Residencies 2015-2016

Winter 2016 Residency
LUCAS PARIS
19 January - 9 March 2016
Presentation of work: 11 March 2016, 7pm - 9pm

ARRAY


With ARRAY, Lucas Paris breaks with traditional methods of musical composition and offers an exploration specific to the digital realm, rethinking the classical parameters of the creation of analog music. He articulates his research around the interactive relationship between the instrument and the performer, while insisting on the impact of the gestures of the interpreter in the face of a complex algorithmic system which generates sound sequences. The artist attempts to represent this process in a transparent way, using LED lights that allow you to visualize those digital interactions.

Paris thus develops his own instrument and is in the process of designing an algorithmic musical performance project staged by light. By putting in place a system of algorithms that modify an array list in real-time, the artist creates an amalgam of sensors making the instrument sensitive to a wide variety of physical manipulations. The different physical permutations felt by the object modify the mathematical lists to generate musical and visual sequences. The computer list appears therefore as the raw material of the musical composition.

If the operation of his device resembles the traditional use of traditional music sequencers, it distinguishes itself by its DIY approach and the use of open-source software that allows him to exceed the technical limits imposed by the industry on the field of digital creation. Paris thus seeks to directly manipulate digital matter, thereby multiplying its musical capacities.


Emerging artist of the digital arts scene, Lucas Paris grew up between France and the United States to finally settle in Montreal. A recent graduate of the digital music program of the University of Montreal, he has a diverse background which goes from turntablism and controllerism, up to electroacoustics, through live performances in many sub-types of electronic music (Neuro-Funk, Drum & Bass, etc.). In addition, he has also worked in creative programming and software design. His works and projects Betafeed and Quadr, in which he is currently involved, have been presented at the music video festival of Montreal, at the International Digital Arts Biennal (BIAN) in 2014, the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in 2015 and the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium (TIES) in 2015.


Artist website: www.lucasparis.ca
Follow the artist's progress here.

Cross residency project with Colombia
YOLANDA DUARTE

1 - 30 November 2015
Artist presentation: 26 November 2015, 7pm
WORDS PROYECT : TECNO FOLIÉ


In November 2014, Eastern Bloc welcomed the Colombian artist Santiago Leal, thus realizing the first in a series of international artist-in-residence exchanges with the city of Medellin. This year, we continue this project and welcome the artist Yolanda Duarte to present her work and the culmination of her residency project on Thursday, November 26th, at Eastern Bloc.

In Words Proyect, Duarte puts forward a multimedia proposal that has its origins in performance art, in the context of her investigation of the balance between the modern technological world and the ancestral. The project began during the 2013 European Summer and seeks to disseminate Latin American poetry, especially that which comes from the Wayuu ethnic group from which the artist is a descendant. The Wayuu are an indigenous people of the peninsula of La Guajira, on the Caribbean Sea, who live across the territories of Colombia and Venezuela.

In this context, Word Proyect provides a pertinent continuity with the research currently conducted by Duarte during her residency at Eastern Bloc, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia. The work is simultaneously a video, an interactive piece and a performance – mediums that are directly inspired by Wayuu poetry. Interactivity and video become two parts of a technical whole using the Mixtikl application, which generates music by mixing and creating templates of words and sounds exported as MIDI files. The performance, entitled Tecno Folié, is the result of an experiment to be conducted in Montreal where, through different fiolage, Duarte reveals the poetry of different landscapes through an iPad app which performs chroma key live.


Yolanda Duarte is interested in experimental interfaces, augmented reality and the media applications of mass communications to reconstruct the philosophical elements of Latin American ethnic groups, especially that of the Wayuu people. The specificity of this ethnic group is based on their intimate bond with words, enriching life with a unique magic, and their interest in making use of that poetic heritage. This is what drives the artist to create series of performances that use a descriptive poetic language as well as her own body to interact with the new landscapes that poems build.


Website of the artist: yo.live.nu
Website of the project: wordsproyect.wordpress.com