Sound as matter — to build with, to dream with.

Sound reaches memory before language does, at a level that is purely sensory, almost physical. My work begins there: a dialogue with sound, across composition, field recording, installation and performance.

Listen — La Salle des Reflets ↗

Binaural · headphones required

See & Hear

La Salle des Reflets

Sound installation in 20.1, 37 min — exhibition “Un Bruit de l'Extérieur” by Claire Poisson, Galerie Fernand Léger, Ivry-sur-Seine

For the main piece of the exhibition, we worked directly on the visitor's state of mind: slowing down, listening. An intimate and immersive sound space, where echography sounds resonate with very soft instrumental tones.

The source material came from echography recordings of my sister during her pregnancy — a foundational work in my ongoing reflection on sound as a trigger of emotion and memory.

Enter the room — binaural ↗

Petit Grain

Stereo sound sculpture — same exhibition

A sound character: a robot soberly built from two small speakers. From time to time a seed falls, top to bottom. Resonating through the room, it marks time like an unreliable hourglass.

Performance

Live sound creation, text, singing and object manipulation — 20 min

With singer and actress Nina Besana-Mourlaas, we staged excerpts from the artist's personal notes. Between poetry and sound: Nina sings and narrates while I take control of the installation and perform live.

Laniakea

Short fiction, 27 min — directed by Matéo Rousson & Tom Cogo · sound design, music composition, mixing · produced by Avant La Nuit and Immercif

Conceived and written in the style of a music album, Laniakea is a work of sensory storytelling. Almost silent, shot on 16 mm, the film is filled with sounds that guide us and envelop us with their presence.

Password: Lnk25

Schedule
Jul–Aug 2026Sonne, Moor und Sterne — Lower Saxony8.1 sound installation with Kollektiv Eigenklang — workshops and live set
Until Feb 2027SommeilStudio period — composition and research on a personal project
Feb 2027Théâtre du Châtelet, ParisLa Belle et la Bête, Philip Glass — sound spatialisation, assistant to Thierry Coduys
Jun 2027Grand Palais, ParisA piece by Pascal Dusapin — sound spatialisation, assistant to Thierry Coduys
Jul 2027SelvaInstallation with Camp.liure, produced by DETZ Collectiu — commissioned by the DRAC, three-week residency
Summer 2027ProsodiaWith Manon Alla — live performance inside an installation
Collectives
Occitan language · decolonial practice

DETZ Collectiu

Multidisciplinary creative collective

DETZ works in the Occitan language. In the wake of decolonial thinking, the collective appropriates and reinvents the collective imagination through films, videos, events and shows.

I compose music, make short films and lead sound creation workshops with the collective. Recent work includes a theatre piece with the Occitan school of Montpellier and the company La Fabrique Sauvage (2026) and a 24-hour live broadcast of La Passem, the charity relay race in support of Occitan culture (2026).

Selva, the 2027 installation with Camp.liure commissioned by the DRAC, is produced within DETZ.

DETZ lab ↗

Audio-visual · participatory

Kollektiv Eigenklang

Germany — founded 2017

Eigenklang builds interactive happenings where visitors take part in the work rather than consume it: participants are connected by wireless headphones to a binaural microphone at the centre of the room, and the piece is improvised live between them.

In summer 2026 we collaborated on an 8.1 sound installation for Sonne, Moor und Sterne, a cultural camping festival in Lower Saxony devoted to the moors — workshops with festival participants, then an audiovisual installation with a live ambient set built from what we made together.

Organised by Amoore e.V. and publicly funded by Soziokultur Niedersachsen and the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture. Pictures and audio coming soon.

kollektiv-eigenklang.com ↗

About

Sound is not just something we hear: it is a material that shapes our imagination and our bodies. It moves through space and through me, revealing its own rhythm, fragility and presence. Each sound suggests its own story, its own pulse — like little lights that shimmer in the dark.

I work across composition, field recording and performance. I sing, play instruments, compose and arrange, I mix and edit. I'm drawn to how sound can suggest an emotion, a memory — and more deeply, to how it reaches that memory before language does. When sound creates a truly intimate connection, emotional engagement becomes real and deep: deep enough to carry us further into our own sensations, into an awareness of ourselves and the world around us.

Beginning

At eight years old, alone in the living room, I put a classical music CD on the hi-fi at full volume. The experience stayed with me — that relationship to sound, physical, immediate, overwhelming.

It led to the BTS Audiovisuel in Toulouse, then to the École Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière in Paris, where I graduated with a Master's in Sound in 2021.

Since

Immediately after graduating I co-wrote and co-directed Laniakea, my first step as an author. Alongside it I built a professional practice in cinema sound — design and mixing for fiction, documentary and animation, with credits in films selected at Venice, Guadalajara and Visions du Réel, working alongside Ken Yasumoto, Bénédicte Schmitt and other leading figures of French sound.

Today my practice is fully dedicated to 3D sound — composition, installation and spatialisation, alongside Thierry Coduys.

ENS Louis Lumière — Master's in Sound, 2021 Formats — 20.1 · 8.1 · 5.1 · binaural · stereo Tools — Max/MSP · Panoramix (IRCAM) · Reaper · Ableton

Open to residencies, co-productions and collaborations.

mateo.rousson@gmail.com