The Society for arts and technology present
METALAB R&D RESIDENCIES
In September 2021, the Metalab, SAT’s R&D center, launched a first call for residency projects to explore different artistic use cases around its research axes. The five selected projects propose different narratives and perspectives of use of the technologies developed by the Metalab. The event is the culmination of seven months of residency and collaboration between researchers and artists. It is an opportunity for the artists to share the research-creation processes that led to the installations presented. The event will begin with a circuit of presentations and demonstrations of each project. Afterwards, participants will be able to test the installations and discuss with the artists.
In Espace SAT
Wednesday, July 27 2022 – 4pm to 7pm
Presented projects:
ComeWithMe
Marie LeBlanc Flanagan
Who hasn’t felt alone? Come With Me is a playful virtual exploration of the spaces between people. ComeWithMe translates the physical, “real world” movements of people into a strange virtual world of animated sculptural shapes and movement. Using a camera, AI-based body detection (LivePose), projectors, and sound, ComeWithMe explores how we reach for each other, how we connect, and how we sometimes fail to connect with the people around us. Come with friends or make some new ones?
PAX
Louis-Olivier Desmarais
PAX is a contemplative installation on several speakers. It’s an invitation to celebrate listening (in all senses of the word), meditation and contemplation through immersion in the spirit and silence of a Benedictine abbey in downtown Montreal. Combining visual arts, lighting and spatialized music, it will be presented in an exclusively sonic iteration, using the Audiodice sound system developed by Metalab, which will be combined with traditional speakers.
Sweet Immersion
Samuel Thulin
Sweet Immersion/Immersion sucrée is an immersive audio exploration created from data I collect on a daily basis as a type 1 diabetic. This data drives the sonorities and musical progression of the piece on multiple levels, from micro temporal scale to macro structural development. Field recordings made while I was testing my blood sugar are granulated according to the sugar levels obtained, while synthesized sounds are also created from these numbers through a wavetable synthesis mode. Each blood sugar number is converted into a rhythm. The spatialization and movement of the sounds in space is entirely data-driven. Through this systematic but not scientifically rational “sonification”, the installation turns away from the usual biomedical orientation towards health data. It attempts to convey the intertwined, non-linear temporalities of a body and invites listeners to explore the resulting metabolic sound space.
Podorythmie sensible
Guillaume Coulombe & Nina Parenteau
The “Ta ka boum – Ta ka boum” of traditional music is unique among world music. Nina Parenteau and Guillaume Coulombe explore various technologies developed by the SAT’s Metalab to artistically represent the podorhythmic nature of traditional Quebec music. Their interactive installation will present spatialization effects of image and sound, on three projection surfaces and with four speakers. These effects will be animated by their new multimedia podorythmy board, as well as by a camera used with skeletal recognition software.
Perspectives
Charlie Leroy & Sébastien Samyn
Perspectives is an interactive multimedia installation that mixes art and technology to immerse us in a space where we, individually and collectively, have an influence. By playing with the principles of anamorphosis, AI pose detection and perspective games, the installation allows us to adapt the content of the work according to our point of view. But what happens when several people are present? What social dynamics emerge? To what extent does the installation and, more broadly, the technology influence these behaviors?