:: Hexagram Mondays

13 | 03 | 2006 @ SAT :: HEXAGRAM Mondays

6pm – Free admission

The purpose of
the Hexagram Mondays is to present and disseminate information relative to research
and creation by Hexagram members, to promote the exchange of ideas leading to
better cohesion within the Institute’s research community, and to develop links
and collaborations with the media arts Montreal community.

Speakers:
Martin Leduc, CIAM ; Martine Époque, UQAM
; P.K. Langshaw, Concordia

More info:
www.hexagram.org

MARTIN LEDUC

Collective sound
creation with the interactive instrument Sonic Totem

Designed for an
experimental exchange through sound matter, the installation
uses technology, water and various materials not as an end in itself but as
a
mean to an end. The end being a positive collective experience playing with

sounds. Ethnomusicology shows how expression with sound always carries strong

creativity potential across cultures and time. Contemporary rituals take shape

now…in various locations and imaginative forms. We must build the instruments

of our time for the musical needs of our time. The myth of the genius artist
is
loosing strength. Real time processing, acoustic and new interface musical
expression possibilities will help un-commercial musical experience to rise.

Technology is just a vehicle for all these potentials to meet and take shape.

Creativity is a bottom up emerging process, not a top down dictation of what

should or not be « good » music or art. New interesting aesthetics
could appear.

Biography:
I found a guitar floating in Ottawa Canal Rideau at 12 and started to experiment

new sounds using modified instruments combined with field recording (trains,

insects, lighthouse as a ready-made instrument). Anthropology at UdM opens me
to
the variability of rituals, which will later come to link with my perception
of
interactivity. Collaborations and experimentations never stopped. I quit my
only
pop band (the others) and start studying multimedia at Maisonneuve college,
then
work at Pixcom interactif. I took a few courses in electro acoustic at UdM.

Finishing a master in interactive media at UQAM i was encouraged to exposed
by
Jean Décarie and Production Molior. I did so in Montreal, US and Brazil.
I am
presently in residence at Avatar for a new interactive instrument called Cordes.

PK LANGSHAW

reality
it is not ___________and it is____________

technology

There is a vast
creative potential that can be drawn from the concepts and
functions relating to thought and memory- singular images or words in the mind

can seamlessly transform into layers of fluid/fragmented/unified narrative
compositions. It is both the simplicity and complexity within the sublime nature

of thought that interests me.
Poetic manifestation on memory: There is a strong tendency of humans to
organize, categorize, and to make patterns. This tendency is perhaps to offset

the inability [outside of meditative states] to live continuously within the

realm of ideas or chaos. But no matter how hard we try to simplify; the objects/
images/script that we regard/observe/perceive as ordinary simplified reality,

all remain quantic complements to the complex, and unfolded projections of the

much deeper, higher dimensional order embedded in memory/dreamscapes/reality.

The artistic productions under the umbrella of d_verse research collective are
a
series of mediated performative and non linear narratives for sensory
environments and thematically based on memory.

Project 1: nomadic
[per]forms: [re]appearance and [sub]verse involves
programming a multi level retrieval system that dynamically selects and plays

multimedia files from a repository of data based on technical and relational

textual annotation. With the aid of the computer, we can play back non linear

narratives of the mind. This past or memory that is recalled, may not be ‘actual

or truth full’ but may be important as a conciliatory attempt at finding ones

‘truth of presence’.

Project 2: ocd_sign
is the label for design productions based on bi monthly
obsessive compulsive/cultural dis[orders] using the web as a vehicle to study/
intervene online consumer culture.

Project 3: algorhythmic
transit[ions] of the self: in poetry and performance
We envision a hybrid environment of poetry, performance and technology where

constant transition and transaction between sensors, performer, words and space

must be as adaptive and nomadic as with the concepts of contemplation.

Biography:
PK Langshaw is Chair and Associate Professor, in the department of Design and

Computation Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. She earned her

degree from Université du Québec à Montréal- Maîtrise
en Arts plastiques- en
Création. __Langshaw’s hybrid praxis is extracted from concrete poetry,
and
expanded by the quantum relations between text and image. Performance and
performer interacting with digital “memory” projections imply nomadic
character
[istic]s, as they are adaptive to audience and environment. Ms. Langshaw is

involved in multi event productions, symposia, public art and cross-disciplinary

research in computation and social design. Her ongoing collaborative research

[Hexagram], “Nomadic [per]Forms: [re]Appearance and [sub]Verse” involves

programming a multi level retrieval system that dynamically selects and plays

multimedia files from a repository of data based on technical, semantic and

relational textual annotation. __PK has taught at all levels of the design
program, including studio and seminar courses, independent study and internship

courses. Her area of concentration in teaching is social and ecology design,

which engages the student with the idea and actuality of designing within and

for community/community members and the natural/built environments, from the

designing process to production and promotion.

MARTINE ÉPOQUE

Dance and MoCap:
getting a point
On the basis of our numerical 3-D work for the screen produced since 2001
starting from magnetic and optic capture of movement, we will give a progress

report on the advantages and disadvantages which we met as choreographers in
the
use of these systems. This will enable us to introduce and present our current

project of choreographic creation for the screen, No body dance, a Rite of
Spring of particles. Based on a paradigm of choreographic writing that we named

“the paradigm of dance without body”, the realization of this infochoreography

of particles claims a constant hybridization of the dance with these
sophisticated numerical tools that are Motion Captures, 3-D treatment and Fluids

editing software’s. Visual examples of the first tests carried out will be
shown.

Biography:
Martine Époque holds a Teaching Certificate in Physical Education (CAPEPS)
with
a major in dance from the École normale supérieure d’éducation
physique et
sportive de Paris (1965), a Callisthenics Certificate from Jaques-Dalcroze
(Geneva, 1967), a masters training in musical composition from the University
of
Michigan (1975). She taught in the Physical Education Department of the
University of Montreal from 1967 to 1974. As of 1980, she taught in the Dance

Department of UQAM. __A prolific choreographer whose stage and screen works
have
been met with international acclaim both on stage and on television since the

70s, she has received the Clifford E. Lee choreographic award in 1983 and the

Prix du Québec Denise-Pelletier (interpretative art) in 1994. __She has
hosted
several conferences and published numerous works such as Arts et technologies

(LYON, 1995, Les chemins de la recherche, no 27) and Les coulisses de la
nouvelle danse au Québec : le Groupe Nouvelle Aire en mémoires
(STE-FOY, 1999,
Les Presses de l’Université du Québec). __A key figure on the
Quebec
choreographic scene, she founded and was the artistic director of the famed

Groupe Nouvelle Aire (1968-1981) that nurtured most of the greatest figures
of
the Quebec contemporary dance scene of the 80s and today, such as Fortier,
Laurin, Fortier, Lecavalier, Léveillé, Lock, Soulières.
__Founder of the UQAM
Dance Department, she directed for 12 years, she presided over the founding
of
Passerelle 840, a laboratory and gallery space for free choreographic and
research by undergraduate and graduate students. __Creator of the Master’s
program in dance and the foundation Agora de la Danse, she is known for her

research and creation in dance and technologies. Responsible for the
implementation of the study of techno-choreography and video-dance at the
undergraduate and graduate levels at UQAM, she founded the Laboratoire
d’application et de recherches en technochorégraphie (LARTech) in 1999.
She is
the director along with Denis Poulin, producer, info-choreographer, and
coordinator of the Dance Department of the Collège Montmorency de Laval.