Thierry Beaupré-Gateau | Université du Québec à Montréal
Thierry Beaupré-Gateau is a professor in the Department of Management at the School of Management Sciences of UQAM. His work focuses on creativity and the imaginary of management. His approach is rooted in the arts and reflects alternative organizational practices. His previous studies in art history, literature and music, as well as his professional artistic practice in music, contribute to his intimate knowledge of research and creative environments.
Dany Beaupré | Université du Québec à Montréal
Biography coming soon.
Joanna Berzowska | Université Concordia
Joanna Berzowska is the founder and research director of XS Labs, a design research studio with a focus on innovation in the fields of electronic textiles and reactive garments that can enable computationally-mediated interactions with the environment and the individual. A core component of her research involves the development of enabling methods, materials, and technologies – in the form of soft electronic circuits and composite fibers – as well as the exploration of the expressive potential of soft reactive structures
Johanna Bienaise | Université du Québec à Montréal
Biography coming soon.
Nicole de Brabandere | Université McGill
Nicole De Brabandere (PhD) is a visiting researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, working at the intersection of research-creation, experimental media practice and corporeality. Current research develops material practices alongside artifacts of computer vision that lend new insight into the generative animacies of A.I., including its affective and aesthetic effects. De Brabandere is the editor of Media, Practice and Theory: tracking emergent thresholds of experience, a volume with contributions spanning topics such as machine-learning, VR, film studies, critical sensory experimentation and performative archiving, forthcoming in summer 2022, Vernon Press.
Stéphane Claude | Oboro
Stéphane Claude is an electronic_acoustic composer and sound engineer. His research is based on integrating a conceptual and physiological framework of audio recording and sound installation for different diffusion contexts in the electronic arts. His interests gravitate around the communication of a formal aesthetic, of a transductive experience of the electronic medium, an exploration of digital signal processing, the parameters of acoustic and sound in spaces. His work has been published by ATAK(JP), LINE, DRAGON’S EYE RECORDINGS (US), ORAL (CA), among others.
Hugo Dalphond | École supérieure de théâtre de l’UQAM
Hugo Dalphond is a scenographer, lighting designer, and professor at the École supérieure de théâtre at UQAM. His practice as an artist-researcher focuses on scenographic systems. He explores spatial, somatic, performative, and digital issues with the aim of revealing how the synergy of bodies, space, and light contributes to breaking down barriers in imagination, weaving new forms of co-presence, and developing critical practices of space. Alongside Nancy Bussières, he is also a member of the Scéno-Lab research group, which is dedicated to contemporary scenographic practices.
Jean Décarie | Université du Québec à Montréal
Biography coming soon.
Manon De Pauw | Université du Québec à Montréal
Manon De Pauw is a professor at UQAM’s School of Visual and Media Arts and co-founder of Labo lumière [créations + recherches interdisciplinaires], an interdisciplinary research group on light. The manifest presence of the body in the work, the link between micro and macro and light as a source of affect are at the heart of her research-creation. Her photographic and video work, installations and public artworks are regularly exhibited at home and abroad. She has developed a singular approach to the performed image through numerous collaborations in the performing arts, literature and music, some of which have toured internationally.
Hélène Duval | Université du Québec à Montréal
Hélène Duval (PhD in Education, MA in Dance) is an associate professor in the Department of Dance at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a researcher at CRIFPE. Her research focuses on pedagogical practices in dance, on the arts as a means of academic and social inclusion, and on choreographic creation in plural contexts. She collaborates with David St-Onge, [co-researcher Hexagram member, ÉTS], with a puppet artist, dance movement artists, sound artist and a movement analyst, on a research-creation project (Prisme-art from FRQ) about humans and robots in interaction, crossing the notions of choreographic writing, intelligence of robotic swarms, expressivity, and recycled materials.
Manuelle Freire | Concordia University
Manuelle Freire is an experienced research and creation program manager and producer in the Cultural and Creative Industries and Academia. She is particularly interested in the disciplines of digital arts, new media, design, higher education and research. From 2020 to 2023, Manuelle coordinated the Hexagram network.
Simon-Pierre Gourd | Université du Québec à Montréal
Professor of Sound Creation and Experimental Media at UQAM’s École des médias. Founding member of the Institut Universitaire des Nouveaux Médias, which later became the Institut de Recherche et Création en Arts et Technologies Médiatiques Hexagram. Mr. Gourd is a founding member of GRMS (Groupe de Recherche-création en Médiatisation du Son) and Labo DEII (Laboratoire de Développement en Environnements Immersifs et Interactifs). His research interests include media creation and interactive media, experimental music and new technology issues, musical aesthetics and sound language reception, perception and representational phenomena emerging from current new practices, particularly in immersive environments.
Florian Grond | Concordia University
Florian Grond is an Assistant Professor at Concordia University and Co-Director of the Center for Sensory Studies. His interdisciplinary work merges immersive audio, auditory display, adaptive design, and assistive technology. In his artistic projects, he often collaborates and co-creates with academic colleagues or artists from disability communities. Grond’s research explores the potential of sound technologies to create inclusive, multisensory experiences for communities with mixed abilities. His innovative projects span sound art, interaction design and ethnography, applying the benefits of immersive audio environments to these fields. In his projects, his primary approach is informed through research-creation methods, combining technology-focused research-through-design with arts-based approaches focusing on sensory experience.
Lynn Hughes | Professor Emerita – Studio Arts, Concordia University
Lynn Hughes is an artist and a researcher at Concordia University where she held the Chair of Interaction Design and Games Innovation from 2004 to 2018. In 2001 she was instrumental in the founding and financing of the Hexagram Institute for Media Art and Technology (now the Hexagram Network for Research Creation in Arts, Cultures and Technologies) In 2008 she founded, with Bart Simon, the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) Research Centre and, in 2015, the Milieux Institute for Art, Culture and Technology at Concordia University (with Simon and Christopher Salter). Her own production focuses on the collaborative design of hybrid physical/digital experiences – currently in the area between digital games, participatory theatre and larping. She also curates exhibitions of experimental games and has written a French manual on AI and its creative use, for high schools.
Martin L’Abbé | Université du Québec à Montréal
Martin is a trained visual artist with a keen interest in television production, the transposition of the theatre to television and video, and the recording and archiving of the performing arts. With over 35 years of experience in the fields of visual arts, theatre, video, and television, Martin has produced video/theatre integration and numerous video installations. In addition to his personal productions, he has produced numerous television programs. He is also responsible for the production of over one hundred theatrical, dance and music recordings.
Anick La Bissonnière | Université du Québec à Montréal
After studying architecture in Montreal and Lausanne, Anick La Bissonnière first practiced her craft with Agence Odile Decq in Paris, then collaborated on some fifty performance hall projects for Trizart in Montreal. Alongside her architectural practice, she quickly built up considerable expertise in scenography for theater, museums and urban events. Particularly since 1999, she has developed a privileged creative relationship with director Brigitte Haentjens, with whom she has signed more than twenty productions, acclaimed by audiences and critics alike.
She has worked mainly in theater, but also in variety, television, dance, circus and opera. Presented as one of the world’s elite at the Prague Quadrennial, she has been a finalist several times for the prestigious Siminovitch Prize, which she won in 2015. In recent years, she has taught set design at the École Supérieure de Théâtre de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.
Caroline Laurin-Beaucage | Université du Québec à Montréal
Caroline Laurin-Beaucage joined the UQAM Dance Department in 2020, where she contributes to the development of the field of dance and new technologies. A choreographer, performer and teacher with 25 years of experience, her repertoire includes installations, in-situ performances, projections and virtual reality film. Her master’s thesis, “Choreographing Collaboration: A Multilayered Approach to Somatic and Site-Oriented Practices, analyzes how somatics can permeate creative practices that involve the representation of the body in both physical and mediated space.
Benoit Melançon | UQAC-NAD
A former film technician, Benoit worked in post-production as a 3D animator and set supervisor. After several years spent in the field of videogames and visual effects, he joined the École NAD team in 2002. In 2006, he published Réaliser un film en animation 3D (Éditions Les 400 Coups), one of the first books written in French focusing on CGI cinematography. A specialist in digital previsualization, he completed a doctorate in film studies in 2020 at the Université de Montreal.
Armando Menicacci | Université du Québec à Montreal
After studies in dance and piano I obtained a degree in Music History and a PhD in dance and computer science. I’ve been teaching and doing research for ten years in Paris 8 University and five in Ecole Media Art in France. I create interactive installations, choreographic and theatrical works with several artists. I was associated artist in the National Theater “Le Manège” in Reims (France) between 2011 and 2014. Between 2015 and 2019 I have been a professor at Université du Québec à Montreal, Canada. My research is on gestural interaction design, dance and new media, visual arts, contemporary, interactivity, robotics and aesthetics.
Hugo Montembeault | Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue
Hugo Montembeault is a professor of video game studies and research-creation at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Montreal campus. His primary research focuses on the forms, practices, and political economy of noise in the media ecology of video games. His research-creation initiatives explore the aesthetic, expressive, and critical potential of glitches from the perspective of game design and playability.
Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon | École de technologie supérieure
Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon is a professor in the Department of Construction Engineering at the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS). She holds the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Multifunctional Materials for the Circular Economy and Ecological Transition. She studied engineering at Dalhousie University, holds a master’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Montreal, a Ph.D. in geoenvironmental engineering from the University of Cambridge, and was a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich. At ETH, she conducts research and teaches construction materials and technology management. Her current projects include functional materials, 3D printing of mortars, biobased materials, aerogels, wood and earth construction, scientific evaluation of industrial residues valorization in cement additives and other value-added materials, sustainable materials for greenhouses in a circular economy perspective, construction robotization, the environmental impact of materials, buildings, and cities.
Anne-Marie Ouellet | Ottawa University
Anne-Marie Ouellet was born in Alma, Lac-Saint-Jean. She is a theater professor at the University of Ottawa. In her research-creation, she seeks new modes of relationships between text, sound and bodies on stage. With Nancy Bussières and Thomas Sinou, she co-directs L’eau du bain, an organization that moves to create, getting out the theater to meet new landscapes and new characters. In recent years, they have presented White Out and The Children’s Room (FTA, CNA, Carrefour), an ambitious theatrical diptych as well as Solarium (Mois Multi, Big Bang, from Ottawa, Lille, Rouen and Antwerp), a botanical sound installation and Le Musée de la famille, a performative labarotary (Zones théâtrales, Maison théâtre).
Alain Paiement | Université du Québec à Montréal
Alain Paiement lives and works in Montreal. He studied at UQAM, ENSAV in Brussels, and University of Paris 1. Between 1989 and 2020, he has been teaching in four universities in Quebec and Ontario.
His artistic practice has evolved between painting, installation, photography and video, with a continuing interest in geography and cartographic processes. The themes covered are environmental, socio-cultural and sometimes explicitly political. Common definition of the subjects is subverted throughout deconstruction-reconstruction processes often creating improbable views.
His work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions since the 1980s. He produced several works integrated into public architecture. He is currently working on a new metro station in Montreal.
Linda Paquette | Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
Linda Paquette, Ph.D., is a psychologist and a professor of social and community psychology in the Department of Health-Sciences at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), as well as a regular researcher in the Centre Intersectoriel en Santé Durable de l’UQAC (CISD). She is interested in the integration of art and psychophysiology (biofeedback) as a way to facilitate and explore human interactions and emotions.
James Partaik | Université du Québec à Chicoutimi
Artist and Professor of Digital Arts, James Partaik’s artistic interests revolve around the idea of techNOMADISM: the creation of hybrid environments that integrate a range of mobile and real-time technologies, using architectural space, the body, sound and image, and sensor and electronic-based technologies.
Diane Poitras | Université du Québec à Montréal
Biography coming soon.
Denis Poulin | Collège Montmorency
Denis Poulin was a dancer and choreographer before becoming a teacher of the art of dance at Collège Montmorency in Laval, where he founded the dance programs and Department of Dance in 1985, as well as a program of 3D animation based on human movement in 2007. He has been an associate professor in the Department of Dance since 2006. Fascinated by the art of dance on screen, Poulin has directed many films and videos intended to be shown on their own or as part of his choreographies for the stage or Martine Époque’s multimedia works.
Nelly-Ève Rajotte | Université du Québec à Montréal
Nelly-Ève Rajotte is a professor at UQAM’s École de Design, where she directs the Moving Image and Sound Design axis. A visual and media artist, her hybrid practice focuses on the moving image, sound and immersion – through performance and installation.
She has been a visiting professor at Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, in Montreal. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Canada and abroad, including at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, MUTEK and ISEA2020.
Margot Ricard | Université du Québec à Montréal
Biography coming soon.
Kimberly Sawchuk | Université Concordia
Dr. Kim Sawchuk is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies, and is the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University.
Cheryl Sim | Fondation Phi
Dr. Cheryl Sim is the Managing Director and Curator at PHI Fondation for Contemporary Art. Recent exhibitions include GROWING FREEDOM by Yoko Ono and the group show RELATIONS: Diaspora and Painting. Sim is also a media artist whose practice incorporates her background in media studies and research on post-colonial strategies in contemporary art practice.
Skawennati | Université Concordia, Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace
Skawennati Tricia Fragnito is the Network Coordinator and Community Liaison for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC). She is also Artist-at-Large with Urban Shaman gallery, as well as an independent curator, and occaisional writer. Though she has battled and vanquished past addictions to Tetris and SSX Snowboarding, she considers herself new to the gaming world.
Alexandre St-Onge | Université Laval
Alexandre St-Onge is an intermedia artist and a sonic performer exploring the mutation of the performative body through its sonic, textual and visual mediations. Philosophiae doctor (PhD) in art (UQAM, 2015) and assistant professor at l’École d’art of Laval University, he is fascinated by creativity as a pragmatic approach to the ungraspable and he has published over twenty works and he presented his work nationally and internationally. He founded éditions|squint|press with Christof Migone and he worked with collectives and artists such as : Marie Brassard, Simon Brown, Karine Denault, K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., Lynda Gaudreau, Klaxon Gueule, kondition pluriel, Suzanne Leblanc, mineminemine, Line Nault, Jocelyn Robert, Second Regard, Shalabi Effect, undo et Unzip Violence amongst others.
Leila Sujir | Université Concordia
Leila Sujir is an artist, associate professor (Intermedia in the Studio Arts Department, Faculty of Fine Arts) and Chair of the Studio Arts Department, Concordia University. Her recent practice combines high definition video with stereoscopic technologies of image recording and projection. The monumental scale of her video projections and the “elastic depth” of the 3D images renders her work immersive, integrating the spectators’ corporal movements into its reception. Over the last thirty years, she has been building a body of video/video installation artworks exploring immigration, migration, nation and culture. Sujir’s works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in NY and the Tate Gallery in England and are in collections including the National Gallery of Canada and the Glenbow Museum.
Alain Thibault | Elektra/Biennale internationale d’art numérique (ACREQ)
Alain Thibault is a composer, sound designer and electronic music artist. His works has been presented in several contexts, contemporary music and digital arts festivals, in Canada, Europe (Chatelet Theater and Radio- France in Paris, etc.) and Asia (Yamaguchi YCAM Japan, South-Korea, Taïwan, etc.). With media artist Yan Breuleux, he formed the duo PurForm. They are presently touring their new AV performance, abcd_light, in Europe and Asia. With American artist Matthew Biederman, he created the duo RAY_XXXX, whose PULSE performance was presented in Italy, France and Brazil. Thibault is presently artistic director of Elektra, an international digital arts festival, presented every year in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Julie Trudel | Université du Québec à Montréal
Julie Trudel is a visual artist who subscribes to an extended definition of painting and whose practice is part of a reflexive and conceptual painting approach. She seeks to update traditional concerns of abstract painting through a renewal of its technical means—in terms of the medium, support and spatial layout. Her most recent plexiglas works are an exploration of the effects of ambient light on colour. Her works have been exhibited throughout Canada, in Europe and the United States, and have also been included in two major survey shows of contemporary Canadian painting. She is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau (Montréal). As a painting professor at Université du Québec à Montréal, she co-founded a research group focusing on light, the Labo lumière [créations + recherches interdisciplinaires].
