Fossilation

As part of its 30th anniversary celebrations, the SAT, in collaboration with the Village Numérique, presented by MUTEK and XN Québec, presents Fossilation. Unveiled for the first time in a suspended form, the installation welcomes visitors upon entering the SAT and invites them to experience a living artwork, transformed in real time by its surrounding environment.

About the artwork

A transparent membrane made of bioplastic hovers over the ground. Several cables grow straight out of it, stretching out toward the walls and the ceiling as if they were trying to cling to them. The membrane is also connected to the building via sensors and cables that are deployed like tentacles searching for food and energy. These sensors invest the building’s architecture by converting the residual flows, energies and activities that circulate into electricity. This energetic and electric grip informs the lighting system that shines through the membrane, and slightly animates it. Exploring the ecology of digital images, the piece resembles a film strip, on which a few frames appear in succession. The membrane is imprinted with counter-forms of bare obsolete electronic components: flat screens, cables, computers and their peripherals. Frame after frame, these imprints progressively merge with the membrane and slowly disappear like an open pit mine being gradually buried, creating a fossil of our era.

Fossilation is an art and design research-creation project led by a collective of researchers and student-researchers from three renowned institutions in the field of research-creation: Concordia University, Montreal (including the Research Chair in Critical Practices in Materials and Materiality, the Milieux Institute Speculative Life Biolab, and the Hexagram International Network), the École des Arts Décoratifs – PSL, Paris (along with its laboratory EnsadLab) and the University of Toronto Mississauga. Research-creation empowers the group to address complex contemporary issues through collective reflection and collaboration. This approach challenges artists to reconsider their roles and relevance in an era where collaboration, among humans and with non-humans, is increasingly vital.

Conception and production: Brice Ammar-Khodja, Alexandra Bachmayer, Samuel Bianchini, Marie-Pier Boucher, Didier Bouchon, Maria Chekhanovich, Matthew Halpenny, Alice Jarry, Raphaëlle Kerbrat, Annie Leuridan, Vanessa Mardirossian, Alexandre Mazel, Asa Perlman, Nathalie Perrier, Philippe Vandall

3D modeling: Daphne Sirracusa