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Keywords
Gender-based violence, embodiment, collective memory, post conflict contexts
Location
Dark Room 1 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
Through her research-creation approach, Isidori’s interdisciplinary work engages with “difficult knowledge”, information and experiences that challenge the familiar pillars of our self-understanding and at-homeness in the world. The work focuses on feminicide, which is the ultimate link of a chain of violence entrenched in the mindset of a patriarchal, capitalist, neoliberal structure exploiting and desecrating the body as a disposable commodity. Isidori’s practice explores the genre of serious games as a medium to engage with her research.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Don Federico is an experimental video installation that juxtaposes YouTube footage of kids playing a hand game with an actual case of feminicide. It creates an unsettling dialogue that reflects on the naturalization of gender-based violence.
“Don Federico killed his wife,
he chopped her in little pieces
and put her in a frying pan,
people walking by,
smelled something stinky,
it was Don Federico’s wife,
dancing cha cha cha”Biography
Agustina Isidori is an Argentinian-Italian visual artist and researcher based in Montreal. Agustina has a Bachelor in Film Studies, a degree in Digital Technologies in Art and Design and a Master of Design (Concordia University). Her work engages through constant dialogue in looking at ways to reflect on difficult knowledge, such as gender-based violence, feminicide, and violation of human rights.
www.aisidori.com
Keywords
Gender-based violence, embodiment, collective memory, post conflict contexts
Location
Dark Room 1 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
Through her research-creation approach, Isidori’s interdisciplinary work engages with “difficult knowledge”: information and experiences that challenge the familiar pillars of our self-understanding and at-homeness in the world. The work focuses on feminicide, which is the ultimate link in a chain of violence entrenched in the mindset of a patriarchal, capitalist, neoliberal structure exploiting and desecrating the body as a disposable commodity. Isidori’s practice explores the genre of serious games as a medium to engage with her research.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
SOLA is a video game that embodies the climate of tension, discomfort and fear that can be experienced walking alone at night in cities where gender-based violence is embedded in everyday life. SOLA builds on the concept of play to explore a video game as an instrument for conceptual thinking and a tool to work through social issues.
Biography
Agustina Isidori is an Argentinian-Italian visual artist and researcher based in Montreal. Agustina has a Bachelor in Film Studies, a degree in Digital Technologies in Art and Design and a Master of Design (Concordia University). Her work engages through constant dialogue in looking at ways to reflect on difficult knowledge, such as gender-based violence, feminicide, and violation of human rights.
www.aisidori.com
Keywords
embodiment, cross-sensorial effects, hallucination, time distortion, lights, sensoriality, immersion, perception, instrument making
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation context
By generating intense multi-sensory experiences, Saunier’s research-creation approach focuses on temporal patterns and dynamics of light qualities. Exploring the physiological impact of digital technologies rather than their potential for representation, his work is located between the perceptible and imperceptible through the production of amorphous luminous forms, blurry effects and experimental rhythms. Saunier interrogates the expanded sensorium shared between human and machines by focusing on the manipulation of our perception of time and space.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Sensum is an instrument to experiment with the sensory effects of LED light. It consists of a helmet that triggers the sense of sight through dynamic patterns of color, intensity, and movement. The work explores how digital technologies offer new algorithmic possibilities to effect light that alters our physiological condition and generate new sensations. Sensum provokes lived experiences that range from visual illusions to complex cross-modal effects, haptic hallucinations, and time distortions.
Biography
Alexandre Saunier is a French artist and researcher. His work brings together light art and digital craft to explore human perception and to forge sensory links with abstract processes. His background encompasses sound engineering, physical computing, and research in art and design. He currently pursuing an interdisciplinary doctorate at Concordia University focused on the creation of instruments for light-based performance.
www.alexandresaunier.com
Keywords
embodiment, cross-sensorial effects, hallucination, time distortion, lights, sensoriality, immersion, perception, instrument making
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation context
By generating intense multi-sensory experiences, Saunier’s research-creation approach focuses on temporal patterns and the dynamics of light qualities. Exploring the physiological impact of digital technologies rather than their potential for representation, his work is located between the perceptible and imperceptible through the production of amorphous luminous forms, blurry effects and experimental rhythms. Saunier interrogates the expanded sensorium shared between humans and machines by focusing on the manipulation of our perception of time and space.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Vitra is an ensemble of lively light sculptures that modulate the atmosphere of the space. It plays with rhythms of color and intensity that fluctuate from barely noticeable to nearly blinding. Both as an installation and a performance, Vitra unfolds a poetic of presence and absence to convey an experience of both spatial openness and temporal suspension.
Biography
Alexandre Saunier is a French artist and researcher. His work brings together light art and digital craft to explore human perception and to forge sensory links with abstract processes. His background encompasses sound engineering, physical computing, and research in art and design. He currently pursuing an interdisciplinary doctorate at Concordia University focused on the creation of instruments for light-based performance.
www.alexandresaunier.com
Keywords
electromagnetic field, wearable, fabric engineering, materiality, interactivity
Collaboration
Lauren Osmond (Samuel H. Kress Conservation Fellow, Victoria and Albert Museum and Barbara Layne (Professor Emeritus, Concordia University)
Location
Dark Room 2 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
Layne and Osmond’s interdisciplinary work focuses on the development of intelligent cloth structures for the creation of artistic, performative and functional textiles. Natural materials as well as microcontrollers, sensing and electronics create surfaces that are receptive and responsive to external stimuli. In this particular context, their research-creation approach reflects on a historical exploration of James Clerk Maxwell’s archival texts and the practical application of his magnetic field theory through custom designed antennas.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Maxwell’s Equations consists of three garments that incorporate unique antenna designs that wirelessly connect the garments to one another. The designs draw inspiration from 19th century fashion and from physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s pioneering theories of electromagnetic fields. When physically aligned, the strength of the connection will change the texts, poetry and mathematical formulas scrolling through the LED panels. The antennas on the front of the dresses portray one of Maxwell’s diagrams.
BIOGRAPHY | BARBARA LAYNE
Barbara Layne is Professor Emeritus in Studio Arts at Concordia University where she maintains a research-creation lab, Studio subTela at the Milieux Institute. She works with graduate students and collaborators in the development of smart textiles garments and interactive environments.
subtela.hexagram.ca
BIOGRAPHY | LAUREN OSMOND
Lauren Osmond holds a MA in Art Conservation (Queen’s University), BFA in Fibres & Material Practices (Concordia University), and Fashion Design diploma (Blanche MacDonald), and is currently a Samuel H. Kress Conservation Fellow at the V&A Museum. Lauren has exhibited textile and performance-based artwork in Canada and abroad, feeding into her interest in the ethics and challenges of exhibiting and caring for interactive objects.
Keywords
Apiculture, affective information, non-human agency, micro-robotics, ubiquity, materiality
Location
Dark Room 2 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
In her research-creation approach, Legault acknowledges more-than-human relations through gesture and resonance. From appropriated fragments of publicly available research documentation, she generates multisensorial installations. By approaching scientific experimentation of insect behavior, her artistic work reflects on our society through sustainable ecosystems and surveillance technology and envisions the future of technological applications through sensory and communication behavior between humans and non-humans.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
DRONE draws on research into the physical dynamics of insect flight and behaviour. The installation video merges documentation images of live bees with their robotic counterparts that are currently being developed by micro-robotics labs in the U.S. and Japan. In collaboration with participants movements, the projected light generates a live soundscape that is tuned to bee flight and communication behaviours, offering a speculative engagement with the tangible sonic experience of bee activities.
Biography
Donna Legault holds degrees in Art History (Carleton University), in Visual Arts (University of Ottawa) and is an MFA candidate in Intermedia at Concordia University. Her research is disseminated through modalities of motion and sound via electronic installation, sculpture, drawing, and performance. Current engagements include Open Codes at the ZKM in Karlsruhe ; Il Suono in Mostra in Udine ; and BIAN2018 in Montreal.
www.donnalegault.com
Keywords
materiality, remembrance, oral histories, uprooting narratives, objecthood, trace, auto-ethnography
Collaboration
Marichka Marczyk (Ukrainian folklorist)
Co-creator, Counting Sheep
Vocals/accordion, Lemon Bucket OrkestraLocation
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation context
Starting from visual self-narratives and the life of objects, Reznik explores and reconfigures the production of memory and its relation to culture. Her research-creation is based on the manipulation of material and immaterial identity traces carried by objects and memories. Thanks to her collaboration with Marichka Marczyk, Reznik forges explicit links between her socio-cultural heritage, artistic practice and ethnographic research in order to combine history and imagination.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Un-weaving takes its origin from a linen fabric made by the artist's Ukrainian grandmother in the 1930s, a period of great famine in Ukraine. It was sent from Ukraine by mail with a letter explaining how it was made: from picking the plants and separating them into filaments, to spinning and weaving. For a long time the fabric remained in a drawer until the day when the artist decided to unweave it in order to make it disappear. Why? For it to be reborn in another form: that of the moving image where its threads become plants once again.
Biography
Eugenia Reznik Born in Ukraine, Eugenia Reznik lives and works in Quebec since 2005. She obtained two master’s degrees in visual and media arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal where she is currently a PhD student. Her research focuses on issues of uprooting, the transmission of memory and its loss. Based on the collection of testimonials, she creates installations in galleries and public spaces that integrate recorded media, drawing, writing and plants.
www.eugeniareznik.com
Keywords
embodiment, auto-ethnography, wall, performance, decolonial epistemologies, intersectional feminism
Location
Light Room 1 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
As a mixed Anishinaabekwe, Faye Mullen is informed and invested in the political field of feminism, queer sensibilities and Indigenous epistemologies. Her approach considers the effect of imposed silences crossing generations, acknowledging that for settler colonialism such silence was (and remains) a tool for dispossession. By folding realities and drawing from past and future experiences, Mullen seeks to unearth these silences, coming to know them as the agent bodies they once were and which have the potential to still be.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Vestige of colonization and political instrument since the Anthropocene, we have never been faced with more walls than today. Faye Mullen proposes the experience of reimagining that which seems to be an imposing limit as an accessible threshold. By way of architectural and especially political and psychological semantics, she navigates the state of the wall in the hour of multiculturalism, access to information and international communication by placing value on deconstruction.
www.fayemullen.com
Biography
Employing a sculptural sensitivity, Faye Mullen works through the performative gesture and a research practice toward site-specific interventions, sound installations, and still and moving image-making.. Through a mixed Anishinaabe/settler perspective, she holds a position in her approach that worlds queer imaginings and decolonial ways of being. Her practice has been nomadic for a decade and is presently based between Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal and Tkaronto/Toronto.
Keywords
bioart, materiality, microbiome, birth, do it yourself, ethics
Collaboration
François-Joseph Lapointe & Marianne Cloutier
Affiliation
Laboratoire d’écologie moléculaire et évolution, Université de Montréal
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
Lapointe and Cloutier explore both scientific and artistic methods to raise awareness of biodiversity in a world of scientific professionalization and sterility. By reinvesting ethical considerations, their research-creation work reclaims the recognition of individual choice in a medicalized environment. They adopt a DIY approach for sharing the results of their scientific research on microbiome transmission, by giving visibility to the seeding process.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The Microbiome Rebirth Incubator is a device designed to seed babies born by emergency c-section with vaginal bacteria and breast milk essential to infant growth, either by dipping the newborn in the incubator, or by soaking a sterile compress in the probiotic cocktail to wash the baby’s mouth, face and body. The project symbolically explores the possibility of repairing the microbiome, as a way to re-empower the mother and her child, and to erase the traumatic experience of caesarean birth.
BIOGRAPHY | François-Joseph Lapointe
François-Joseph Lapointe is an artscientist from Montréal with a PhD in evolutionary biology and a PhD in dance and performance studies. As a scientist, he has published 120 papers ranging from population genetics to metagenomics. As an artist, he is currently sequencing his microbiome (and that of his wife) to produce microbiome selfies. His work has been exhibited in Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, Australia and the USA.
www.twitter.com/fjlapointe
Biography | Marianne Cloutier
Marianne Cloutier is an art historian specialized in bioart. She is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Montreal. As part of her research, she is interested in the ethical, political, social and philosophical issues that emerge from the integration of the living in art, and the appropriation of the scientific tools, techniques and knowledge by the artist.
www.twitter.com/cl_marianne
Keywords
Hijacking, hybridation, experimental, “install action”, instrument, perception
Location
Arthaus Salzamt
research-creation CONTEXT
Captivated by the relationships between motion, electricity, the digital and the living, Arseneault's research-creation combines technologies to create interactive instruments. Through the mastery of materials, Arseneault engages in experimental processes to hijack or transform existing mechanisms. Recalling underground cinema methods, he develops digital environments that enable both kinetic and sound synesthesia through variations in electric current.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Working on the distinctiveness of sound signals such as phase, frequency and amplitude, Feedback Cycles for Oscillographs produces an audio-driven synesthesia of hypnotic lines drawn from the stereophonic disparity. Activated by movement on two wheels, this installative action seeks to reveal the ungrasped between void and short circuit.
Biography
Guillaume Arseneault is a transmedia digital artist. He completed a master's degree in communication, research-creation concentration in experimental media (University of Quebec in Montreal). He hijacks technologies to create novel interactives experiences. Driven by a desire to provoke reactions and dialogue toward ourselves in the digital era, his pieces investigates kinetic feedback and sustainability in interactive audiovisual environments
gllmar.gitlab.io
Keywords
Vibropixel technology/vibrotactile devices, Senses, Interactivity, Haptic, Instruction piece/game
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
Promises is a part of a broader research-creation project that investigates processes of sensing and sense-making through the modality of vibrational patterns as artistic expression. Toft’s work focuses on the perception of movement and vibration of materials which results from the interaction between human and non-human agencies. Her experimentation investigates machine touch as the primary modality for choreographing social gatherings as game-like situations.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
While consumers of mainstream culture have developed refined literacies in screen-based media, the modality of vibration is less coded with meanings. Promises explores what local multiplayer games might look like when using algorithmically-driven vibration as primary material for expression. In Promises, objects circulate between the hands of the visitors. Objects and promises replace one another via the acts of trading, making attachments, and letting go. Preferences and meanings emerge.
Biography
Ida Toft is an artist and PhD candidate at Concordia University working on the intersections of digital games and media art. Growing up in Copenhagen, Ida has been involved with underground and experimental game communities across Europe since 2007. In Montreal, she has explored non-screen based digital games.
Keywords
Materiality, Embodiment, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), Interactivity, non-human agencies
Collaboration
Jess Rowan Marcotte (TAG Research Lab, Concordia University) & Dietrich Squinkifer (TAG Research Lab, Concordia University)
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation Context
In their research-creation process, Marcotte and Squinkifer consider alternative forms of intimacy and relationships between entities not normally viewed as agents/subjects. Their work is inspired by concepts of vibrant material traditions and of kinship and otherness. Exploring the devices of a game, they create situations in which the codes of society are challenged in order to promote direct experience along with individual and collective sensibilities.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
In this screenless physical-digital hybrid game, the main interaction is caressing and stroking a plant gently. Using the natural conductance of both humans and plants, a soundscape with Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) poetry is generated. Since conductance varies from human to human, and with the moisture in the plant and earth, each human has a unique relationship with their plant partner. This game asks questions about what it means to design from the perspective of an "other" that we cannot know the mind of.
Biography
Jess Marcotte & Dietrich Squinkifer are designers who have collaborated since 2015 on intersectional feminist game design projects related to embodiment, physicality, and queer themes, with a particular interest in the areas of autobiography and autoethnography, alt controllers and physical-digital hybrid games, and alt games. They are doctoral students at the TAG Research Lab.
www.jeka.games
www.squinky.me
Keywords
portraiture, mediation of images, slit-scan, post-photography, ubiquity, interactivity
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation Context
In his works, Rondeau develops devices that explore self-representation in a playful and unconventional manner. His research-creation approach reveals as much a search for simplicity of design for users, as an interest in the complexity of computer code and the execution of physical objects. While situating his research in the history of serial and sequential photography popularized in the 19th century, Rondeau’s works with digital images - unlike analog photography - do not stand for reality.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
REVOLVE/REVEAL is an interactive installation based on slit-scan photography, a marginal process which transposes temporality and spatiality within the image. Through distorted representations of the interactors, it seeks to transgress the photographic portrait’s conventions of fixity and single vantage point. Slit-scan stretches and spatializes time within a paradoxically static representation, requiring innovative modes of interpretation by the viewer.
Biography
Louis-Philippe Rondeau’s research is focused on exploring the outskirts of photographic portraiture. His interactive installations compel us to reconsider the conventions employed in the mediation of images, specifically those regarding the representation of space and time. He is a PhD student in research-creation at University of Quebec in Montreal and teaches at the NAD school of UQAC, and his practice stems from working in the area of visual post-production in Montreal.
www.patenteux.com
Keywords
embodiment, synesthesia, choreography, technological interactivity, movement sonification, human/ non-human agency
Collaboration
Axelle Munezero (choreographer & dancer)
Ricky St-Jusna // Mecdy Jean-Pierre (dancers)Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
RESEARCH-CREATION context
Research-creation is explored in Cossette and Munezero’s collaboration through urban dance and electronic music mixed with the universe of technological interactivity. They develop a choreographic practice that is characterized by connection and improvisation. Their interest in the sensory world, namely synesthesia, material agency and embodiment, is captured thanks to the sonication of movement.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Temporalité Expressive questions the relationship between movement and sound on stage by created a choreography which is composed and expressed musically. The three performers were chosen for their diversity and mastery of the musicality in their movements in order to enrich the melodic research. In order to create this relationship, sensors positioned on the dancers influence in real time a musical generation algorithm and sound synthesis parameters which influences their expressivity.
Biography | Marc-André Cossette
Marc André Cossette is a trans-disciplinary artist working on the relation between technology and performing arts. Marc-André holds a Bachelor’s degree in Interactive Media (University of Quebec in Montreal) and is currently pursuing a research-creation master’s degree in Experimental Media (University of Quebec in Montreal). Temporalité expressive is the third creation in collaboration with the dancer and choreographer Axelle Munezero.
www.fortheloveofsound.ca
Biography | Axelle Munezero
A dancer, choreographer and event organizer, Axelle Munezero has been immersed in the world of urban dance for 10 years now. She has collaborated with many artists, including Arcade Fire, Corneille, Poirier, Rime Salmi, and AfrotroniX. She also completed a Bachelor's degree in Contemporary Dance (University of Quebec in Montreal) as a choreographer.
www.axellemunezero.com
Keywords
intelligence collective, interrelation, machine learning, workshop, embodiment
Collaboration
Moussa Abdenbi (Mathematician, Computer scientist), Raphaël Dely (video game designer, art historian)
Affiliation
LAVI (Laboratoire en Arts Vivants et Interdisciplinarité), Université du Québec à Montréal
Location
Light Room 2 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
Theunissen's research-creation workshops focus on collective intelligence in a constantly changing environment. Thanks to her collaborations, this transdisciplinary project explores the intersection of performance and technologies (learning algorithms and image processing). Theunissen attempts to understand the "states" of a group interacting in a shared space and evolving without a central leader. This project seeks to challenge our apprehension of adaptation through a continuously evolving feedback loop between the machine and the performers.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The "generative chorus" project is an artistic research laboratory on the role of chorus in movement. Acting as a "collective body", 15 performers move in an interactive apparatus that interprets its "states". The creation iterates its analysis with each experimentation, creating a kind of endless experiment. This choral approach values horizontal relationships between individuals and seeks leadership-less organizational strategies in a constantly changing environment.
Biography
Marine Theunissen is a performer and a PhD student in visual and media arts at University of Quebec in Montreal since 2016. Engaged in a research-creation process, her work is influenced by her MA in Theatre (Esact) and in Communications (ULG). Her research values the laboratory as an iterative art form, and focuses on the transdisciplinary creation of performative apparatuses, improvised movement and collective intelligence.
Keywords
Caribeean futurism, staging, embodied experience, hybrid identity, exploration
Collaboration
Collaborating artist : David Corbett (Nottingham Trent University, U), Ayana Evans, Henri Tauliaut
Location
Dark Room 1 in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation CONTEXT
At the intersection of art, science and technology, Mc Gilchrist’s work reflects on how to stage embodied experience through an immersive VR installation. The sequence of the spectators' gaze creates an infinite reflection through 360 o performances, the imaginary universe of the island and the exhibition space itself. McGilchrist is concerned with new forms of performed and enacted storytelling, particularly the practice of auto-ethnography, and how these can be used to subvert racial, social and gender-based categorization, classification and discrimination.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Islands are metaphors for a condensed physical space in which we are aware of the edges of our living environment. By transposing this notion to an immersive VR - sculptural installation, we invite participants to navigate through an archipelago of possible encounters through filmed 360 performances and deconstructed sounds, which inhabit these imaginary islands. Submerged in virtual reality, ISLAND’s embodied experience becomes a tool to decipher experimental practices within an immersive installation context.
Biography
Olivia is concerned with new forms of immersive storytelling and how they can subvert racial, social and gender based categorization and discrimination. She draws on performance, poetry and submersion to design VR experiences and video installations where the lines between user experience and co-creation are blurred.
www.oliviamcgilchrist.com
Keywords
deep learning, artificial agent, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), machine learning, “Long short-term memory” (LSTM), synesthesia
Collaboration
Sofian Audry (Research director)
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation Context
In an attempt to induce tingling sensations and pleasurable auditory-tactile synesthesia in the user, Audry and Gee’s research-creation approach aims to reveal the listener’s own cyborgian qualities. The use of human and non-human agencies seeks to blur the boundaries between time, cognition, language, and technologies of communication. The artists’ collaboration demonstrates media art as agent-based art practice and research regarding human voices and electronic bodies.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
to the sooe re-embodies the cognitive processes and creative voices of three agents into a tangible device: a deceased author, a deep learning neural net, and an Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response performer. These agencies are materialized in the device, which transmits soft vocalizations of an AI-generated text: its vocalizations are intended to induce autonomous physiological sensations in the listener (ASMR), revealing the body as linked to the technological-sonic assemblage and initiating an intimate encounter with machine learning processes.
Biography | Sofian Audry
Sofian Audry is an artist, computer scientist, and educator. He holds a B. Sc. and M. Sc. in Computer Sciences (University of Montreal), an M.A. in Communications (University of Quebec in Montreal), and a PhD in Humanities (Concordia University). Sofian is Assistant Professor of New Media at University of Maine. Before, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT. His work has been presented around the world.
www.sofianaudry.com
Biography | Erin Gee
Erin Gee is a Canadian artist who works in performance art, choral composition, VR, robotics, and sound through the metaphor of human voices in electronic bodies. Her recent work explores communication through human emotion as articulated through biosensing technologies, data, and sound. She received an MFA from Concordia in 2014, and was a visiting Assistant Professor in Concordia’s Faculty of Communication from 2015-2017.
www.eringee.net
Keywords
indigenous epistemology, hair braid interface, wearable sculpture, Lakota visual interface design, storytelling, embodiment
Location
Deep Space
RESEARCH-CREATION Context
By developing a spiraling feedback dynamic between performer and machine, Kite cultivates an integrated Indigenous and research-creation methodology approach in order to understand and articulate how the Lakota acknowledge and support truth-telling in a variety of forms: facts, lies, stories, spiritual channeling, family gossip, and community mythologies. She explores these mythologies and articulates how they can be conceptually, creatively, and pragmatically productive alternatives to the hegemony of Western epistemologies.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Listener is a site specific performance artwork that engages with Lakota epistemologies through computational media and narrative. Lakota ways of knowing tell us that hair is an extra-sensory tool, operating in physically, metaphorical, and spiritual dimensions simultaneously. How can a Lakota understanding of hair influence the design of technology? What does a Lakota data visualization interface look like?
Biography
Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an Oglala Lakota performance, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition, an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and is a PhD student at Concordia University. Her research investigates the multiplicity of mythologies existing constantly in the contemporary storytelling of the Lakota through research-creation, computational media, and performance practice.
www.kitekitekitekite.com
Keywords
“translucidoscope”, “empreinte-mouvement”, performativity, silhouette, perception
Collaboration
Jennyfer Desbiens (actress & Ph.D. candidate UQAM)
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation context
Combining media art and physical theater, Chartrand's research-creation questions human presence by exploring the threshold of the shadow’s visibility. Her work seeks to offer a new apprehension of the body, different from its commonly recognized forms. A performer’s digital print is captured by the “translucidoscope” technique that Chartrand has developed - a process that favors unpredictability and the immersion of the subject within a broader inquiry into performativity and perception.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The video triptych Study 1 presents three figures performing an asynchronous jumping whose slow motion reveals successive states of the figures’ metamorphosis. The work explores the shadow as an unpredictable doubling the body. A video capture of the sliding shadow on the moving body in contact with a translucent screen. The rebound of fabrics mixing their shadow with that of the body alters the human contours, generating these figures as labile as they are insolent at the risk of entanglement.
Biography
A practitioner of media arts and physical theater, Sylvie Chartrand is experimenting with methods of capturing the human shadow. She explores the emergence of silhouettes where the familiar intertwines with the misshapen or the shapeless. She holds a Bachelor's degree in graphic design (University of Quebec in Montreal) and a diploma from the National Studio of Contemporary Arts (Le Fresnoy). She is currently completing a PhD in visual and media arts (University of Quebec in Montreal).
www.sylviechartrand.net
Keywords
bioart, micrography, materiality, cell culture media, biotextile research, connective tissue cells
Collaboration
Dr Ionat Zurr oversaw my use of her lab at the University of Western Australia and trained me in tissue culture protocols.
Location
Main Gallery in Kuntsuniversitat
research-creation context
Hunter promotes a research-creation approach that aims to raise critical awareness of scientific techniques and stimulate discussion of biotechnology outside the functional context of laboratories and hospitals. During her residency at the SymbioticA Center for Excellence in Biological Arts in Australia, she observed the behavior of cells in order to create new vital and aesthetic specimens through hands-on tissue engineering. By putting cells on a human visual scale, Hunter thus seeks to create a feeling of empathy.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Aseptic Requiem presents a new scientific protocol for the compassionate disposal of in vitro semi-living organisms. The 24-hour time lapse image from digital micrography shows repetitive looping of 11 compressed seconds of live NIH3T3 connective tissue cells successfully engaging with and performing vital functions on silk filaments in cell culture media. Aseptic Requiem is presented on a small, intimate screen, with the accompaniment of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem Op. 48. The installation includes a handwoven Jacquard prayer rug, entitled, Metamaterial.
Biography
WhiteFeather Hunter is a multiple award-winning Canadian artist/researcher based in Montreal. She holds an MFA in Fibres and Material Practices (Concordia University) and presents her work internationally. WhiteFeather positions her BioArt practice within the context of (witch)craft, via material investigations of the aesthetic and technological potential of vital materials.
www.whitefeatherhunter.net
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Taking Care is an exhibition of twenty works from student members of Hexagram, an interdisciplinary research network for media arts, design, technology and digital culture based in Montreal (Quebec), Canada. Established in 2001, the network brings together 40 faculty and over 200 graduate students from its founding universities, the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) and Concordia University, along with the University of Montreal, McGill and the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi, local and international academic and cultural partners.
The projects exhibited in Taking Care operate at the intersection of ethical-aesthetic concerns. They are not meant to be prescriptive – describing the good life – but rather speculative, asking what the possibilities and conditions of life in the present and future could be. At the same time, they question our understanding of the world as we continually search and struggle to make sense of it. Expressed through a range of forms and media including games, VR, performance, installation, biological art, textiles, sound, video and photography, the projects all involve the use of contemporary technologies yet, their focus lies beyond the technological. From issues of post-colonial conflict to the imperceptible in more than human beings, questions of trace, history, narratives of experience, non-human materiality and representation are assembled and entangled with each other in the spaces of the University of Art and Design and at Ars Electronica venues across Linz. As attention turns to the considerable uncertainty of our future, Taking Care thus examines what is at stake in the ideas and visions of the next generation.
From an open call to Hexagram graduate students across the network, the twenty projects were chosen by a selection committee of Hexagram members and collaborators outside of the university context. The exhibited projects exemplify what is known as “Research-Creation” – a research trend where Hexagram, Quebec and Canada have taken an international lead. This interdisciplinary approach bridges faculty and students from the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences and is well funded and supported by universities, provincial and federal research bodies. Students and faculty from around the world are attracted to Hexagram for its cutting edge research infrastructures - studios, labs, black boxes - and the vibrant cultural scene of Montreal and Quebec, a centre for digital arts and culture in North America.
Structured around three research axes (sense, embodiment and movement; materiality; ubiquity), Hexagram responds to the increasing need to develop critical and reflexive theories and methods in artistic practice through experimentation, production, documentation and dissemination. Within Montreal, Hexagram provides an intra-university environment for collaboration through public seminars, events and publications that transcend disciplinary silos and the isolation of university departments. Within Quebec, it also enables structured mobility and exchange between French and English research cultures in art, science, technology and society.
Anna Kerekes
Anna Kerekes works as a curator, artist and researcher. She focuses on media arts and collaborates on various projects in the international art scene. After receiving a masters in curating at the University of Sorbonne-Paris IV, her interest in the making of art led her to pursue a PhD in art studies and practices at the University of Quebec in Montreal, where she specialized in research-creation. Her collaboration with Jonas Mekas transformed how she associates notions of memory and everyday life through artistic practices, making these subjects the focal point of her current work.
https://annakerekes.netChris Salter
Chris Salter is an artist, University Research Chair in New Media, Technology and the Senses at Concordia University and Co-Director of the Hexagram network for Research-Creation in Media Arts, Design, Technology and Digital Culture, in Montreal. Salter’s performances, installations, research and publications have been presented exhibitions, festivals and conferences around the world including the Venice Biennale. He is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010) and Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MIT Press, 2015).
http://www.chrissalter.comProject Initiator
Chris Salter, Co-Director of HexagramCuratorial Statement
Chris Salter, Co-Director of Hexagram
Anna Kerekes, CuratorProduction Team for Campus
Anna Kerekes, Curator
Marine Theunissen, Project coordinator
Alexandre Saunier, Director of production
Patil Tchilinguirian, Exhibition designer
Lorène Chesnel, Head of Communications
Agustina Isidori, Documentation
Jason Pomrenski, Technical SupportProgramming Committee of Hexagram Network
Chris Salter, Co-Director of Hexagram
Jean Dubois Co-director of Hexagram
Armando Menicacci, Professor, Dance Department UQAM
Thierry Bardini, Professor & Chair, Communications department UdeM
Yan Breuleux, Professor at NAD center
Cynthia Noury, Student RepresentativeHexagram Network Analyses Research Team
Louis-Claude Paquin, principal investigator
Thierry Bardini, co-investigator
Chris Salter, co-investigator
Cynthia Noury, collaborator
Kevin Nicolas, research assistantHexagram Network Staff
Natalie Lafortune, General Coordinator
Marc-André Cossette, Programming CoordinatorWeb design
Patil Tchilinguirian, Web Design
Marc-André Cossette, Web DevelopmentBehind the scene
MAKING OF TAKING CARE
This video presents the Hexagram Campus exhibition, Taking Care, at Ars Electronica Festival and features some of the selected artists: Louis-Philippe Rondeau, Sylvie Chartrand, François-Joseph Lapointe and Marianne Cloutier, and Olivia McGilchrist.RESEARCH-CREATION NETWORK
Hexagram is an international network dedicated to research-creation in the fields of media arts, design, technology and digital culture. Consisting of over eighty members working from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Concordia University, with additional researchers from l’Université de Montréal, l’École de technologie supérieure, l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and McGill University. The network collaborates with organizations in Québec, across Canada, and around the world (Europe, Latin America, the United States, Asia and Australia).RESEARCH AXIS
The 2014-2020 research program is centered on three axes: (1) Senses, Embodiment and Movement; (2)Materiality; (3) Ubiquity. These axes reflect the changing landscape of media arts, design and technology research with the inclusion of researchers from sociology, art history, anthropology, game studies, philosophy and communication/media studies in addition to artists and designers into the network.RESEARCH-CREATION DEFINED
Hexagram’s approach identifies research-creation as exemplifying a material-discursive method of producing and disseminating knowledge, which assumes a critical entanglement between artistic, humanities, social sciences and scientific research around technological culture.RESEARCH AIMS
The quality and diversity of research and technical infrastructures available to researchers and graduate students makes Hexagram unique. Hexagram has two central goals: (1) Promoting collaborative work between Hexagram researchers to develop theoretical, methodological concepts/tools/processes and practices for the promotion of research-creation as an emerging field and (2) consolidating, exchanging and exporting this expertise on the international stage.
To find out more about Hexagram please check the link below
WWW.HEXAGRAM.CABehind the scene
MAKING OF TAKING CARE
This video presents the Hexagram Campus exhibition, Taking Care, at Ars Electronica Festival and features some of the selected artists: Louis-Philippe Rondeau, Sylvie Chartrand, François-Joseph Lapointe and Marianne Cloutier, and Olivia McGilchrist.Presentation
RESEARCH GROUPS AND LABS
Presentation of different labs and research groups associated with Hexagram Network.RESEARCH-CREATION NETWORK
Hexagram is an international network dedicated to research-creation in the fields of media arts, design, technology and digital culture. Consisting of over eighty members working from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Concordia University, with additional researchers from l’Université de Montréal, l’École de technologie supérieure, l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and McGill University. The network collaborates with organizations in Québec, across Canada, and around the world (Europe, Latin America, the United States, Asia and Australia).RESEARCH AXIS
The 2014-2020 research program is centered on three axes: (1) Senses, Embodiment and Movement; (2)Materiality; (3) Ubiquity. These axes reflect the changing landscape of media arts, design and technology research with the inclusion of researchers from sociology, art history, anthropology, game studies, philosophy and communication/media studies in addition to artists and designers into the network.RESEARCH-CREATION DEFINED
Hexagram’s approach identifies research-creation as exemplifying a material-discursive method of producing and disseminating knowledge, which assumes a critical entanglement between artistic, humanities, social sciences and scientific research around technological culture.RESEARCH AIMS
The quality and diversity of research and technical infrastructures available to researchers and graduate students makes Hexagram unique. Hexagram has two central goals: (1) Promoting collaborative work between Hexagram researchers to develop theoretical, methodological concepts/tools/processes and practices for the promotion of research-creation as an emerging field and (2) consolidating, exchanging and exporting this expertise on the international stage.
To find out more about Hexagram please check the link below
WWW.HEXAGRAM.CABehind the scene
MAKING OF TAKING CARE
This video presents the Hexagram Campus exhibition, Taking Care, at Ars Electronica Festival and features some of the selected artists: Louis-Philippe Rondeau, Sylvie Chartrand, François-Joseph Lapointe and Marianne Cloutier, and Olivia McGilchrist.