Exhibition from 22/11/2019 to 14/12/2019
SUSANNA FLOCK
Building AI out of Clay (working title)
During her residency at Sporobole, Susanna Flock will work on a multi-channel non-linear video installation called Building AI out of Clay. The project focuses on mortality in the context of technological change. The motif of the predetermined breaking point as a figure of prevention and sabotage between life and death permeates the work. It will be composed of several videos, featuring a salamander tail still in motion and an animation of the Frankenstein monster in identity crisis.
JEAN-PIERRE AUBÉ
Exoplanets 2
Sporobole has the honour to welcome the artist Jean-Pierre Aubé for the BetaLab1019 in October and November 2019. This is the second phase of a research and creation project that began in April 2018 during the Interface: Art & Science residency where Aubé worked for a year with researchers from iREX, the Mont-Mégantic Observatory and the Astrolab in Mont-Mégantic National Park. A video work – Du Mont Mégantic aux exoplanètes – emerging from this context was created and presented at the Astrolab of national park of Mont-Mégantic in the summer of 2019 as part of the triennial EIM produced by Sporobole.
As part of this BetaLab, the artist will develop two other artistic proposals inspired by his residency. A sound immersion device for 16 loudspeakers will be installed in the main gallery and will allow the artist and his collaborators to develop a sound work evoking the research of the German physicist, astronomer, mathematician, musician and theologian Johannes Kepler. In 1619, he published the treatise Harmonices Mundi, in which he attributed a musical theme to the planets and expressed his convictions on the connections between the physical and spiritual worlds justified by mathematics, physics and astronomy. The second project to be developed there will use as its primary material the raw data collected by modern tools for observing the far reaches of the universe in search of exoplanets. This data will serve as the basis for the work, which will take the form of a video installation.
THOMAS WATSON
Sporobole provides artist Thomas Watson the opportunity to experiment with three prototype works for virtual reality headphones in a test bench to evaluate the public’s reception and reaction. Very close to sculptural and spatial practices, the artist’s works were produced in 2019 in our production laboratories in collaboration with 0/1 Hub numérique Estrie. They offer a perspective on the relationships between materiality and virtuality in an immersive context.
PROJECT
Gasmask, Bell, Spoons are three distinct but thematically related VR art works that highlight the interconnected relationship between humans and the material world. The objects I chose to scan are disruptive to the material and social flow in the world of things as they exemplify human creative capacity despite limited means or access to machines. Each work will explore different aspects of the fidelity of experience and depth of immersion possible when combining photogrammetry scanned 3D models of real-world objects with room scale VR.
