Trace

Sofian Audry

Sofian Audry holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Sciences and Mathematics and a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Montreal. Since 2004, he developed various installations and web projects, both individually and collectively. He joined the artist-run center Perte de Signal in 2005 and has just completed a master's degree in Communication (UQAM, 2007). His work has been presented in Canada and Europe in many festivals and exhibitions.

Influenced by an education in information processing and an interest in language modeling, Sofian Audry works in a niche that mixes new technologies with the social and cognitive mechanisms of the human being. His works are built using complex algorithms and process data generated by ingenious interfaces. He thus diverts the achievements of his scientific training by pursuing projects whose inventiveness explores issues related to the networking of defined entities and the management of dynamics caused by the passage of data. His works take the form of interactive montages, showing a research on the transformation of devices through time and the behaviors they generate. The dialogic nature of interactivity is thwarted because the artist focuses more on the imprint left in the work by the visitor. By moving, the later creates a dynamic and makes so that images, words, networks of association accumulate in a temporal evolution. In his recent work, Sofian Audry focuses on electronic interventions, this time incorporating technological objects in the natural environment to create new kinds of interactivity. The work enters a real life dynamic and takes place in its own position, thus distracting, if not modifying the order of things.

Jonathan Villeneuve

My work reflects on my relationship to my living space, and its cultural and social specificities, by exploring the possibilities of the narrative process. My solo body of work includes awarded installations that have been part of numerous group shows. For Cube, I filmed myself walking on a spiral pathway from eight points of view. All of the eight continuous sequences are edited on a virtual 3D cube spinning, successively revealing the different points of view of the camera. In Reflexion, a vertical steel rod structure made out of mirror and wood contains a video monitor that plays a 3D animation loop, virtually representing the installation inside the gallery space. In La Station, an individual self-observatory station is represented in a printed assembly plan and an instructional animation demo. An empty sealed wood box that could hypothetically contain the enigmatic object is presented in the upfront. In EOTB, five rear projection screens assembled as a cyclorama creates an immersive space containing twelve speakers that ask to be pulled down by the spectator to be audible. A new narrative is to be constructed from the glimpse of images and sounds appropriated from 1951 movie : When Worlds Collides.

Formally, my practice focuses on the mise en espace of the narrative process. The images, sounds and objects that inhabit the space of a piece are hijacked from their common usage with the goal to re-enforce their narrative potential. The physical elements or mechanisms of the piece, each participate in the construction of a hyperspace, inviting the spectator to construct a new narrative from the elements that are presented. The spectator is confronted by opposite notions of in/out, inside/outside, immersion/emersion and is asked to take a position in time in regard to the physical and virtual space of the installation.

Since 2005, I have mainly work in collaboration as a member of the Drone Collective and more recently Perte de Signal. These collaborative works address the relationships we establish with numerous interface systems used in daily life (television, computer keyboard and mouse, ATM, cell phones, etc.). This work often experiments with new types of interfaces in ways that rely on both ludique (playful) and self-reflexive representation, emphasizing a suggestive rather than directive response.

In Grace State Machines, the movements of a performer are red by a wearable motion capture system. Her actions then triggers the movements of a robotic structure. In Travel Agent, a multi-user carpet interface enables the spectators to triggers video images of the city according to their position on the carpet. In TraceL, a vertical light and sound structure reacts to the passage of spectators near the artwork thus producing a physically engaging space. In TraceV, a TV cathode-tube displays a succession of glitchy images captured in real time or pre-recorded. The TV monitor vertically scans the gallery space while moving along a mechanical shaft. The hybrid aspect of the artwork addresses everyday objects. Finally, Abysse is an in situ light installation that addresses the particular ceiling structure of the Centre d’art Expression, St-Hyacinthe.

Myriam Bessette (sound environment)

Myriam Bessette received a bachelor's degree from L'Université du Québec à Montréal's École des arts visuels et médiatiques in 2000. She works primarily in media art, in which she undertakes a variety of digital sound and video installations, as well as single-channel video. Her work includes digital audio, digital video installation and single channel digital video. Her videos have been exhibited throughout Canada, New Zealand and Europe.

Samuel St-Aubin (electronics)

Samuel St-Aubin has a college degree in Electronics and Telecommunications. Since 2003, he has been involved in many electronic and sound art projects. He lives and works in Montreal.

Samuel St-Aubin has participated in the Zone Grise experimental sound collective with which he has performed in several events. He also contributed to many other electro-musical performances. He has taken an active role within the Drone collective, creating rich electronic interfaces in the interactive installation produced by the group. Since then, he has worked with many different new technologies like Wireless sensors, micro processing (BS2, Arduino, Atmel) and realtime data processing.

Through the multiple art projects he has worked on, Samuel St-Aubin has developed a personal vision of electronic interactive art that he his continually nourrishing with new projects and ideas.

Perte de Signal

Perte de Signal is a center dedicated to production, research and development of media art projects. Under various forms - from numerical discs to in situ immersive installations - the diffusion projects seek to innovate in the modes of presentation of numerical works. Moreover, the non-profit organization provides a structure of provision of services which offer to its community a professional contribution in term of artist representation, events and artwork production, equipment rental, art commission, sponsorship, networking, edition, intellectual property defense, support to the improvement of the socio-economic statute of the artist and support to the development of media arts.

Perte de Signal already produced five collective works: Névé, exhibited at the St-Michel bath Montreal, Ellipse in an old cinema at Rimouski, Nimbus at the Darling Foundry in Montréal, Frimas at the Gallerie Sans Nom in Moncton. Trace, as a first collaboration between those three artists falls under a common will of exchange and interbreeding of convergent practices. Collective creation seeks to work out new aesthetic and technical concerns starting from the concerns of each one.