Hexagram Mondays

6pm – free

The SAT and Hexagram
cooperate in organizing a series of conferences which will feature Hexagram’s
creators-researchers and students sponsored by the Centre interuniversitaire
en arts médiatiques (CIAM) who will present their works.

Open to everyone,
this series of conferences aims at the dissemination of Hexagram’s works
within the network of creators-researchers from the Institute and independant
media and technological artists, but to the the general public as well. The
researchers will have the opportunity not only to demonstrate the works they
create in the frameworks of the Institute, but also the works they have developed
previously or elsewhere.

The conferences
will take place every second Monday of each month from September 2005 until
May 2006, from 6pm to 8pm.

This third conference
welcomes three researchers associated with the Interstices group: Manon
De Pauw, Jean Dubois et Lynn Hughes.

Manon De
Pauw, CIAM
Title : Le corps en jeu
Paragraphie is an interactive installation that interprets the rhythm and musicality
of a writer’s gestures rather than the sense of what it written. A chair,
a table, some paper and pencils are available for the visitor’s use. To
activate the interactive device, one must get down to work: write, draw, scribble,
tear, rub, tap… Microphones inserted in the table and amplified in the whole
gallery space pick up the sounds generated by the viewer’s actions. Depending
on their amplitude, these sounds trigger different video loops that are projected
directly onto the table. Virtual hands appear on the writing surface, suggesting
actions and leaving traces that are superimposed on those of the participant.
This situation explores physical and mental attitudes that often accompany the
writing process: a place of frustration and pleasure, communication and withdrawal
into oneself. In medical terms, “paragraphie” (paragraphia) is an
aphasic transformation of language that results in writing of unintended words
or letters. This involves a control loss, a gap between intention and action,
between thought and trace.

Manon De Pauw obtained
a BA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in 1996. From 1997 to 2001, she
was artistic coordinator of the artists’ centre DARE-DARE, where she gained
expertise in the organization and exhibition of performance projects, interdisciplinary
practices, and in situ gallery and extramural interventions. She continues to
take courses and workshops in dance, performance and movement. The principal
theme of her master’s project at UQAM is corporeal language, a research-creation
project that integrates performative action and digital video. She lives and
works in Montreal.

Jean Dubois,
Hexagram, UQAM
Title : Les Errances de l’écho, lorsque l’écran se fait
peau
Jean Dubois will present his latest artistic creation entitled Les Errances
de l’écho, exhibited for the first time at the Optica Contemporary
Art Center in March 2005. This media work consists of an interactive mirror
that answers to the spectators’ caresses by broadcasting bouts of a speech
involving several invisible interlocutors. The mirror is then used as a contact
space which allows biased dialogues.

The screen simultaneously
plays the roles of surface and interface by blending the tangible and intangible
aspects of the haptic image while confronting our intentions to the others’
perception. For hundreds of years, man has has an interaction with mirrors.
This can be increased by electromagnetic captors which allow our reflection
to obey to our desires, but also to interact through outside voices.

Jean Dubois is
a multidisciplinary artist who worked in the fields of installations and urban
intervention before becoming involved in new media. He has a diploma in the
aesthetics, science and technology of art from Paris VIII University, and currently
teaches at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques, UQAM. Since
June 2001, he has co-directed the Interstices’ research-creation group
with Lynn Hughes.

The major focus
of his artistic work is to explore the poetic potential of the interactive image
and to offer an approach to portraits that deals with alterity and intersubjectivity.
The principle corporeal interface he uses is the touch-sensitive screen, to
put the spectator in touch with fictional personalities and allow personal but
casual encounters with the bodies and memories of others. The situations presented
suggest a “push and pull” dynamic, as much seduction as deception,
in an attempt to delimit the interstices, the space of identity between people
and personalities in a way that defines ones own self image through that of
others.

Lynn Hugues,
Hexagram, Concordia
Title : Keeping It Interesting : the Space Between Games and Art
This conference focuses on a presentation of CUB-iD , a large scale 3-D interactive
“play” environment developed by a team associated with the Hexagram
research group Interstices. CUB-iD was developed as an alternate game that emphasizes
the physical and social aspects of play. It features innovative physical interfaces,
as does an earlier interactive work which will also be shown.

Current and future versions of the play environment are being developed in the
context of Canadian iMatter Research Network proposal. iMatter (www.interactivematter.ca)
led by Lynn Hughes and Dr Geoffery Rockwell of McMaster’s University proposes
interdisciplinary projects within the university and between the university
and the community that cross fertilize digital humanities, media arts and games.

Lynn Hughes has
been producing and exhibiting her work for over twenty years. Her current practice
focuses on interactive works for the screen and sound that use non- traditional
(non-mouse/keyboard) interfaces. She was instrumental in the conception, structuring
and funding of Hexagram (www.hexagram.org),
the Montreal Institute for Research / Creation in Media Arts and Technologies.
In 2001, she a co-edited (with Marie-Josée Lafortune) a bilingual book
entitled Creative Con-fusions / Penser l’indiscipline which looks at interdisciplinary
practice in contemporary art. She has a long history of involvement with artist-run
galleries and served on the Boards of Articule, Optica and Oboro in Montreal.
She also occasionally curates exhibitions or organizes conferences. Lynn has
taught at Universities across Canada and presently holds a Concordia Research
Chair and teaches in the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University in Montreal.
Her undergraduate education was in English Literature and in Art and she has
a graduate degree in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, with
a concentration in the area of mathematics.