I imagined that a soundwalk in the city that was not so much about the history of its architecture but about the experience of the architecture through music compositions. I was aware that there was a trend in different art forms for site specific creation but I never thought that it could apply to music writing. And that’s what Polytectures consists in really: asking a team of composers to write a music piece that is meant to be listened to in a very specific space, in contact with a specific building.
Polytectures: structured sounds in the capital
October 11th, 2011A Premonition of Artificial Hells
September 26th, 2011“In a world where everyone can air their views to everyone, we are faced, I think, not with mass empowerment but with an endless stream of banal egos.” – Claire Bishop Claire Bishop is on a mission to re-scribe readings of participatory/collaborative/socially engaged/relational/dialogic art beyond moral interpretations. Her agenda hasn’t changed since her 2004 October […]
Moving among moving images: Philomène Longpré’s Xia
August 5th, 2011Xia, a video installation by Montreal based artist Philomène Longpré, caught my eye recently at the Gallery 101 show Body Tracks | Traces de corps (10 June – 9 July) in Ottawa. It was given prominence, taking over the entire back half of the exhibition space with the rest of the, mainly video, works all reduced to monitor size. It certainly needed and warranted the space.
U of O Grad, Victoria Cote on her project : Untitled (Pillars)
July 14th, 2011Victoria Cote is a recent graduate from the Undergraduate program in Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa. She was honored by Artengine for her work in the media arts, and her contribution to the graduating class show.
My abstract sculptural installation Untitled (pillars) explores and emphasizes the quality and texture of acrylic plexiglass tubing. By challenging the material and depicting its visual characteristics in different ways, I am able to encourage the viewer to more closely analyze the work. The repetitive process in which I work culminates in organic shapes and abstract sculptural forms.
Video Cache – Activating the Archive: An interview with Mél Hogan
June 29th, 2011This interview takes as a starting point the VIDEO CACHE project. Mél’s research into defunct video art repositories online raises many questions about the ephemeral nature of digital culture, and the social/cultural parameters that frame the preservation of and access to such materials. VIDEO CACHE is a research creation project emerging from Mél Hogan’s […]
Elektra 12: The dubious liveness of laptop performance
June 11th, 2011“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” – Walter Benjamin Frank Bretschneider EXP (Raster-notion) Photo courtesy of Elektra The majority of Elektra 12 performances were characterised by pulsing, glitching, looping, […]
Wanted : Visual arts Technician for the UQO!
May 25th, 2011L’université du Québec en Outaouais est à la recherche d’un nouveau technicien/cienne pour ses ateliers de création de l’École Multidisciplinaire de l’Image. La date limite de dépot des candidatures est le 3 juin. Infos: site Web de l’UQO SOMMAIRE DE LA FONCTION : Sous la direction du supérieur immédiat ou de la supérieure immédiate, assume […]
Elektra 12: Playing with your senses
May 18th, 2011The Elektra 12 festival, presented in Montreal from 4 to 8 May 2011, followed a similar pattern to previous years. During the day was the “international marketplace”: a series of short presentations by artists and administrative types talking about their work. In the late afternoon were openings of exhibitions dotted around town. Then from 9pm […]
Awesome Indies: LCRC Kinetic Painting with Robots Workshop
May 18th, 2011After making tiny vibrating robots from the head of a toothbrush, dipping it in paint and watching them spin on paper, I asked the kids if they were the artists or if the bots were. Mostly the answer was “It tickles!” In this final workshop for 6 to 8 year olds at the LCRC‘s after school […]
Awesome Indies: LCRC Homemade Papercraft Batteries Workshop
May 11th, 2011In front of a room of 25 astonished faces I dipped my finger into the brine and dabbed the last of the water onto the flower, the LED popping on and cries of “But but…where’s the battery?” echoing amid “Wait…what?” This workshop focused on understanding how a battery works by taking the traditional model of […]