ELEKTRA AT BIENNALE NÉMO

In collaboration with the Biennale NÉMO, as part of "Les faits du hasard" exhibition taking place December 9 to March 23, ELEKTRA travels to CENTQUATRE in Paris to present some of Montreal's talent. In "Les faits du hasard", randomness is not imposed on artists, but rather the artists are imposing randomness to the audience. There is no accidental coincidences, but rather planned ones by the creators. The artworks presented, some created with specialized technology, often involve computer programming. Therefore, artists carry the potential to program randomly and exploit the generative quality of coding. This notorious "generativity" is a major component of contemporary digital arts's grammar and tools.

LIGHTHOUSE#2 - ALICE JARRY AND VINCENT EVRARD

Lighthouse explores the potential of glass through light and sound signals, unstable and transient. The phenomenon of diffraction, addressed as a material, spacial and collaborative process (Hardaway, 1997 ; Barad, 2007), is central in this research. Hence, the piece comes to life by vertu of unforeseen collisions between space, time, pulsing light, precarious materialities, ourselves and the audience.

IMPULSE - MARTIN MESSIER

An installation where sound and light flow according to a non-linear choreography. Composed of five segments, each of them made of suspended interconnected metal boards, the artwork arise to a luminous and sonorous semi-random programming. With this piece, Martin Messier offers a techno-poetic analogy of the brain mechanisms and the flux of thoughts. This analogy is comprehended as a network of energy flows, where a luminous circuit travels from one board to another.

AQUAPHONEIA - NAVID NAVAB AND MICHAEL MONTANARO

Aquaphoneia is an alchemical installation centred around the poiesis of time and the transmutation of voice into matter. A large horn mid-space echoes the ghost of Edison’s machine. But unlike early recording, this odd assemblage transmutes voice into water and water into air. Vocal sounds falling into the depths of the horn are calcinated, and liquified: The aqueous voice then flows into three alchemical chambers where inner time is surrendered to the tempi of matter: unbound, yet lucid and sound.

ENIGMA - PURFORM

Enigm(a) will be closing this year's edition of Biennale Némo. Hats off to Alan Turing with the incredible performance by Canadian duo PurForm (Alain Thibault and Yan Breuleux). It outlines the state of the art of audiovisual performance : Turing's trademark encrypted message is the genesis of this show. Enigm(a) features multiple simultaneous visualizations of the same sound phenomenon. Given the complexity of the artwork, it is impossible to grasp the animations altogether. Each spectator creates their own understanding.