Project Monahan is a national award-winning public sound art piece located at the Monahan Wetlands in Ottawa’s Kanata South. Commissioned by the City of Ottawa, it is a permanent installation designed to be a non-physical work of public art that reflects the changing nature of the wetland environment.
The artwork is a generative sound piece, meaning it uses an algorithm to create a unique and personalized listening experience for each person. The sounds are a collage of 173 “chapters” that include a wide variety of audio, such as nature sounds, songs in different languages (English, French, Algonquin, Turkish, etc.), interviews, and stories contributed by over 30 different artists, poets, and scientists.
To experience the art, visitors to the wetlands use their smartphones to scan a QR code located on benches and signs along the paths. This takes them to a website where they can listen to the algorithmically generated audio. The piece is designed to be listened to with headphones, encouraging visitors to practice “deep listening” and pay close attention to both the artwork and the natural environment around them.
While created for the specific site, the artwork can be accessed and listened to from anywhere in the world by visiting its dedicated website. The project’s ever-changing nature ensures that no two listening experiences are exactly the same, much like the landscape that inspired it.
LAURA TALER concept & realization
Laura Taler is a Romanian-born, award-winning artist, filmmaker, choreographer, and performer with a 30-year career in collaborative art practices. Her experience with public art ranges from large-scale performance works, to projections and screen-based works, to permanent installations. She expertly integrates mediums, pushes boundaries, and uses technology simply and innovatively. Since the beginning of her career Laura has worked collaboratively as the director of a team of artists and technicians. Through her company Grimm Pictures, founded in 1994, she has produced work for a variety of small and large organizations. Laura’s strength as an artist lies in her ability to provide a clear vision to the team of experts that she gathers around each project and to guide that vision with precision and flexibility.
Each time you click BEGIN, you’ll hear a unique sound piece, collaged by our algorithm from 173 sound chapters. All these chapters are created by a group of contributors. You’ll hear everything from songs and poems to nature sounds, interviews and stories.
By bringing together sounds by human and non-human beings MONAHAN creates an ever-evolving experience. You may hear a chapter you’ve heard before, but this time it’s next to something new. Like the landscape around you, MONAHAN is always changing.
HOW TO LISTEN Visit the MONAHAN website Put on your HEADPHONES Click BEGIN LISTEN to a personalized sound piece
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) made their way into the popular imagination and have been a lightning rod topic in the realm of culture throughout this year. As part of our Digital Economies Lab, we invited Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey to help us consider this current moment and put it in a larger context of art, culture and technology. Check out the conversation as well as links and notes to help orient you or expand your considerations of this NFT moment.
This discussion brings together artist, scholar and Director of Creating Knowing and Sharing: The Arts and Cultures of First Nations at the Canada Council for the Arts, Steven Loft; craft historian Sandra Alfoldy; architect Tom Bessai; and fashion designer, Valerie Lamontagne, to consider the way we talk about making.
