LIVING EXPERIENCES, MACHINES ARE ROMANTIC

PERFORMANCES AND CONCERTS
BLOCK 2: PRETEXTING LEONARDO DA VINCI
PARTICIPANTS: JEAN-PIERRE GAUTHIER, KANTA HORIO, MANON LABRECQUE,
PASCAL ROBITAILLE, GHISLAIN ROY
MAY 11, AT 8 P.M. / ESPACE 400E BELL
10$ / 8$ ON PRESENTATION OF THE PASS

Those artists create sonic devices and kinetic aural sculpture from everyday objects. Several artists included here are also showing work in the Manif d’art’s exhibition component. This evening of performances and concerts offers an exceptional opportunity to discover another facet of their production in a convivial setting.

Jean-Pierre Gauthier
Montréal, Canada
Jean-Pierre Gauthier has lived and worked in Montréal since 1986. He holds a graduate degree in art from Université du Québec à Montréal, and won the 2004 Sobey Art Award and the 2006 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award. His sound installations have been shown in Europe, Asia and North America. In 2007, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal put on a solo exhibition of his work, which subsequently traveled to four museums in Canada and the USA. He is represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City. http://sites.google.com/site/jpgauthiermachines/

Kanta Horio
Tokyo, Japan
Kanta Horio is a sound artist and engineer. He studied acoustics and computer music at Kyushu Institute of Design in Fukuoka, Japan. His performances and installations are based on physical phenomena like sound, light, magnetism or physical movement, employing electromagnets, motors, LEDs, and circuits that convert elements.He has performed widely, both internationally and throughout Japan. He also works as an engineer of electronic devices and has developed several projects, including commercial interactive installations, films, and musical instruments. 

Manon Labrecque
Montréal, Canada
Multidisciplanary artist Manon Labrecque lives and works in Montréal. Since 1991, she has presented drawings, photographs, single channel videos, performances and video or kinetic installations at festivals or exhibitions in Québec and elsewhere. “My creative work is rooted in the body and movement. I dissect subjects, states, postures, actions, sign language and the dynamics of movement. I create recording devices to extract image sensations, mechanisms to counteract inertia and strategies to access human vulnerability and strength.” 

Pascal Robitaille
Québec City, Canada
Versatile and inventive artist Pascal Robitaille lives in Québec City. He is known for his sound and stage designs for theatre and musical productions, particularlywith the Orchestre d’Hommes-Orchestres. He received an award nomination at the 2002 Soirée des Masques and is the recipient of four prestigious Bernard-Bonnier awards for theatre sound design. He also creates sonic machines shown in exhibitions or performances. He seeks to elicit and maintain a movement, a precarious stability, with room for the unforeseen. The project presented here is the result of a research and creation residency at Avatar in Québec City. 

Ghislain Roy
Montréal, Canada
After studying visual arts from 1994 to 1998, the Montréal artist Ghislain Roy took on music, becoming a “cobbler” of sound machines. With David Lafrance and Jean-Benoît Pouliot, two painters and musicians, he formed the group Robot Dave Merci, followed by the trio Monday Morning Erection (with David Lafrance and Jean-François Lauda). Their studio music makes use of sampling, turntables, invented objects and electronic parts. On the side, Ghislain Roy makes instruments out of heterogeneous objects gleaned from his wanderings through the city or thrift shops. He records his sessions on a 4-track tape recorder.


LIVING EXPERIENCES, MACHINES ARE ROMANTIC

PERFORMANCES AND CONCERTS
BLOCK 3: WAITING FOR H.G. WELLS
PARTICIPANTS: THOMAS BÉGIN, NORBERT MÖSLANG, TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA, VROMB
MAY 12, AT 8 P.M. / ESPACE 400E BELL
10$ / 8$ ON PRESENTATION OF THE PASS

The artists of this third and final evening will lead us into imaginary worlds marked by their vision of a machine-based utopia. Inspired by the fantastic, they suggest impossible worlds or evoke unthinkable mechanical creations through unusual instrumentation and presentation. 

Thomas Bégin
Montréal, Canada
Thomas Bégin is a multidisciplinary and polymorphous artist. At one tinkerer and sculptor, his most recent works take the form of sculptural and performative sound installations. Based on the physical properties of sound, geometrical shapes and materials, his sonic devices interpret themselves and generate music whose development relies on the way the inventor assembles them. Full Spectrum, the work presented here, is a mecanicoanalogue sound machine made of industrial motors, an electromagnetic device and guitar amplifiers, presented as an installation and performance. When turned on, sound waves and pulsating light become perfectly synchronized, creating a hypnotic effect.

Norbert Möslang
Saint-Gall, Switzerland
A prominent international composer and artist, Norbert Möslang is known for his use of “cracked electronics.” He formed part of the duo Voicecrack, which separated in 2002. He then participated in Poire_Z and King UÅNbü OÅNrchestrü. He has played with numerous improvisational artists, including Borbetomagus, Otomo Yoshihide, Günter Müller, eRikm, Jérôme Noetinger, Lionel Marchetti, Jim O’Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Jason Kahn, Oren Ambarchi, Tomas Korber, Keith Rowe, I-Sound, Toshi Nakamura, Maria, Keiichiro Shibuya, Aube, Carlos Zingaro, Christian Weber and Florian Hecker. He is also a prolific visual artist.

Toshimaru Nakamura
Tokyo, Japan
Toshimaru Nakamura is a Japanese musician, active in free improvisation and Japanese Onkyo. He began his career playing rock and roll guitar, but gradually explored other types of music, eventually working on circuit bending, producing electronic music on a self-named “no-input mixing board.” No external sound source is connected to inputs of the mixing board. The Larsen effects that result are manipulated with great finesse. Since the mid-1990s, Nakamura has given numerous concerts in Japan and elsewhere and has collaborated with Otomo Yoshihide, Keith Rowe, John Butcher and Nicholas Bussmann, Taku Sugimoto, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jason Kahn and Sachiko M.

Vromb
Montréal, Canada
Montréal composer Vromb began his career in 1993. His personal style links powerful electronic rhythms to intense atmospheres created by analogue synthesizers. He is mainly known in Europe and the USA where his rare concert appearances are highly anticipated. His relatively modest discography means each new recording is greeted with enthusiasm. His compositions are anchored in imaginary spaces inspired by two fields in which he excels: science-fiction and fantasy literature, to which he links autobiographical references. www.hushush.com/vromb