalization of dissonance, which has just been mentioned, characteristic of the expressionism of the Second Vienna School. With Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (1911-13), dissonance is not about suffering be it protest against society or the expression of personal pain: Stravinsky plays with the temptation of challenging civilization with a primitivist aesthetic. Dissonance also spread, during the same period, thanks to the American "ultra-moderns" -described as "bad boys"and their taste for sound experimentation (see D. [START_REF] Nicholls | American Experimental Music. 1890-1940[END_REF]. Sometimes, it is the equivalent of Stravinskian primitivism, for instance with Leo Ornstein's Wild Men 's Dance (1914). Elsewhere, it is related to a political involvement, as with Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford and Charles Seeger who were militants in the Composer's Collective, a progressive association. Cowell also earned a place in the history of music for his famous book New Music Resources (published in 1930, but begun as far back as 1914), which invents the notion of "cluster". Charles Ives is the most famous of these Americans who activated the proliferation of dissonancealong with polytonality and cross rhythms. We find many of the ways in which he introduces dissonances in his Concord Sonata for piano . It is important to note that, during his life, Ives reworked his pieces, adding dissonances. Finally, in the same vein, we could mention some early Soviet composers, such as Alexander Mossolov and his Iron Foundry (Zavod, 1927).

Be that as it may, noise truly enters into music with the movement that took its name (in French) from it : bruitism. Among the bruitist musicians, Luigi Russolo, author of the Futurist manifesto of 1913, L'arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), is the most singular. As an inventor of of the intonarumori (the noise instruments) (see figure 1), he had some success, but being, unlike other Italian Futurists, not a fascist, he exiled himself to Paris in 1927, where he sank into oblivion until his relatively recent rediscovery. The futuristic manifesto expounds revolutionary ideas, which criticize tradition: "We futurists have all deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner stirred our nerves and hearts for many years. Now we have had enough of them, and we delight much more in combining in our thoughts the noises of trams, of automobile engines, of carriages and brawling crowds, than in hearing again the Eroica or the Pastorale" (L. Russolo, 1986: 25). The text defends the idea of a history of music leading to what he calls "noise-sound": "From the beginning, musical art sought out and obtained purity and sweetness of sound. […] As it grows ever more complicated today, musical art seeks out combinations more dissonant, stranger, and harsher for the ear. Thus, it comes ever closer to the noise-sound. This evolution of music is comparable to the multiplication of machines, which everywhere collaborate with man" (ibid.: 24). But, at the same time, he does not give up a certain idea of music. Thus, intonarumori are supposed to produce pitches, they are not just noise makers. One of these instruments, the "howler", "is a mysterious, suggestive instrument that takes on an intense expressiveness in various enharmonic passages and offers many resources, being capable of the most perfect intonation" (ibid.: 78). Criticizing the noise makers ("Why, Italian futurists, do you slavishly reproduce the trepidation of our daily life only in what is superficial and annoying in it?"), Edgar Varèse (1983: 24; our translation) is the composer who conducted the furthest morphological research into noise during the interwar period. With his new definition of music as "organized sound" (ibid.: 56), he put an end to the debate waged by conservatives who contested the quality of "music" in works with widespread recourse to dissonance, let alone noise. As a matter of fact, he rejected the musical sound / noise cleavage: "I do not distinguish between sound and noise. When someone says noise (as opposed to musical sound the refusal is of a psychological kind: the refusal of everything that diverts from droning, 'pleasing', 'lulling'. It is a refusal that expresses a preference. The listener who states his refusal affirms that he prefers what diminishes him to what stimulates him" (Varèse in G. Charbonnier, 1970: 43-44; our translation). In his music, noises proliferate thanks to the use of percussions (Ionisation, 1929-31, the first Western work for solo percussions) and complex harmonies, but also, after 1945, to the use of electroacoustic sounds. With Déserts (1950-54, instrumental ensemble and electromagnetic tape) -one of the very first "mixed" pieces in the history of musicor with the Electronic Poem (1958, electromagnetic tape: see figure 2), composed for the multimedia performance at the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (a spatialized piece in which Xenakis collaborated), Varèse is also the composer who constantly calls for a new new world of sound, and in political terms toolet's not forget his engagements with workers' choirs during his youth.

1950-60S

The avant-garde music of the immediate post-1945 era unmistakably has a "technocratic" aspect. We may well take the birth of additive sound synthesis, which takes place in the Cologne studio, as a metaphor for the reconstruction of Germany (and Western Europe) with the help of the Marshall Plan. As a result, morphological type research tends to become predominant. Contemporary music, especially music working with new technologies, becomes synonymous with "progress": progress in the dominance over the material, technological progress too. This is how the notion of "experimental" music was born, an expression notably launched by Pierre Schaeffer (ed., 1957). However, the critical positioning has not disappeared.

In instrumental music, dissonance, by spreading, becomes commonplace: we can't keep regarding it as a criticism. However, this trivialization of dissonance as well as the extraordinary rigor of the constructions lead to a kind of "neutrality" of the musical fabric, which could be analysed as the symptom of a critique, that of the subjectivist aesthetic linked to note-based music. In serial music, sometimes, to quote Henri Pousseur (1972: 78-79; our translation) talking about Book I of Boulez's Structures, "we hear sorts of sound cohorts, statistical and of variable density […]. Although the charm of this piece is however undeniable, it is less a matter of the charm of a perfectly clear and translucent 'geometry' than a more mysterious charm, exercised by many distributive forms encountered in Nature, like the slow moving of clouds in shreds, the scattering of gravel at the bottom of a mountain stream or the gush of a wave breaking on some rocky strand". This "charm" is not without affinities with the undifferentiated, syncretic perception evoked by the psychoanalyst Anton [START_REF] Ehrenzweig | The Hidden Order of Art/ Berkeley and Los Angeles[END_REF] in his book The Hidden Order of Art: also referring to Boulez and his Marteau sans maître (see figure 3), notes that, in this music, "any continuity of melodic line or harmonic progression seems missing; the instrumental sounds tumble like the tinkles of an Aeolian harp responding to irregular gusts of the wind.

[…] We must listen to this music without trying to connect the present sound to the past and future; […] After a while the sounds will come with the feeling of inevitable necessity, obeying an unconscious submerged coherence of a different order that defies conscious analysis". Also related to instrumental music, the same analysis could be proposed concerning the proliferation of noise in John Cage's music either with the use of percussions or wth the invention of the prepared piano: it is indeed a morphological quest, but also a critique of the subjectivist aesthetic in favor of a neutral expression. To quote one last example: what about the search for noise via clusters, extreme registers or particular modes of playing in Krzysztof Penderecki in the 1960s, and in particular in his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960, string orchestra)? We know that the title was given after the piece was composed, accordingly it's a matter of morphological research, of which however the composer soon grasped the expressive (critical) potentialities.

In the 1950s and 60s, it was of course musique concrètethe first musical creation of which was given by Schaeffer's Five Studies of Noise (1948)which further developed morphological research on noise. For the musique concrète's musician, there is no difference between musical sounds and noises: any sound sound material can serve music. The words "noise" and "musical sound" are discarded in favor of the sole word "sound". And the whole effort of the theorist [START_REF] Schaeffer | Treatise on Musical Objects. An Essay Across Disciplines[END_REF], in his Treatise on Musical Objects, consists in analyzing the morphology of sounds through the use of a much refined typology 2 . After several successive approaches, the Treatise resulted in a "summary diagram" (P. Schaeffer, 2017: 467). This chart consists, horizontally, of seven "criteria of musical perception" (mass, dynamic, harmonic timbre, melodic profile, mass profile, grain and allure) which several columns fill with "descriptions" and "evaluations". To To quote but one example, regarding the criterion of "mass"a term that corresponds, roughly speaking, to an approach to sound according to its spectral dimension, or a generalization of the notion of pitchwe have several "types": "tonic (type N), complex (X), variable (Y) and some or other (W, K, T)". This typology is based on the sole principle that sounds are not classified according to their origin, but only according to their internal morphology. The same principle enables Schaeffer to postulate the existence of "sound objects" attainable through "reduced listening": "There is sound object when I have achieved, both materially and mentally, an even more rigorous reduction than the acousmatic reduction: not only do I keep to the information given by my ear (physically, Pythagoras's veil would be enough to force me to do this); but this information now only concerns the sound event itself: I no longer try, through it, to get information about something else (the speaker or his thought). It is the sound itself that I target and identify." (P. Schaeffer, 2017: 210).

By cutting off sounds from their origin and making "sound objects"which are almost the equivalent of musical notes -, Schaeffer is merely exploiting the morphological dimension of the world of noises. However, while Schaeffer tried to impose this methodology on young composers who took up musique concrète in the 1950s and 60s, not all of them bowed to this discipline. Among the best-known "dissidents", Luc Ferrari, with Hétérozygote (1963), developed a sort of "sound cinematography" in which various anecdotal sounds blend, in particular in soundscapes and words. Hétérozygote has remained in the history of concrete music by its "opening" to the world of external sounds, which are neither made nor cut off from their source. This opening occurs at 4'43" when we hear sounds of waves in a stereophonic movement, then at 5'12" when a voice says says, "Ah! no, don't think of that… you only think of eating…" (see the analysis of A. [START_REF] Reyna | La construction de l'hétérogène dans la musique de Luc Ferrari : lieu, récit et expériences. Analyses d'Hétérozygote, Far-West news et Chantal, ou le portrait d'une villageoise[END_REF]; figure 4 gives the Ferrari assembly diagram, where the "waves" can be seen).

1960S-70S

Much as the 1950s and 1960s were a period of faith in technocratic progress, the 1960s and 1970s were a period marked by protest. The progression of noise in domains like rock music or (free) jazz parallels the the multiplication of diverse forms of revolt, protest or political, social and cultural criticism in western societies during those two decades. When, in 1966, Archie Shepp declared: "We see jazz as one of the most meaningful social, aesthetic contributions to America. It is that certain people accept it for what it is, that it is a meaningful profound contribution to Americait is anti-war, it is opposed to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, it is for Cuba; it is for the liberation of all people. That is the nature of jazz. […] Why is that so? Because jazz is a music itself born out of oppression, born out of the enslavement of my people" (in P. Carles, JL Comolli, 2015), free jazz has already developed all kinds of noise, whether through modes of playing such as multiphonics or by structures calling on free improvisation, polyrhythm or atonality. As for rock, noise enters through the front door with the Beatles' montages ("Tomorrow Never Knows" from the Revolver album, 1966), the distortions of the electric guitar (live recording of "Star-Spangled Banner" in Woodstock by Jimi Hendrix, 1969), the sound experiments of progressive rock (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, 1974)…

In avant-garde music, such composers as Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono or Helmut Lachenmann also use noises for purposes of protest. This was the time when Nono had his work La fabbrica illuminata performed several times in factories resulting in debates with with the workers. This piece for soprano and magnetic tape, composed in 1966, is based on recordings made in a factorythe Italsider factory (one of the most important steel companies in Europe throughout the XXth century) located in Cornigliano (West district of Genoa) -, and includes noise-based sounds. At the end of one of these "concerts", Nono (1966: 238-239; our translation) writes: "The workers: often without the slightest academic, cultural and musical 'preparation' [...]. But forced, in life and at work, technically to be in the vanguard: new technical means of production and work. The technical and aesthetic analysis is the vehicle of their understanding: the work and composition processes in the electronic studio and the phonetic and semantic analysis of the text in relation to its musical becoming, they easily perceive. The relation between sound and noise and the sound structure of the acoustic phenomenon do not represent a problem for them, as it is for the bourgeois audience who most often attend concert halls". In a way, reviving Walter Benjamin's thought, Nono explains that the workers are much more sensitive than the bourgeoisie to contemporary music, because of the technique. Both contemporary music and the proletariat are indeed at the "avant-garde" in the technical field, because they use the most advanced techniques in their respective fields (assembly-line work for the workers, electroacoustic music studios for the composers).

To name another figure in the 1960-70s, the German composer Lanchenmann starts from the Adornian observation that the musical material is not neutral but is already in conflict with reality: "Musical material is something other than simple, docile raw matter waiting uniquely for the composer to fill it with expression and thereby give it life within such and such a set of relations: it is itself already inscribed in relations and marked expressively, even before the composer approaches it" (H. Lachenmann, 1991: 262-263; our translation). Against an authoritarian domination of the material, which empties it of its concrete qualities of its share of realityby transforming it into something neutral, and that regardless of its nature (tonal material, dissonances, noises), Lachenmann develops, to use Adornian language, a veritable mastery, enabling it to preserve these qualities. To do so, he advances the idea that composing means "building an instrument": composition is not an abstract task (a blind domination), but a confrontation with matter, like the musician's confrontation with his or her instrument. So in sum, it's all a matter of "touching a sound" (see H. Lachenmann, 1993: 233; our translation). With his "musique concrète instrumentale", Lachenmann composes pieces that constantly rub with the matter. Moreover, the literal action of rubbing is quite important in his works, as we can observe in the opening of Pression ("Pressure", 1969), a piece for cello (see figure 5). The score, which constitutes a tablature -Lachenmann indicates the action to carry out and not the sound result -, indicates the bow's motion (up) and the fingers' on the strings (down). In Pression, Lachenmann rejects operations concerning the notion of note, for it can be obtained only by abstraction: the musical material is made up uniquely of the cello's concrete sounds and the actions for obtaining them. By laying the stress on matter, the concrete, the living, and the sensitive, Lachenmann's music makes us aware that the domination of Nature leads to its disappearance. It is in this sense that, with him, noise constitutes the musical sign of social criticism. In a musical way, Lachenmann prolongs the critique of "Instrumentalˮ Reason that [START_REF] Adorno | Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by Edmund Jephcott[END_REF] had carried out in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, which tends towards the blind domination of Nature.

SINCE THE 1980S

From the 1980s, noises also spread in such post-rock music as "industrial music", in post-punk music, and are found in rap too… In some cases, they still bear their protest charge. This is the case with such new trends as "radical improvisation". The book Noise and Capitalism (Mattin and al., 2009) federates some research in this field. The British drummer and percussionist Edwin Prévost writes: "If weas musicians and listenershave any choice when confronting the morality of capitalism, then it must be to do rather than to be done to. We must decide who we are rather than be given an identity. In our freely improvised music there is the opportunity to apply a continual stream of examination. We search for sounds. We look for the meanings that become attached to sounds. […] The search is surely for selfinvention and social-invention. This is an opportunity to make our world" (ibid.: 58). In avant-garde instrumental music (contemporary music), however, the work on noise-based playing modes no longer has this critical load, as noise has become widely commonplace: this is true for example, of the French "saturation" music (Franck Bedrossian, Raphaël Cendo, Yann Robin…) (see P. Rigaudière, 2014) or of the Russian composer Dmitri Kurljandski (Kourliandsky) (see M. [START_REF] Solomos | The post-catastrophe world. Six thesis to understand Dmitri Kourliandsky's world[END_REF]. Situated between avant-garde music and popular music, Noise music, for its part, is a cross of criticism and morphological research. This is the case with "Japanoise" and Merzbow (Masami Akita), who explores the complex morphologies of the universe of noises and, at the same time, playfully transgresses limits (see P. Hegarty, 2007: 155).

Unable to analyze everything that is done in terms of noise in avant-garde music during the late 20th and early 21 st centuries, let us mention only two musicians representative of different trends, Agostino Di Scipio and Hildegard Westerkamp. Di Scipio is one of the pioneers of "ecosystemic" compositions. In the set of pieces called Audible Ecosystemics (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005), live electronics solos), which offers implementations of composed interactions (see figure 6), the ecosystem is a triangular interaction between the musician, the DSP computer and the sonic ambience (see Di Scipio, 2003: 272-275). This idea has noise play an important role. In the simplest terms, I would say that in Di Scipio's music, noise is not disturbance (as in traditional music) nor sonic material (as in modern music). It is one of the agents of the interaction, since it is produced by the concrete place where the interaction occurs: it is part of the system. In Audible Ecosystemics, "the role of noise is crucial […]. Noise is the medium itself where a sound-generating system is situated, strictly speaking, its ambience. In addition, noise is the energy supply by which a self-organizing system can maintain itself and develop" (Di Scipio, 2003: 271). With Hildegard Westerkamp, we are in the field of the so-called acoustic ecology. For this musical and ecological movement, noise must be banned: acoustic ecology fights against noise pollution; as Murray [START_REF] Schafer | The Tuning of the World. A pioneering Exploration into the Past History and Present State of the Most Neglected Aspect of our Environment: The Soundscape[END_REF] explains, it is synonymous with "lo-fi" soundscapes. However, Westerkamp takes a more dialectical approach. Insisting on the need to give priority back to our ears, which have been neglected, she explains that listening can sometimes be a painful, exhausting or even depressing experience when the surrounding sounds are too loud or seem meaningless to us, that is, when it is noise. "Trying to ignore them, however, makes even less sense […] We desensitize our aural faculties by shutting out sounds and thereby not allowing our ears to exercise their natural function" (H. Westerkamp, 1974: 49). What is needed is to produce the (inner) force to resist these sounds. Westerkamp explains that she has experienced with this type of sound attitude in India, for example by observing "people worshiping in deep inner focus at a temple while crowds and noises, hustle and bustle happen around them" (H. [START_REF] Westerkamp | The disruptive Nature of Listening[END_REF]. Her piece Gently Penetrating Beneath the Sounding Surfaces of Another Place, made from recordings in India, brilliantly illustrates this dialectic of listening thanks to its subtle mix of lively street atmospheres and moments of sound peace.

XENAKIS, A CASE STUDY

Michel Serres's text that I quoted at the beginning of this article is largely dedicated to Xenakis' Pithoprakta (1955-56, orchestra). The piece begins with noises: each of the players (46 in number), totally individualized, turns their instrument over and strike the body of the instrument. Only the rhythms are noted on the score (fig. 7). This is one of the earliest examples of "granular" music in Xenakis. Indeed, the rhythms vary and the density also, the strokes are sufficiently short and numerous so that, overall, a kind of synthesis of sound takes place 3 , from which Serres (1972: 189-190; our translation) concludes: Xenakis "erases the signal and composes the noise. He gives to hear the rerum universals, the naked voice of the things of the universe. He strictly emits what is emitted per se, without intervening, without letting the articulate intervene, without letting anybody intervene. What is emitted, in the absence of screening, filtering or separating? The effect of gravel, the effect of scintillation, the noise of thermal agitation -the ensemble of background noises"; and we know how important the reference to thermodynamics is for Xenakis at that time, who introduced stochastic music. Xenakis is one of the composers who most closely mixes morphological and critical approaches, in his search for music that exploits the dimension of noise. The hypothesis of a granular synthesis is of a morphological order, but Serres's analysis makes it clear that the whole issue is also a critique of art as riveted to a "molar" subjectivity in order to favour a"molecular" subjectivity, to use [START_REF] Deleuze | A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translation and foreword by Brian Massumi[END_REF] passim) terminology 4 .

Morphologically, Xenakis's music is intimately linked to the world of noise, moreover, it is in both senses of the term: sound of very high intensity and sound with a very rich spectrum. Great intensity: in his instrumental music, Xenakis makes extensive use of fortississimi, sometimes exhausting for instrumentalists in terms of durationespecially in his latest works. With electroacoustic music, we know that he liked playing the sound very loud. This was also one one of the reasons for his argument with Pierre Schaeffer, who wrote for the premiere of Bohor (eight-track tape, 1962): "Bohor, it was, in worse (I mean better), the early wood fire. It was no longer the little embers [Concret PH], it was a huge backfire, an offensive accumulation of lancet hits in the ear at the maximum of the potentiometers" (P. Schaeffer, 1981: 85). Maybe Xenakis liked playing the sound very loud due to his partial deafness (due to his injury during the Greek Civil War, an episode when he almost lost his life). It should be noted, however, that the speakers he was working with are not today's 5 . Playing very loud with today's high-performance speakers, without filtering out some highpitched sounds, as some do, is criminal.

As for the second meaning of the word noise, now, Xenakis is one of the main composers of his generation to have worked on noise as a musical material, developing its morphological dimension. To mention Pithoprakta again, the piece follows the model of physical sound: its entire form goes from noise (the "grains" of the beginning) to pure sound (harmonics at the very end). This transformation is realized through interpolations, with frequent returns to to prior states in terms of the degree of noise. To summarize, the process is as folllows : 1. Noises with continuous transformation of density and spatialization with progressive emergence of pizzicati and arco (bars 0-51); 2. Overall transformation through "filtering" of a "cloud of sounds" (bars 52-59); To illustrate the fact that, in Xenakis, noise is also valid as criticismaccording to social, political, historical dimensionslet us take two periods: his beginnings when, in a way, he heals, with music, his wounds as well as the defeat of civil war; then, the mid-1960s, foreshadowing the unrest May 1968, when the revolutionary Xenakis reappeared. The first period relates to the political and military action that the composer carried out in Greece, before being forced to flee the country illegally (where he would be sentenced to death in absentia) to settle in France. Everyone knows the important role he played during the Resistance against the Nazis, organizing with his comrades demonstrations, food distributions, etc., as well as the tragic events of December 1944the outbreak of the Greek Civil Warwhen, along with his comrades of the Lord Byron battalion, he was among the last to defend Athens against the colonialist troops of Churchill and their Greek allies (former Nazi collaborators), until the the day of his above-mentioned injury. In some interviews, he evoked the relationship between the chaotic, noisy sound and visual environment of war and civil war and his polytopes (cf. N. Matossian, 1981: 261-266), a subject that some commentators have developed (cf. Ε. Kiourtsoglou, 2016: fifth part). But already, in Metastaseis (1953-54, orchestra), the relation is obvious. A famous passage from Formalized Music explains the need to introduce the calculus of probabilities in music: "Everyone has observed the sonic phenomena of a political crowd of dozens or hundreds of thousands of people. The human river shouts a slogan in a uniform rhythm. Then another slogan springs from the head of the demonstration; it spreads towards the tail, replacing the first. A wave of transition thus passes from the head to the tail. The clamor fills the city, and the inhibiting force of voice and rhythm reaches a climax. It is an event of great power and beauty in its ferocity. Then the impact between the demonstrators and the enemy occurs. The perfect rhythm of the last slogan breaks up in a huge cluster of chaotic shouts, which also spreads to the tail. Imagine, in addition, the reports of dozens of machine guns and the whistle of bullets adding their punctuations to this total disorder. The crowd is then rapidly dispersed, and after sonic and visual hell follows a detonating calm, full of dispair, dust, and death. The statistical laws of these events, separated from their political or moral context, are the same as those of the cicadas or the rain. […] They are stochastic laws" (I. Xenakis, 1992: 19). This text is, in a way, a perfect description of the first part of Metastaseis. Figure 8 shows "the reports of dozens of machine guns" (brass and percussion), "chaotic shouts" (strings) and "total disorder". In his text, Xenakis considers to "separate" these events "from their political or moral context" in order to be able to compare them with natural events that are also stochastic, but it should be remembered that he himself experienced these demonstrations from the inside: we can consider that, the creative proposal that he emits was a way for him to survive after his injury and the death of several of his comrades. There is therefore a relationship between the concept of "mass" that Xenakis introduced in music and the masses of demonstrators during the Resistance and the Greek Civil War: his music represents these historical events and "uses" them to invent noise-based avant-garde musical techniques. To go further, we could also consider a movement in the opposite direction. Indeed, in some cases, music does not only represent social, political, historical struggles, but itself becomes an instrument in a struggle to transform society: it is "revolutionary" in the sense that avant-garde research at the musical level has also a combative character at the sociopolitical level. Indeed, the noise, the chaotic masses could also be interpreted as weapons: the weapons of a revolution which one tries to win by music itself. In other words, not only does Xenakis represent the historical events of the Civil War which culminated in the defeat of the Greek left and its exile in France, but he continues the fight, giving promises for future victory.

As an example, let us take another period when both musical and social-political events mingle: the mid-1960s, when the major protests began which led to the revolts of May 1968. During that period, Xenakis was no longer, officially, a "committed" composer, but he continued to be linked to political protest. That was also also the time when he composed Nuits (1967, twelve a cappella voices) that he dedicated to the political prisoners of the Junta which had just stage a coup d'État in Greece, as well as to the political prisoners of Spain and Portugal, still under dictatorship. At the same time, students taking to the streets see him as revolutionary because of his music itself. And they are right: when you listen to a work like Terretektorh (1965-66, orchestra), you want to make a revolution! Not only are we stimulated by the incredible sounds and the noisy complexity of the sounds of the piece, but the unprecedented arrangement of the orchestra (the 88 musicians are dispersed among the audience: see figure 9), which breaks with the conformism of the Italian stage, foreshadows an egalitarian society, resulting from the revolution.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Luigi Russolo, crepitatore.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Edgar Varèse, Electronic poem, final part: spectrogram (R. Cogan, 1984 : 39).

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Pierre Boulez, Le marteau sans maître, IV (Commentaire II de « Bourreaux de solitude »): beginning. © Universal Edition.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. Luc Ferrari, Hétérozygote's montage diagram: sequence 2. In A. Reyna, 2016: 65.

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Helmut Lachenmann, Pression: beginning (first edition). © By kind permission of Musikverlage Hans Gerig, Köln, 1980 assigned to Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden.

Fig. 6 .

 6 Fig. 6. Agostino Di Scipio: composed interactions for the Audible Ecosystemics interface (after A. Di Scipio, 2003: 272). © By kind permission of Agostino Di Scipio.

Fig. 7 .

 7 Fig. 7. Iannis Xenakis, Pithoprakta: bars 0-4. © By kind permission of Boosey and Hawkes.

3 .

 3 Tenuti with progressive emergence of pizzicati then glissandi (bars 60-104); 4. Discontinuous transformations of a field of glissandi (bars 105-121); 5. Noisy superposition of six timbre groups with sporadic "views under the microscope" (bars 122-171); 6. Continuous transformation of the register of sounds in battuto col legno (bars 172-179); 7. Discontinuous transformations through "filtering" of a cluster (bars 180-207); 8. Fields of glissandi with irregular then linear transformation of register (bars 208-231); 9. A large cluster that "evaporates" progressively into the high register (bars 231-250); 10. Harmonics in discontinuous spatial transformations (bars 250-268).

Fig. 8 .

 8 Fig. 8. Iannis Xenakis, Metastaseis: bars 0-4. © By kind permission of Boosey and Hawkes.

Fig. 9 .

 9 Fig. 9. Iannis Xenakis, Terretektorh: arrangement of the orchestra. © By kind permission of Editions Salabert.


Makis Solomos

Four sounds against capitalocene

published or not. The documents may come

due to the lack of preparation of governments despite numerous warnings from scientists and environmentaliststo halt the progression of the pandemic.

Should lockdown also be taken as a repressive measure against the protest movements? Would we be called supporters of conspiracy theories if we said so? If we observe that the mobilizations resumed as soon as the lockdown ceased and if we also observe that, despite the second lockdown that we are currently experiencing, the protests against the new reforms of the Macron government (and in particular the law of "global security") are very strong, as are mobilizations in other regions of the world, I will answer the initial question positively.

Yes, lockdown is a form of repression, there is no doubt. Unilaterally decreed by a government, it is possible due to the state of emergency. A form of political repression is also the curfew that so-called democratic regimes have hardly experienced outside of times of war. Let's quote a text by Giorgio Agamben, in Italian and in English, a text which has been widely read and criticized:

Italiano : "Lo stato di paura che in questi anni si è evidentemente diffuso nelle coscienze degli individui e che si traduce in un vero e proprio bisogno di stati di panico collettivo" trovato nell'epidemia "il pretesto ideale". "La limitazione della libertà imposta dai governi viene accettata in nome di un desiderio di sicurezza che è stato indotto dagli stessi governi che ora intervengono per soddisfarlo", e che così continuano a stabilire lo stato di emergenza. English : "The state of fear that in recent years has evidently spread to the consciences of individuals and which translates into a real need for states of collective panic" found in the epidemic "the ideal pretext". "The limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that has been induced by the same governments that now intervene to satisfy it", and which thus continue to establish a state of emergency.

This is what Agamben wrote on April 26, 2020. This text has been widely criticized, and rightly so, because the philosopher had not, at that date, taken the measure of the pandemic. But today, in light of the measures taken again during the second wave of the pandemic, which should have been foreseen, this text deserves a reread.

ANTHROPOCENE AND CAPITALOCENE

 audio (1'20'')

During the first lockdown, an atmosphere of astonishment, fear and often despair settled in. For some, the hope was that this would serve as a lesson for the "world to come". Sometimes, however, we took pleasure in observing the silence, the return of birds to the city ... From the start of the lockdown, several projects were launched to observe the change in sound environments in the cities. To mention the French project Silent Cities. Paysages sonores d'un monde confine: "Since the implementation, throughout the world, of more or less strict measures of lockdown of populations and social distancing, many press articles have encouraged city dwellers to contemplate what some already present as a renaturation, or even a rewilding of urbanized spaces", write the authors of the project, who ended up bringing together many people from several countries around the world, using a precise protocol making it possible to record sound atmospheres. They therefore suggest that we compare a recording from the Allée de Brienne in Toulouse on March 16, 2020 at 7 p.m. with a recording from the same Allée at the same time on March 20, 2020: https://laboratoireparallele.com/2020/04/17/silent%C2%B7cities-paysages-sonores-dunmonde-confine/

The pandemic clearly marks a new ecological crisis, since it is a zoonosis. In this sense, it could be interpreted as the best warning signal of our entry into the anthropocene, made up of ecological disruptions of all kinds that you don't need to be a collapsologist to take seriously. As such, the disappearance of anthropogenic noise in cities during the first lockdown (this is not the case in the second!) could be taken as a revenge of "nature" on "man", if the we absolutely want to distinguish the two rather than speak of the "living". We could dream of "echoes of the past": "It is sixteen thousand years ago, and the plains teem with life. […] It is jam-packed with nonhuman life, whose individual voices coalesce into an intense and collective symphony. […] In this one verdant spot thousands of creatures sing in choruses at all times of the day and night. The visual spectacle is impressive, but the sound is absolutely glorious", writes Bernie Krause in The Great Animal Orchestra. But why would animals do what we did in the era of tonal music: symphonies, choirs, well-behaved concerts; why wouldn't they make some noise, like that magnificent "lion's roar" found in Edgard Varèse's Ionisation? Forgive me, but I cannot subscribe to this wilderness ecology, which is nostalgic and that takes us back to the days of harmony when we grew to love certain forms of noise. Above all, it is an ecology that is insensitive to social issues, to issues of racialization or to gender issues.

Certainly, we all liked the silence and the birds during the first lockdown, but is it necessary to recall that this lockdown was a terrible momentwhich is far from overfor the most economically precarious populations, for the violence conjugal, for students, for the poorest countries…? It is important not to think only in terms of environmental ecology. Félix Guattari, in his 1989 manifesto, already said that there is not only one ecology (the environmental one): there is also a social ecology and a mental ecology; the simultaneous concern for these three ecologies forms what he called "ecosophy". An important part of political ecology, that of the left parties, is just coming back on the social ground. This is why, with the economist Benjamin Coriat, we will say that the analysis of the anthropocene (with precious and indispensable indicators such as the state of the ozone layer, the melting of glaciers, the warming of the planet, the state of biodiversity, etc.) is useful, but that it has its limits: "many of those who refer to it have an apolitical vision of the disruption we are witnessing: for them, it is the 'human activity' as such which is the cause of disturbances. This is where the notion of capitalocene allows us to go further in the analysis. Based on the observations made in climate change, it highlights that the state of degradation in which we have arrived is not linked to a 'humanity'hypostasized and undefined -but to a very particular humanity, organized by a predatory economic system". Artists and all culture workers have suffered tremendously from the situation, from the first lockdown until today, and it is not about to end. After the concert, theater, cinema and dance halls which have closed, there has been a succession of cancellations of major summer and autumn festivals. The economic situation of those in France who enjoy the status of "intermittent du spectacle" is dire, even though the government has extended their rights for a year. In addition to economic suffering, there are several forms of psychological depression, due to cancellations of shows, the inability to publicly present one's work, and the general uncertainty. In France, while places of worship were opened (in limited capacity) from the end of November, the places of spectacle which were to be opened in mid-December, will only openand this is not certainin January, like universities. The government informs us that culture (and education) are not "essential" areas, unlike religion...

MUSIC IS NOT JUST THE WORLD OF CONSOLATION

During the first lockdown, the artists however tried not to be defeated. Many artists have tried to overcome this lockdown from the first days, doing what they loved to do: music, dance, theater, as they could and where they were, "looking for forms suited to the moment in order to hold on, to resist, to continue to exist as well, not to lose a part of their identity which crowns the phase of creation by a presentation, an exchange, a sharing". And the audience seemed to be "there", that is to say in front of their computer mainly.

Thus, we had ersatz concerts produced by concert halls, by professional orchestras or by high-level artists, who could have professional means to produce good videos. In France, we quickly had a Ravel's Boléro offered on YouTube by the Orchestre national de France (#Confinement and # EnsembleÀLaMaison), a video that went viral (whether spectators saw it to the end is another question). Another video worked well: the dancers of the Paris Opera and their Ballet en visioconférence in tribute to caregivers (#RestezChez VOUS), with a production by the filmmaker Cédric Klapisch: the dancers "appeared both natural and professional in gestures whose very nature and quality of execution stood out against the domestic setting of the background. They made a hob, a stairwell, a corridor, the frame of a window, a carpet or a bathtub a new bar [to dance], a new workspace".

In parallel to these "zoom concerts", we had the famous concerts of windows and balconies at 8 pm, which came from Italy. In France, they took a very interesting turn when they became a means of protest as a reminder that we applaud the caregivers whom the government had beaten up when they demonstrated against the break-up of the public hospital. Alessandro Greppi and Diane Schuh told us about these forms of protest linked to artistic events. There have also been many other "grassroots" initiatives, for example podcasts combining music or sound creation.

Finally, there were all those initiatives by grassroots musicians and artists (and countless amateurs as well), which were discussed previously, who tried to resist the desperation of lockdown by playing alone or with others in amateur videos.

What about "zoom-concerts", whether they are those of large orchestras or concert halls or those of grassroots musicians? Certainly, they brought consolation, but no one was fooled (it is significant that they were far fewer in the second lockdown). And it is also difficult, with hindsight, to subscribe to the enthusiasm of certain journalists, during the beginnings of the first lockdown, for the videos of artists in beautiful houses or in splendid gardens playing the hits of classical music. "Lockdown inspires", we could read in a video posted online by the newspaper Le Monde. This is undoubtedly the case of the French violinist Renaud Capuçon, who made videos that border on the ridiculous:

 vidéo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnCNkClwxYA

THE ARTIST AS PRODUCER

 audio (1'30) Artists are rightly concerned that "zoom-concerts" have contributed to the idea that art has to be free, that the artist's work does not have to be remunerated. (If there is one thing that should be free during this health, political, economic, ecological, social crisis that we are going through, it is internet connections!) On the other hand, as rock musician Dave Grohl writes: "The coronavirus pandemic has reduced today's living music to unflattering little windows that look like video surveillance screens, and sound like Neil Armstrong's distorted radio transmissions from the moon, all chopped and compressed". "Zoom-concerts" indeed introduce us into a world where everything is recorded, stored, sold, including our personal datathe world of generalized surveillance. Most of us don't care or live with it, until one day we learn that Zoom banned this or that conference (political censorship) as it happened recently with the well-known Palestinian activist Leila Khaled. There is no need to invoke Agamben again (or Michel Foucault) to say that capitalism has reached the stage of biopolitics. If you prefer a more moderate, but equally disturbing version, I will cite pianist and researcher Pavlos Antoniadis who, referring to the live animal markets where covid was bornand where soils are always wet from runoff blood from slaughtered wild animals, from seafood, etc. -, evokes the "wet markets" of music: "It is the market for streaming digital data between brains connected in networks, the 'wetware' and 'netware' of new computer and communication technologies, complementing the distinction between 'software' and 'hardware' in the context of cognitive capitalism".

The progress of GAFAM (Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon-Microsoft), of Zoom.us and other empires of digital capitalism during the crisis is ruthless. They are taking over sectors that are still not very industrialized, such as education. Art has been delivered to them for a long time in its commercial version and it is a war prize that will cost the art world dearly: an article in the international edition of the newspaper The Guardian recently announced in its headline that "Streaming platforms aren't helping musiciansand things are only getting worse". And this is just a small example. In fact, to follow the economist Cédric Durand, it is not "digital capitalism" that we should speak of but "techno-feudalism", based on rent, predation and the political domination of multinational companies. The reference to feudalism is not a metaphor. The analysis of the social relations generated by this mutation of capitalism indicates that "the link between the digital multinational companies and the population is that of the seigneurial class with the serfs and [that] their productive behavior is more a matter of feudal predation than of the capitalist competition". We do not have time to develop the question here, but Cédric Durand delivers a serious and convincing analysis, showing that the current future of capitalism is not the society of "free men" that libertarians dream of but a feudal form of the society.

If artists want to avoid being eliminated or instrumentalizedto serve as a Trojan horse for techno-feudalismby this development, it is important to think about the means of production they use and the social relationships they induce. Art and especially music are sometimes steeped in a form of idealism, where, under the pretext of focusing on the music "itself", musicologists leave this reflection to sociologists or politically engaged people. The mutation that we are witnessing, to which the crisis serves in many ways as a gigantic territory for experimentation, will surely modify the music "itself", if that expression means anything. Let us become a little materialistic, in order to think of the artist as a producer, and let's quote the end of Walter Benjamin's article from the 1930s, "The author as a producer": "Perhaps you have noticed that this development, of the end of which we are approaching, formulates a single requirement with regard to the writer, the requirement to reflect, to ask oneself what is his position in the process of production ".

The evolution is not inevitable. One can imagine a development of the commons, as many claim: "The GAFA[M] will perish on their own when we will understand that the Internet must become a public service. Commons as well as air and water. A global commons. We have to work on that as much as on a solidarity economy", says the writer Alain Damasio. We can also imagine "short circuits" of culture, which would make it possible, "as in agriculture, to do without intermediaries, while taking into account the reduction of the ecological footprint and the constraints of social distancing". We can still think of degrowth, even if the word is scary, not only to live with less technology, but to develop other technologies, which would allow us to move towards autonomy, that is to say towards "emancipation from dependence on alienating and heteronomous systems". Thinking of the artist as a producer would perhaps open the doors to many other concrete, "real" utopias (to quote sociologist Erik Olin Wright), and would certainly not distance us from the art world, quite the contrary.

  video: https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-10855673-crowded-musicconcert-stage-zoom-camera-+10 By typing "zoom concert background" on my browser, this is what I found. Of course, you can try to put the sound on, it doesn't change anything, since it's up to you to create the sound!