Bois eau métal
Documentation of the first art installation of the Canada Research Chair MÉDIANE, presented outdoors in July 2021 at Jardin botanique Montréal. The installation experiments artistically with the ecophysiological data of three species of trees collected by the research programme SmartForests. The artwork proposes tree technologies and machines as witness and memory, up close and from afar, of a continuous sensing relation between forest, weather and climate; a situated, constant, variable, cyclical and energetic exchange.
Reclaiming the Planet
Reclaiming the Planet will be a publication, series of video taped discussions, and installation of data visualizations and architectural models. In this piece we showcase the results of our current architecture research studio investigating how industry 4.0 is transforming territory, environment, and political-economy. The project involves data visualizing the changing Quebec extraction industry ecologies, and imagining speculative designs for inhabiting post-extractionary territories in the future.
The Global Urban Wilds
The Global Urban Wilds locative platform curates ruderal landscapes that survive in city spaces and invites the user to explore the entanglement of urban biodiversity, site remediation, and settler culture in contexts such as Montreal’s Champ des Possibles. The site-specific, GPS-enabled locative sound walk and app affords users experiences of “embodied knowing” in urban wilds that represent informal brown/green spaces on the edges of urban development.
Hexagram Showcase
The Hexagram Showcase 2019-2021 is a compilation of show video presentation of research-creation works produced by members and students affiliated to the Hexagram Network. The compilation demonstrates the diversity and vitality of research-creation in the Quebec academic landscape.
Bois eau métal. Documentation of the MÉDIANE public art installation at the Espace pour la vie, Jardin botanique, Montréal, July 2021.
Video
Gisèle Trudel: Gisèle Trudel is an artist. She works under the name Ælab since 1996, an artist research unit co-founded with Stéphane Claude, who is a composer and sound engineer, and Head of Audio Research at OBORO. Ælab’s commitment to collaboration and creative dissemination are ways of thinking and doing that try to bridge different methods of inquiry. Their process-oriented investigations creatively engage art and technology as intertwined with philosophy. Trudel is a professor at UQAM’s École des arts visuels et médiatiques and a member of Hexagram. She holds the Canada Research Chair MÉDIANE in Arts, Ecotechnologies of Practice and Climate Change (2020-2025).
Maya Lamothe-Katrapani: Maya Lamothe-Katrapani is an undergraduate student in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Concordia University, Montreal. She is currently a research assistant examining speculative smart city projects at a planetary scale under the supervision of Dr. Orit Halpern. She is also collaboratively working on the website for the Reclaiming the Planet project. Her past academic works have merged her interests in gentrification, the role of material traces, memory and heritage with sound recording and photography. She is interested in exploring how creative mediums translate the embodied experience of social science research. She will complete her BA in the Fall 2021 semester at the University of Copenhagen as part of a student exchange program. This experience will allow her to familiarize herself with the Danish Welfare model and with Danish Architecture and Urban Design through a sociological perspective.
Alessia Zarzani: Alessia Zarzani is currently a Guest professor at the Université de Montréal, Faculty of Architecture. Her current research focuses on the urban landscape and the influence of technology and artificial intelligence. She graduated in architecture in 2012 (Sapienza University of Rome) after having worked in Italy and Brazil on multiple projects combining architecture and urban planning; furthermore she holds a joint PhD in Planning from Université de Montréal and in Landscape and Environmental from Sapienza University of Rome (2018). Author of several articles related to the evolution of urban landscape, Zarzani co-edited together with A. Ponte the publication Architecture and information 2.0 (2017). In 2018 she joined the research staff of the cooperation MILA-IVADO-UdeM on issues dealing with the ethics of urban digital landscape and the integration of artificial intelligence. In 2019 she became co-author of the Montreal Declaration for responsible artificial intelligence. Since then, she joined the Division of Plan and Policy of the City of Montreal. Her portfolio includes the integration and the impact evaluation of new mobility services and technologies in the urban landscape, including autonomous vehicles and micro-mobility.
Orit Halpern: Orit Halpern is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design. She is currently working on two projects. The first is a history of the relationship between “intelligence”, liberalism, and democracy; the second project examines extreme infrastructures and the idea of experimentation at planetary scales in design, science, and engineering. She is also the director of the Speculative Life Research Cluster and D4: The Disrupting Design Research Group, both are laboratories bridging the arts, environmental sciences, media, and the social sciences.
Jean-Denis Milette: Jean-Denis Milette is an Architect and Ph. D. student at Montreal University. His work focuses on the impacts of science, computing, and regulation on architecture. He completed his studies at both Montreal University and EPFL. He is currently working on his Ph. D. research about 4.0 industry’s impact on architecture.
Gabriel Payant: Captivated by the effects of the digital transformation in design, Gabriel Payant works as an Architect and automation specialist for DMA Architects, as well as a Guest Professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Montreal. Since he first grasped the disruptive nature of computational design in his master’s thesis on the parametric planning of the redevelopment of ailing malls at the regional scale, he has furthered his research by tutoring architecture master students for their thesis project in workshops on territory and technology.
Marius Senneville: A recipient of SSHRC scholarships at both the master and PhD levels, Marius Senneville is now pursuing a thesis in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University under the supervision of Orit Halpern. Borrowing from science and technology studies, political economy and organization studies, his research focuses on the cultural and organizational/financial factors influencing how ethical and socially responsible research in AI is conceptualized and operationalized in entrepreneurial spaces of knowledge production. His work has been published in Big Data & Society (co-authored) as well as presented at the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).
Alessandra Ponte: Alessandra Ponte is Full professor at the École d’ architecture, Université de Montréal. She has also taught at the schools of architecture of Princeton University, Cornell University, Pratt Institute New York, the ETH Zurich, and at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. Since 2008 she has been responsible for the conception and organization of the Phyllis Lambert International Seminar, annual colloquia held at the Université de Montréal, addressing current topics in landscape and architecture. She curated the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975 (Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, 2009) and collaborated to the exhibition and catalogue God & Co: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble (with Laurent Stalder and Thomas Weaver, London: Architectural Association Publications, 2011).
Kim Laneuville: Kim Laneuville completed a pre-university degree in natural sciences (2014) at the Cégep de Sherbrooke. She also owns a Bachelor’s degree in psychology (2017) as well as a Master’s degree in architecture (2020 at the Université of Montréal. Since 2013, she has been a medical assistant in the Canadian Armed Forces requiring resourcefulness, priority management, creativity and leadership. She started her intership in architecture in June 2021 with Groupe Leclerc Architecture + Design.
Adriana Menghi: Adriana Menghi aims for a career in ecological architecture which would contribute to the valorization of the built heritage, of crafts arts and vernacular building techniques. She believes in an egalitarian and collaborative design process as well as in the importance of low-tech and high-tech approaches. She completed an Honours Bachelor of Arts with distinction from the University of Toronto, with a double major in design and in history and theory of art and architecture. She founded her faculty’s student union and a student research lab in eco-architecture, the future-Living Lab. With this design-build group she designed and built several prototypes and a Passiv Haus in Northern Ontario. After her graduation she worked with architect Stefano Pujatti in Italy, then as a researcher in the fields of holography and virtual and augmented reality visualization at OCAD University, in Toronto.
Delphine Ducharme: After having completed her undergraduate studies in architecture at Université de Montréal and having spent a year abroad at LOCI Bruxelles university, Delphine came back to Montreal to pursue a master’s in architecture. Her research interests currently focus on the role of architecture within territorial issues. She simultaneously works in a research group in collaboration with ARIAction and Architecture Without Borders Quebec where she works on improving the resiliency of the built environment in cities of Quebec to increasingly frequent flooding events.
Meryem Sekhri: After graduating from the University of Montreal with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 2020, Meryem Sekhri is pursuing her Master of Architecture degree at the same institution. In 2019, she participated in the Visiting Barragan workshop in Mexico City, under the tutelage of Go Hasegawa. Since winter 2020, she has been involved with Docomomo Quebec, a modern heritage preservation organization. She is currently participating in the Architecture Territory Information 4.0 workshop directed by Alessandra Ponte. Her research theme addresses the issues of pollination and the beekeeping industry in Quebec.
Alexandre Asselin: Originally from a small village in Montérégie, Alexandre started his academic path in the city of Saint-Hyacinthe. After having completed his high school studies in an international program at Saint-Joseph de Saint-Hyacinthe, before obtaining his college diploma at the cegep of the same city in Pure and applied sciences. In 2017, he enrolled in architecture at McGill University, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in 2020. He is currently completing his Master’s degree in architecture at the Université de Montréal. Since the summer of 2018, Alexandre also works at Architecture CBA, a small firm located in Mont-Saint-Hilaire.
Anna Paola Bossi: Originally from Verona, Anna Paola Bossi first completed her studies in foreign languages, to then study architecture at Polytechnic of Milan, in Mantou. After many travels, she finally settled in Montreal in 2015 where she undertook a minor in art history and started her professional career at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Afterward, she started her studies in architecture at the Université of Montréal through which she is awarded three scholarships from the CIBPA Foundation as well as from the Fonds Wilrose Desrosiers et Pauline Dunn. Officially graduated in 2020, she is currently pursuing a master at the Faculty of Planning and works full-time as an intern at Ian Nataf architect.
Baptiste Kauffmann: After having obtained a general scientific baccalaureate at the Saint-Just high school in Lyon, Baptiste Kauffmann went to study for a BTS in construction (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur). He completed an internship in the construction company Grisoni-Zaugg in Geneva, Switzerland. Following this training, he entered the Université de Montréal to complete a Bachelor’s degree in architecture. He worked for Architecture Barillot in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, on various projects such as the conversion of a dwelling into a wine tasting school in Mâcon and the creation of a butterfly refuge for the Parc des oiseaux in Villars-les-Dombes. He is now completing a Master’s degree in architecture at Université de Montréal.
Millie-Ann Grenon: Passionate about architecture, she completed her professional training at the Université de Montréal while accumulating various professional experiences within emerging architectural firms. Sensitized to the challenges of current practice and the opportunities that the field of planning might offer, she undertook the Architecture/Territory/Information 4.0 Master’s project. It is people and their environment that inspire her and motivate her passion for planning and inhabited spaces.
Rachel Ducharme: Rachel Ducharme is currently completing her Master in architecture at Université de Montréal. After graduating from high school in 2015, she completed a DEC in Visual Arts at Édouard-Montpetit CEGEP and obtained, in 2016, the scholarship for the best R score in the program. From 2017 to 2020, she completed her Bachelor’s degree in architecture at Université de Montréal and started the Master’s program in 2020. Since May 2021 she has been interning at Nativ Architecture.
Charles Antoine Poulin: After his undergraduate studies in architecture at Université Laval, Charles Antoine proceeded to complete a master in building engineering, structural profile at Concordia University. He is currently pursuing a master in architecture at Université de Montréal. Helped with his previous experience in patrimonial architecture in Chaudière-Appalaches, Charles-Antoine is now focusing on digital integration with regard to the conception of forestry projects in the region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue. His research conducted during winter 2021 has allowed him to explore various ways to use wood structures as well as data collection with regard to the monitoring of the general state and behaviors of buildings. This research framework is to be further advanced within the thesis project during the fall 2021 semester.
Fannie Hébert: Following her undergraduate studies in communication-marketing at Université de Sherbrooke as well as her independent studies in art history at Université du Québec à Montréal, Fannie Hébert ultimately choses the architecture program at Université de Montréal in 2016. In 2018, equipped with a basis of German, she leaves Montreal to complete her last undergraduate year of study at the Technische Universität of Munich. This experience allowed her to discover and explore an entirely new perspective on her domain of practice. Once back in Montreal, she joined the team of Manoeuvre Architecture, where she has been working for now more than a year and a half, in parallel to her master in architecture she currently conducts at Université de Montréal.
Ikram Haffaf: Initially pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Université du Québec à Montréal, Ikram reoriented toward architecture to satisfy both her curiosity and creativity. She graduated from Université de Montréal in 2019 and then dedicated a full year to internships and entering the professional milieu at Rouge Architecture. In 2020, she started her master in architecture and is concurrently working at Ruccolo+Faubert Architectes.
Liliane Hamelin: After having completed her Bachelor’s degree in architecture at Université de Montréal in 2019, Liliane undertook her Master of architecture at the same faculty. In 2009 she was recipient of the Ivanhoe-Cambridge Observatory Scholarship for a project carried out in collaboration with two of her colleagues, and in 2021 she received the GLT Scholarship for her proposal with regard to her Master’s project. Liliane is now working as an intern at the Montreal firm Provencher_Roy for almost two years.
Marie-Ève Fortier: Originally from Cantons-de-l’Est, Marie-Ève graduated in 2016 from the Technology of architecture program at Université de Sherbrooke (award of excellence) and continued her Bachelor’s degree at the Université de Montréal. In 2018, she undertook a semester abroad as part of the Hors les murs program where she conducted research and design work in Brazil. She dedicated the following year to a professional trip to Paris where she notably worked at the Ramdam architecture studio as well as to the Conseil d’Architecture, d’Urbanisme et de l’environnement (CAUE) of the city of Paris. In parallel to her university training, she participated in various competitions within the DAME collective founded in 2020 with David Blanc.
Emerging landscapes and Possible Futures: Global Urban Wilds and Environmental Storytelling
Dr. Jill Didur is Co-Director of the Speculative Life Cluster and member of the TAG Research Centre at Milieux Institute for Art, Culture and Technology. She is the creator of the locative sound walks, the Alpine Garden MisGuide (installed at the Jardin botanique de Montréal, 2015) and the Global Urban Wilds (to be installed at the Champs des Possibles in August 2021). She has recently published articles on the use of locative media for environmental storytelling (Intermedialities & Media Theory) and a co-edited collection on postcolonial environmental humanities (Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches).
Tony Higuchi (b. Las Palmas, Spain) is a research-creator based in Montréal. In 2015, after participating in Critical Hit, he joined Milieux’s Technoculture, Art and Games research center as resident artist, where he currently conducts his PhD project in which he explores cultural and artistic issues regarding playfully interactive AI with a multidisciplinary and experimental approach. He has performed in festivals such as Cau d’orella and collaborated in the production of works exhibited at festivals such as Sónar, Mutek, Indiecade, Cau d’orella and venues such as Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst and Quartier des spectacles.
Hexagram Showcase AELab
Gisèle Trudel and Stéphane Claude are artists. They work under the name Ælab since 1996, an artist research unit they co-founded. Ælab’s commitment to collaboration and creative dissemination are ways of thinking and doing that try to bridge different modes of inquiry. Their process-oriented investigations creatively engage art and technology as intertwined with philosophy.
Stéphane Claude is a composer, sound engineer and immersive sound specialist. He is Head of Audio Research at OBORO since 2005. Gisèle Trudel is Professor at UQAM’s École des arts visuels et médiatiques since 2003 and a member of Hexagram since 2004. She holds the Médiane Canada Research Chair in Arts, Ecotechnologies of Practice and Climate Change (2020-2025). Fossilation Fossilation (2021) is a practice-based art and design research project, a research-creation project. It involves a collective of researchers and student-researchers from three leading institutions in the development of research-creation: Concordia University (Montreal, with the international network Hexagram and Milieux Institute), the École des Arts Décoratifs (with its EnsadLab laboratory and its Arts and Sciences Chair) and the University of Toronto Mississauga. Research-creation makes it possible to approach complex subjects representative of our current world by implementing means and a reflexivity that would be difficult to envision for a single person, for an artist with a monopoly of authority. Research-creation calls for a rethinking of the role and place of artists at a time when cooperation between humans, and, also, other than humans, is more necessary than ever.
Fossilation was collectively realized by Brice Ammar-Khodja, Alexandra Bachmayer, Samuel Bianchini, Marie-Pier Boucher, Didier Bouchon, Maria Chekhanovich, Matthew Halpenny, Alice Jarry, Raphaëlle Kerbrat, Annie Leuridan, Vanessa Mardirossian, Asa Perlman, Philippe Vandal, Lucile Vareilles. Andrée Martin Artist and researcher, Andrée Martin has conducted for 25 years a multi, inter, trans, post-disciplinary work on the body’s multiple ramifications. Co-founder of the Living Arts and Interdisciplinarity Laboratory (LAVI – FCI), she is currently leading a research-creation project linking immersion, performing arts and homeostatic balance. She also has been creating an ABC of the Dance Body, composed of literary and scenic essays of which 14 works have been presented all over the world (Canada, Mexico, Chile, Belgium, Spain, France, Brazil and India). Screenwriter and director, recipient of the prestigious Core Funding, Andrée has signed The Power of Sound (2018), Danser Perreault (2003), Untitled rouge (1999). Author of fifty articles published around the world, she has directed the books Abécédaire du corps dansant and Territoires en mouvance. Ms. Martin has benefited from the support of the major granting agencies in creation and research in Canada (CALQ, CAC, NFB, FRQSC, CRSH, FCI).
Estelle Schorpp: Estelle Schorpp is a French sound artist and composer based in Montreal. Her heterogeneous work involves sound installation, electroacoustic composition, writing and performance. She is interested in sound environments, hybridity between nature and technology, and attention to the “unremarkable”. In her latest projects, she draws inspiration from natural sound ecosystems and explores the potential of algorithmic systems through autonomous sound installations.
Marc-André Cossette: Marc-André Cossette is a Canadian trans-disciplinary artist working on the relation between technology and performing arts using sound, visual, and interaction design. Marc-André holds a BA in Interactive Media and a Master’s in Experimental Media (UQAM). He is now pursuing a PhD program at Concordia University in which he explores the use of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life algorithms to create generative dance performances. In addition to his research-creation practice, Marc-André has collaborated with several artists as a sound, visual, interaction, and stage designer. He is also the co-creator and co-host of the REC podcast series on research-creation produced in collaboration with CHOQ.fm and the Hexagram Network.
Sandra Volny: Sandra Volny is a contemporary artist and researcher. Working across diverse media such as sound, moving images, photography, sculpture, and text, she produces installations, instruments, and videos. Volny completed a PhD in Art Sciences and Aesthetics at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne by conducting a thesis research on “Surviving Aural Spaces,” in their material, sensory and social constellations. Volny is currently an artist in residence at Darling Foundry and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences, Université de Montréal, and at École des arts visuels et médiatiques, Université du Québec à Montréal. She has exhibited work in Canada and Europe, most recently at Dazibao, Centre Clark, FOFA Gallery, Centre d’Exposition de l’Université de Montréal, Place Publique/Fonderie Darling, Galerie Michel Journiac, Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture, and Raumlabor 267- Braunschweig. www.sandravolny.com
Ahreum Lee: Ahreum Lee is a musician and interdisciplinary media artist from Seoul, South Korea currently based in Montreal. Lee began her career as the co-founder and frontwoman of experimental art-rock band Juck Juck Grunzie. After spending nearly a decade producing records and touring internationally, she extended her practice into video and multimedia installation work.
Emilie Morin: Emilie Morin was born and raised in Montreal. She obtained her BA in dance in 2006, and since then, works freelance as a dance performer for live performance and dance on screen. She has collaborated with many independent choreographers and filmmakers. She has traveled to Europe, the United States and Mexico to present her work, give conferences, teach and for her own professional development. To investigate further the relation between dance and new medias, Emilie completed an MFA at Concordia University in the Intermedia Program (2017-2021).
Erin Gee: Erin Gee is an artist and composer who promotes critical sensuality, affect, haptics, communication, and presence in sonic and digital architectures. Inspired by the human voice as a conceptual object, she likens the vibration of vocal folds to electricity and data across systems, or vibrations across matter. Gee applies these principles to electroacoustic composition, ASMR, virtual reality, networked music performance, interactive sculptures, AI, and robotics. She is a DIY expert in affective biofeedback, using biosensors to implicate the body of the listener as part of her cybernetic systems in place. She is currently a doctoral student at Université de Montréal, specializing in methods for composing affective and embodied electronic music for biofeedback inspired by feminist theory. Branching further into materiality and mattering, she is currently exploring quantum systems as artist in residence at the Institut quantique de l’Université de Sherbrooke.
Guillaume Pascale: Guillaume Pascale is a programmer of audiovisual and software drifts. He proposes an unstable liminal point of view on the environment where operative images, data architectures, sound and musical environments participate in the elaboration of speculative fictions that flirt with documentary drift. His work has been presented at Interaccess (Toronto), Perte de Signal, Place des arts, Cinémathèque québécoise, SPAMM (Paris), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, ENSP (France), among others.
Juliette Lusven: Juliette Lusven is an interdisciplinary visual artist and researcher. Her exploratory and processual approach is inspired by geosciences and perceptive and technological visualization processes in regard to terrestrial and oceanic space. She creates different forms of installations and spatial compositions that are at once sculptural, photographic and videographic. Her research questions our relationship to the world in relation to technological interconnectivity, its terrestrial materiality, flows (natural and artificial), perception and scale relationships. She is currently pursuing a PhD in art studies and practices at UQÀM where she is developing the project Exploration.135. Her research has been supported by Hexagram and deepened at the Geotop laboratory. Her work was recently exhibited at the Agora Hydro-Québec during the Nuit des idées (2020) and will soon be shown at the Elektra gallery (Montreal).
Maxime Boutin: Maxime Boutin is a multidisciplinary artist-researcher-skater developing the concept of Texturology. His artistic practice materializes through video, sculptural, and recently, photographic and sound installations. It is inspired by skateboarding, which animate a need to transpose the sensory experience of a vertigo: the one we seek. He holds a master’s degree from the School of Fine Arts in Montpellier, France (Mo.Co) and since 2016 has been pursuing a PhD in art studies and practices at UQÀM (Université du Québec À Montréal). His research is supported by the Hexagram network and the Fonds de recherche du Québec, société et culture (FRQSC).
Olivia Mc Gilchrist: Olivia Mc Gilchrist (she / her) is a white French-Jamaican multimedia artist and doctoral candidate exploring how colonial legacies extend their reach to Virtual Reality (VR) technology. She has exhibited in Canada, Jamaica, USA, Brazil, Germany, Norway, Austria, France, Switzerland, UK. Building on her experience as a white Euro-Caribbean and research in the portrayal of her hybrid identity within contemporary Jamaican culture, Olivia explores how this can be represented in VR. Working with Professors MJ Thompson, Lynn Hughes and Alice Ming Wai Jim at Concordia University, her Individualized PhD thesis project is entitled “Virtual ISLANDs, postcolonial hybrid identities in Virtual Reality.”
Dr. Rilla Khaled: Dr. Rilla Khaled is an Associate Professor at Concordia University and Director of its Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) Research Centre. She works with design, games, and HCI, and focuses on interactive technologies to improve the human condition.
Enric Llagostera: Enric Llagostera is a game maker and researcher from São Paulo, Brazil who engages with unconventional, anti-capitalist ways of making and circulating games. His PhD research questions what is alternative about alternative game controllers.
Dr. Jess Rowan Marcotte: Dr. Jess Rowan Marcotte designs, writes and thinks about interactive experiences from a queer, intersectional point of view. They co-founded the Soft Chaos Cooperative and lead the Queerness and Games conference (QGCon). Their doctorate is in interaction design, from Concordia University. Steven Sych Steven Sych is a Master’s in Design (MDes) student. His work places the technological-quotidian realities of 2021 into surprising contexts and configurations, and aims to open up pathways for meaningfully re-approaching the role of the digital in our everyday lives.
Jean Dubois: Jean Dubois is a professor at the School of Visual and Media Arts of the Université du Québec à Montréal. He addresses art in the public sphere with media installations displaying unstable monuments of random and interactive forms. He is especially preoccupied with corporal and multisensual experiences which he stages through body posture, touch and breath in order to produce an amplified intimacy.
Ghyslain Gagnon: Professor of electrical engineering at the École de Technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Ghyslain Gagnon is interested in the development and combination of advanced techniques of signal processing, microelectronics and artificial intelligence. His fields of interest are varied, as evidenced by his numerous scientific contributions.
Ké Medley: Ké Medley is a Canadian artist completing a master’s degree at NAD-UQAC University in Montreal. In his work, Medley playfully tinkers with novel assemblages of various media objects, creating unique mediatic experiences. Interactivity often takes center-stage in his art, evoking a desire to implicate others in the artistic process – to bring people and art closer together. Often fueled by nostalgia, Medley approaches the materiality of media objects as a way to preserve and interact with the past – both in terms of personal and mediatic history. While still very interested in the technical components of media objects, Medley is particularly intrigued by their personal significance – what TV, video games, movies, technology and other media mean to us on a more personal or cultural level.
Louis-Philippe Rondeau: Artist and researcher, Louis-Philippe Rondeau is a professor at École des arts numériques, de l’animation et du design (NAD). His research focuses on the issues of post-photography. Like virtual mirrors, his interactive installations show the body in a different light. Diverting the physiognomy of the interactor through marginal devices, they question the relationship of the spectator to the work and incite us to rethink the conventions of image-based mediatization, particularly its spatiotemporal articulation. His applied practice stems from his years of working in the field of digital visual effects.
Yan Breuleux: Yan Breuleux is a professor at École des arts numériques, de l’animation et du design (NAD) and a practitioner and researcher in the field of visual music for immersive systems. For the past ten years, he has been collaborating with musicians and composers for the creation of multi-screen, panoramic, architectural projections and integral dome pieces. Since 1998, he has been creating A/V sensory performances in collaboration with composer Alain Thibault (duo PURFORM).
Nicolas Bernier: Nicolas Bernier creates audiovisual performances and installations aiming to carve a dialogue between sound and tangible matter. Shaped by his work within the fields of cinema, literature, dance and theatre companies, his own language blend together elements of music, photography, design, science, video art, architecture, light design and scenography. Awardee of the prestigious Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2013 (Austria), his work widely recognize, presented all over the world: SONAR (Spain), Mutek (Canada), Elektra (Canada), ZKM (Germany), Transmediale (Germany) and LABoral (Spain) to name a few. He holds a PhD in sonic arts from the University of Huddersfield (UK). He is a member of Perte de signal, CIRMMT and Hexagram media arts research and development centres based in Montreal. He is teaching in the Digital Music program of the Université de Montréal.
Nicolas Reeves: Nicolas Reeves and David St-Onge have been collaborating for sixteen years in the NXI Gestatio laboratory, which explores the impact of digital technology in all fields related to design. Trained in architecture and physics and a graduate of MIT, Nicolas Reeves is a designer-researcher at the École de Design de l’UQAM. His work is characterized by a highly poetic use of science and technology. A founding member, then director of research and creation at Hexagram (2001-2009), he also served as vice-president of the SAT for ten years. Winner of several awards and grants, he has presented his work and given conferences on four continents.
David St-Onge: David St-Onge, an engineer by training, is an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at the École de Technologie Supérieure, where he directs the INIT Robots laboratory. He has been working for the past fifteen years with renowned artists, both in terms of technological coordination and as an R&D engineer. An expert in the field of autonomous flying vehicles, he specializes in the design of multi-robot systems with ergonomic and intuitive control, and actively participates in numerous development and training programs in advanced robotics.
Chris Salter: Chris Salter is an artist, Professor for Design + Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and Co-Director of the Hexagram network. He studied philosophy, economics, theatre and computer music at Emory and Stanford Universities. His solo and collaborative work has been seen all over the world at such venues as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Barbican Centre, Berliner Festspiele, Wiener Festwochen, Musée d’art Contemporain, EXIT Festival and Place des Arts, among many others. 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). His new book Sensing Machines will be published by MIT Press in 2022.
Dietmar Lupfer: Dietmar Lupfer is co-founder, artistic director and managing director of Muffatwerk in Munich, Germany. He has extensive experience in the artistic conception, production and marketing of numerous high-profile art and cultural exchange projects, as well as curating works that transcend the boundaries between art, technology and science, as well as music, dance and performance. He has designed and curated art interventions in public spaces and designed media environments, including the European project “Crash Test Dummy,” “Urban Mutations,” as well as the installation “Hemisphere” for media artist Ulf Langheinrich for the large-scale installation “From Spark to Pixel” at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. Together with Chris Salter, he was the artistic director of the immersive installation Sense Factory, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Culture as part of the Bauhaus 2019-Bauhaus Today programme.
Sofian Audry: Sofian Audry is an artist, scholar, Professor of Interactive Media within the School of Media at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). Their work is inspired from artificial intelligence, artificial life, biology and cognitive sciences. Their computational artistic practice branches through multiple media including robotics, interactive installations, immersive environments, physical computing interventions, internet art, and electronic literature.
TeZ Maurizio Martinucci: TeZ Maurizio Martinucci (aka TeZ) is an Italian interdisciplinary artist and independent researcher, living and working in Amsterdam. He uses technology as a means to explore perceptual effects and the relationship between sound, light and space. He focuses primarily on generative compositions with spatialized sound for live performances and installations. In his works he adopts custom developed software and hardware, featuring original techniques of sonification and visualization to investigate and magnify subtle vibrational phenomena.
