MIAN 2024: Artist presentations

Since 2007, MIAN has been an event that facilitates professional exchanges between major players in the digital art and cultural ecosystem on an international scale.

Through round tables, performances and networking, the MIAN brings together producers and curators from all over the world to discuss issues linked to the future of digital art and the place new technologies hold in the production and promotion of contemporary digital art.

Artist presentations

A  selection  of  artists  working  in  the  field  of  digital art present their works at MIAN.

Anna Eyler and Nicolas Lapointe [QC]

Digi-Deuil Distribution | aenl | 2022 | participatory installation

Digi-Deuil Distribution (DDD) is a participatory installation focused on digital death. As virtual space becomes increasingly cluttered with our digital artifacts, DDD questions the impact of technology on our understanding of (im)mortality. Using a “”pixel art”” aesthetic inspired by video games, DDD plays with the commodification of contemporary experience by considering how our most sacred subjects are transformed into consumer products. At the same time, the work draws inspiration from the ways that games make space to reflect on our deepest fears and anxieties outside of everyday life.

DDD invites participants to purchase a small piece of virtual space in the digital graveyard of digideuil.net. A vending machine offers acrylic tombstones-each containing a web address-that leads the user/owner to their personal burial site. Each burial plot is unique and customizable, and participants are invited to write a short epitaph and bury an image/text/ sound file to commemorate a digital death, which is visible to the website’s visitors.

Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes [QC - CR]

Last Species on Earth is a 4-minute looping video installation with an accompanying 17 minute audio piece exploring the tragic beauty of genetically modified organisms. Portraying a future where genetically altered nature is the norm, it visualizes a scenario where animals, through heavy genetic modifications and breeding, have evolved to become accessories to humans. Last Species on Earth follows the story of the last two remaining organisms of their kind (inspired by Donna Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto) who resemble severely inbred designer animals found within our own world, echoing mankind’s attempts to patent and control life, particularly in the use of GMOS. Last Species On Earth was created during the “Ecologies & Cosmologies: Themed Commission” residency at Trinity Square Video.

Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta [QC - COL]

The Novels of Elsgüer - XR Interactive Installation with VR, video projections, spatialized sound and translucent and reflective materials. (2024)

The Novels of Elsgüer are immersive installations and expanded performances that explore dislocation as a pathway to create new worlds. These immersive scenographies have been rendered digitally to create an XR installation where audiences can navigate the “Elsgüer ‘’ universe through VR and while being immersed by large panoramic video projections, spatialized sounds and a translucent vinyl wall. In the installation, the video projections depict the VR journey of each viewer in real time, effectively transforming them into performers, and transforming the gallery space into the virtual environment. Each virtual installation found within the novels is referred to as an “episode”, and contributes to a larger narrative that deconstructs the different colonialist relationships between body and space.

This project was recently exhibited at OPTICA, Centre d’art contemporain, Montréal, Canada, April 13 - June 15, 2024.

Cristo Riffo [QC - CHIL]

Cristo Riffo’s work conveys and explores the complexities and contradictions of history, politics, and technology mirroring them with the deep mysteries of life and consciousness. With the use of robotics, electronics, chemistry, and microbiology he creates poetic translations of reality with what he calls “philosophical machines’’: machines that try to confront the expansion of subjects such as neo-fascism, disinformation wars, and the exploitation of each other and nature. These machines take shape as kinetic installations, bio-art pieces and audiovisual performances. Through form and materiality, each machine, in their various approaches, weave deeply intricate meanings with the use of light and shadow, the cosmic drama of microbial life, the warmth of wood and rigidity of metal, the use of found footage and historical archives, all in the desire to amplify reality through the expanded perception of  Art. This desire expands into the possibility of creating thought-provoking debates into my spectators minds and lives, confronting them with the contradictions of life, forcing them to see these contradictions in different perspectives, in hopes of making their sensibilities a prism of human and natures emotions.

Rytha Kesselring [QC]

Ecosystem III : Living in our own fictions (2022) The interactive installation features hand woven linen panels, sonic elements and growing plants. The autonomous system interacts with its immediate environment through embedded sensors that measure ambient light, temperature, humidity and movement. In response to these changing factors, sonic elements modulate and transform the ambiant soundscape creating an altered ecosystem for the growing plants. The delicate hand-woven cloth is set in motion by the emitted sound waves through experiment textile loudspeakers creating a visual resonance with the soundscape.

Philomène Longpré [QC]

Every autumn, monarch butterflies travel over 4800 km from Canada to their wintering grounds in the mountain forests of Mexico. Emblematic of the borderless union of the three countries of North America, the monarch is now endangered, as of December 8, 2023. Philomène Longpré documented their migration from Point Pelee National Park in Ontario to Mexico. During a residency at the Maison de la culture Claude Léveillée, she used the images and sensations gathered in the field to create a work composed of 4,800 ephemeral starch paper wings painted with edible ink, and placed under the shade of robotized branches. Accompanied by soundscapes, a video installation and prints on recycled fabric, it pays homage to milkweed, the monarch’s indispensable host plant. The installation questions fragility, endurance and perseverance, but also the impact of the technological world. This observation prompts us to reflect on the depth and complexity of the life cycle and migratory movements, highlighting how we are all interconnected in our constant quest for survival and renewal.

Myriam Bleau and Nien Tzu Weng [QC - TW]

Montréal based digital artist and performer Myriam Bleau teams up with dancer, choreographer and lighting designer Nien-Tzu Weng for a brand new performance. Inspired by both artists’ fascination with the spaces between physical reality and virtual, imagined worlds, ‘Second Self’, explores the multiple possibilities of the touchscreen: as an extension of ourselves, an instrument, a mirror, and a portal to the virtual world.

Cinzia campolese [QC - IT]

Set-Rise-Sun is a mixed-media installation that explores the interplay between technology, time and the environment. The piece is made of a modified Lcd screen perpendicular to a water surface within a natural environmental setting. Through this arrangement, viewers can observe an evolving virtual Sun that progresses from the top to the bottom of the screen. To the naked eye, the screen emits only white light. As the polarized film on the Lcd has been removed, the content is only visible through the reflection on the water that acts as a natural polarizing filter due to Brewster’s angle phenomenon. The prevailing Western cultural norms have often viewed time as a resource to be won and defended, marked by a linear progression, a craving for rapid results, and a feeling of haste. Such an endeavor to dominate time has historically been an example of how humans have attempted to exert their control over nature and over them. The work prompts the observer to contemplate the intricacies of our present situation, grappling with the socio-environmental challenges we confront. It encourages us to ponder the ramifications of our increased reliance on technology and the possible outcomes that may arise from distancing ourselves from the natural world.

Santiago Tavera and Laura Acosta [QC - COL]

Camouflaged Scream - Immersive and Interactive Installation with panoramic video projections, spatialized sound, ultrasonic sensors, a tree branch, LED light and reflective materials. (2021) Camouflaged Screams is an interactive installation exploring the (a)symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural environment. This augmented experience incorporates large scale panoramic video projections of a recorded performance with textile pieces, along with motion sensors, enveloping soundscapes, lighting setups and sculptural elements. As the audience moves around the installation, their movements have the capacity to alter the images and sounds in the space, asking viewers to reflect on how their presence and actions have a direct effect on the environments that surround them. This project was Exhibited at OPTICA, Centre d’art contemporain, Montréal, Canada. April 17 - June 12, 2021.

Santiago Tamayo Soler [QC - COL]

Title: Recado (Video Installation, 20’, 2023)

Recado is a 2-screen, 20-minute video installation, depicting simultaneously the inside and outside of a house in the Colombian mountains, while a pot of soup is being cooked. Recado in Spanish means “message”. In Colombia, recado is a word also used to describe a mixture that enhances the texture and flavours of various typical concoctions, primarily soups.

Dany Massicotte [QC]

Cosmic Debris: A Story About the Universe is a multidisciplinary installation that features a set of kinetic sculptures filmed live and presented in video form in a library model. At the entrance to the exhibition, the viewer is greeted by the library model (70 x 33 x 50 cm), embedded in a black wall. Television screens replace the ceiling, floor and windows of the model. These screens broadcast a story about the genesis of the universe.