Part 2: Public Activations, with Visualization in 2D + 3D, with Immersion and New Media (including Drawing and Photography and Drone Animation)

Public Activations, with Visualization in 2D + 3D, with Immersion and New Media (including Drawing, Photography and Drone Animation) will address empathy and point-of-view in current social and environmental issues. Maria Lantin (ECUAD) will present possible ways to build empathy through VR and other technologies. Romeo Gongora (UQAM) will present his collaborative AR project, a reconstruction of a social club that Guatemalan immigrants ran in Montreal, built from extensive interviews and archival documents, Philippe-Aubert Gauthier will present his 3D spatialized sound works, and Alexandre Castonguay will talk about his research that re-purposes party technologies, to offer participatory and collective methodologies for co-creation. Paul Landon (UQÀM) and Valérie Kolakis will present their latest research and exploration of gardens with augmented reality applications to reveal structures and address issues of housing, migration, urban planning and the environment. MA Concordia grad student Jorge Zavagno will present his recent research on documentary ethics. 

Panelists:

• Paul Landon (UQÀM) & -Valérie Kolakis
• Romeo Gongora (UQÀM)
• Philippe-Aubert Gauthier (UQAM)
• Alexandre Castonguay (UQÀM)
• Maria Lantin
• Jorge Zavango (MA INDI grad student Concordia)

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Bios and talk description

Paul Landon (professor at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of UQAM) is an artist who explores urban space using experimental processes of mediatisation, both analogue and digital. Landon’s work is structured through the uncompromising physicality of architecture and the modern landscape; his art practice and his research reflect upon the social and experiential effects of the multi-dimensional built environment. In 2016 Landon completed a doctoral project which considered urban architectures of moving image presentation through a travelogue form of writing. His installation and video works have been exhibited internationally for over thirty years and are in public collections in Canada and Europe.

Valérie Kolakis has exhibited her work in museums, galleries, biennials and art fairs across Europe and North America over the past 20 years. Born in Athens and living in Montréal, Kolakis makes sculptures, drawings, photographs and installations that relate to issues of migration, dislocation and domesticity. Her work reconsiders architectures of modernity in the construction of identity and culture.

Talk Description

Mapping an imagined garden city with augmented reality This is a project that proposes a series of imaginary structures mapped into the landscape of the botanical garden. The public will be able to experience these 3D drawings with their smartphones. The project addresses issues of housing, migration, urban planning and the environment. The project would suggest a transformation of the landscape of the garden into a lived habitat shared by human and non-human species. It would recall recent and historical architectural propositions where garden and park settings have served to house migratory and dispossessed populations. 

Romeo Gongora (Professor of Critical Approaches to Cultural Diversities at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of Université du Québec à Montreal) is a Canadian-Guatemalan visual artist, and doctor in Art at Goldsmiths, University of London (UK). Since 2008, he has conducted major collaborative projects that interact with the social sphere, integrating politics and critical pedagogy in the practice of performance. He is the recipient of several grants and has shown his work at, amongst others, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Canada), HISK (Belgium), Centre of Art Torun (Poland), Centre Makan (Jordan) and Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Canada). He has been an artist-in-residence at, among others, the Rijksakademie (Netherlands, 2007-08), the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany, 2009) and Acme Studios (UK, 2016). www.romeogongora.com

Talk Description

La Casa de Guatemala en Montreal, catching migration stories in a virtual 3D environment Casa de Guatemala en Montreal is a long-term art project that investigates “El Club Social, Cultural y Deportivo Tikal Guatemala”, a social club that Guatemalan immigrants ran in Montreal between 1972 and 1982. The project is a reconstruction of the space in virtual form, drawing on extensive oral interviews with the founders, on-site research, and archival documents. The final project will offer a virtual reality experience, allowing the visitor to step into the club reconstructed from the Guatemalans’ memories and dream-like recollections.

Philippe-Aubert Gauthier (professor at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at UQAM)  is a mechanical engineer, master of science, doctor of mechanical engineering (acoustics) who works at the crossroads of arts, sciences and technologies. He has produced over fifty works in sound and digital arts. His work has been presented in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Mexico, France, England and Germany. Since 2001, P.A. Gauthier has received grants from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Fonds Recherche Québec, and the Fonds Nature et Technologies du Québec. As a researcher and artist, he has published more than 80 articles and conferences, as well as 30 specialized workshops and conferences on arts and technology. He is currently Associate Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology and President of Sporobole.

Talk Description

Environnements sonores, espaces sonores : vers de nouveaux enjeux Le son : une partie prenante de nos environnements. Les environnements sonores sont ainsi construits par nous, êtres organiques, ou technologiques, et par la nature. Mais ils nous construisent et modulent tout autant dans nos ressentis, nos émotions, nos pensées. Après une année de télé-présence et de téléconférence, nous retrouvons enfin une caractéristique pourtant fondamentale de tous nos environnements sonores : leur spatialité. En effet, les constituants sonores de nos paysages audibles viennent de partout autour de nous, et non d’un seul haut-parleur au centre de notre écran de téléconférence. La présentation offrira une synthèse de recherches, créations, et spéculations quant aux espaces du son, à la spatialisation sonore. Les enjeux aborderont notamment : la fragmentation de l’espace sonore, les nouvelles spatialisations sonores émergentes vers la réalité augmentée, et les nouveaux usages ou moyens de la mise en espace du son.

Alexandre Castonguay is a professor at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques (EAVM) of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a member of the Hexagram network. His creations have circulated, amongst other places, at Piksel (Norway), the 11th Transmediale (Berlin), the Festival International d’Art Vidéo de Casablanca (Morocco) and Montreal’s Museum of Contemporary Art. http://artengine.ca/acastonguay

Talk Description

Les technologies de la fête, méthodologies participatives et collectives pour la co-créativité.

Darkness designer and príncipe descolonizador, Alexandre Castonguay approaches different artistic forms suggesting modes of exchange and i​nteraction inspired by the relational dynamics of information flows. His uses of technology mediate the individual and the collective by amplifying the subtle and the unheard.

Maria Lantin (Associate Professor, Emily Carr University of Art + Design) is Director of the Basically Good Media Lab, and an artist-researcher who works in immersive media including photogrammetry, stereoscopic CAVEs, large stereoscopic displays and VR headsets. 

Talk Description

Empathy, impermanence, and porosity Many have spoken of VR’s potential for increasing empathy, even calling it an empathy machine. The aspiration for more empathy is good however the research around empathy gives us some insight into the complexity of this emotion and its resulting actions. Indeed, we as feeling human beings, automatically feel empathy when we witness suffering but how long this feeling lasts and whether it gets suppressed or leads to virtuous action and lasting behaviour change is based on many contextual and learned factors. In short, there is a cost to empathy and designing augmented visual interfaces to surmount this cost is a worthy yet delicate endeavour. On an emotional level, to truly feel the imbalance humans have created in various ecosystems is to be steeped in tremendous loss and grief. If we are to use augmented senses to help with “staying with the trouble” (Haraway), I believe that these should emphasize the impermanence and porosity of our world so that we begin to dissolve boundaries. This talk will look at possible ways of achieving this and the technologies that can get us closer.

Jorge Zavagno (INDI MA Concordia University grad student) Jorge Zavagno has been working as a production and post-production supervisor and technical director of stereoscopic 3D projects and independent documentaries and S3D video art installations for over a decade, and as an assistant editor of IMAX documentaries and. As an INDI MA candidate at Concordia University, Jorge Zavagno has been researching ethical dilemmas in the documentary filmmaking process, using 360 degree and 3D video as an immersive tool to discuss and propose solutions for ethical dilemmas. For his MA INDI thesis, he will be presenting two short films, one on the relationship between documentary film and reality (truth) and the other on the process of creating a documentary while using reflexive tools to approach ethical dilemmas. 

Talk Description

Shadows of Reality is part of a project researching ethical dilemmas in documentary filmmaking and examining these elements at different stages of the filmmaking process. The public will be guided through 6 stages of filmmaking by immersing in a 360 Virtual Reality experience capturing idea conception, pre-production, production, post-production, distribution, and consumption. In documentary, the process of seeking and grappling with truth is explored here through shadows. As the viewer has their own reality questioned and changed before them, they are placed themselves at the center of the quest for truth. Viewers take control of the scene to pursue their version of reality and to explore who, or what, is controlling the projections before them.