Off Sight + Sound Festival
Roundtable, Performances and Concerts
─▷○─ Modular Synthesis
March 20, 2025
Roundtable : 5: 30 PM
Concert : 8: 00 PM
In French and English
Tickets starting at 34,49$
Eastern Bloc
5355, Louvain W. Street, suite #480
Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang | Montreal
Arts sonores et transduction des genres III presents two distinct sound explorations: an evening dedicated to modular synthesis curated by Éric Mattson (Radio Bloc Oral), and a three-day sonic journey across Montreal organized by Éric Létourneau (Musiques cachées).
The Corvette Performance Machine (CPM), designed by Nina Isabelle as a mobile laboratory, transforms a 1984 Corvette into a sound instrument. Six artists will navigate Montreal’s urban space in this vehicle equipped with a modular synthesizer, transforming mechanical and environmental sounds into spontaneous sonic explorations. The project will conclude with a roundtable at Hexagram.
The evening, titled ─▷○─ ,explores the intersection between electronic audio synthesis and material processes. It begins with a roundtable featuring nine artists offering discussions and micro-concerts, followed by performances including “Orphans and Voids,” an exploration of ritual and material transformations through light, smoke, and electromagnetic emissions.
This event from the Musiques cachées : écouter la diversité sonore, supported by the Groupe de recherche en médiatisation du son (GRMS), is part of the OFF program of the SIGHT+SOUND festival, whose main program will take place from March 27 to 29.
The Corvette Performance Machine (CPM)
The Corvette Performance Machine (CPM) takes a first-generation/fourth model 1984 convertible Corvette with manual transmission and transforms it into an artistic performance machine that invites an improvisational sound artist to create a documented ride. The improvisational sound artist responds to the sounds of the engine, the road, and the mechanics, as well as the driver and environmental elements, including the wind in relation to speed, aspects of the physical landscape, and the emotions they inspire.
The performance structure aims to highlight human decision-making processes specific to creative impulse. It creates a scenario allowing improvisation practitioners to respond by engaging in a shared listening experience with the machine and the environment, and is designed to emphasize creative impulse in a real context, outside the technically controllable variables of sound studios and other listening installations.
DETAILS OF LOCATIONS AND PERFORMANCE SCHEDULES
Thursday, March 20
1: 30 PM to 3: 30 PM: in the Chameran neighborhood in Saint-Laurent
4: 00 PM to 5: 15 PM: route between the Eastern Bloc center on Chabanel and Crémazie Metro
Friday, March 21
2: 30 PM to 4: 00 PM: around the Armenian Church Sourp Hagop, Cartierville
7: 30 PM to 9: 00 PM: in Old Montreal
Saturday, March 22
10: 30 AM: around Maison Smith on Mount Royal
1: 00 PM: in front of Hydro-Québec, Downtown
4: 30 PM: Presentation of Videograms, Action Findings, and Roundtable at the Agora of the Coeur des sciences
DETAILS OF PERFORMANCES BY ARTIST
(In chronological ordre)
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CPM with Cham-Pang and Vagin Soleil
Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025
Time: 1: 30 PM to 3: 30 PM
Location: In the Chameran neighborhood in Saint-Laurent, around Henri-Beaulieu School, loop traffic, corner of Bleignier and Chameran to the entire Deguire Boulevard and Painter Park
Interdisciplinary artist, Yvel Champagne, under the name Cham-Pang, creates and sings albums considered classics of experimental and alternative music in Quebec and worldwide (Ne mourrez pas, Disques YUL, 1981 and Tant pis 81-21, Disques Tanzier, 2017). She performs in Montreal, New York, Milan, Osaka, acts in films, and has collaborated on numerous multimedia and electroacoustic music projects since 1970. This is her first collaboration with Vagin Soleil.
Fresh in the market garden, the music of Vagin Soleil immobilizes to better muscle up. Metastable movement of a stable entirely built of maple: the little creatures stay in shape and deform our binary pretensions. A sequence resonates, but the brain’s envelope avoids the gutter: we want clean without dirty hands, without dirty males, but a healthy male for a strong woman, without a truce-shaped celebration. Vagin Soleil is a constitution of Karen Eliott Trudeau, Erika Dumaine, Monty Lehmann. Here in an octet with Cham-Pang! Marrying EDI with Ta(t)chisme, we are half-human, half-virtual beings. Isn’t it cute!?
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CPM with Philippe-Aubert Gauthier
Date: Thursday, March 20, 2025
Time: 4: 00 PM to 5: 15 PM
Location: Between the Eastern Bloc center on Chabanel and Crémazie Metro
Philippe-Aubert Gauthier is a professor at UQAM (Montreal, Canada), School of Visual and Media Arts, mechanical engineer, Master of Science and Doctor of Mechanical Engineering (acoustics). He works at the intersection of art, science, and technology. His works take forms ranging from installation, sound and digital arts to performance and music. His works have been presented in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Mexico, France, England, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Japan. He is Associate Director of Artistic Research at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill University.
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CPM with Hraïr Hratchian
Date: Friday, March 21, 2025
Time: 2: 30 PM to 4: 00 PM
Location: Circulation around the Armenian Church Sourp Hagop at 3401, Olivar-Asselin Street, Bordeaux-Cartierville borough
Hraïr Hratchian [QC-AR] has been pursuing work since 1995 that intersects music, performance art, and experimental film. Founding member of the Montreal rock group De la Caucase (1998-2008), he held the roles of singer and duduk player and produced the album La mort cruelle de Marcel Léart. He also founded the group La Désunion (2010-2013), characterized by its sound improvisations. Invited as a duduk player by the German group Einstürzende Neubauten, he collaborated on the piece Armenia during concerts in 2004, 2005, and 2011. He has also participated in various projects and tours with Sam Shalabi, the Canadian group Esmerine, and Jerusalem In My Heart. Since 2014, he has performed on stage and created experimental films in Canada, the United States, and abroad.
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CPM with Brian McCorkle
Date: Friday, March 21, 2025
Time: 7: 30 PM to 9: 00 PM
Location: Old Montreal district, circulating on St-Jacques, Notre-Dame, and William between Saint-Urbain and McGill; on McGill, St-Paul, and around Carré d’Youville
Brian McCorkle [US] is a composer, performer, and digital artist. McCorkle was co-director of the Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) for over a decade and is a founding member of the Varispeed Collective of composer-performers who create site-specific, sometimes participatory, often long-duration, and always experimental events. As a composer, McCorkle has written music for 6 original operas with PPL, as well as several scores for theater, dance, installation, and performance art. His residencies include Yaddo, LMCC, Momenta Art, and Harvestworks; McCorkle has performed at the Venice Biennale, Lincoln Center, Adelaide Festival, American Repertory Theater, Guggenheim, Kitchen, Whitney, Issue Project Room, Danspace, Roulette, Stone, and PERFORMA, to name a few. McCorkle holds degrees in comparative literature, music, computer science, and applied mathematics from the University of Michigan and SUNY Albany.
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CPM with Martin Howse
Date: Saturday, March 22, 2025
Time: Starting at 10: 30 AM
Location: Circulation on Remembrance Road, passing by Maison Smith in Mount Royal Park (1260, Remembrance Road)
Martin Howse [UK-DE] is dedicated to investigating the links between the earth (geophysical phenomena), software, and the human psyche (psychogeophysics) through the construction of experimental situations (performances, laboratories, walks, and workshops), material works, and texts. He is the founder of the Tiny Mining community. From 1998 to 2005, Howse was director of ap, a software performance group working with electronic waste, pioneering an early approach to digital glitch. From 2007 to 2009, he hosted a regular series of workshops, micro-residencies, and salons in Berlin. Howse has worked and collaborated on recognized projects and practices such as The Crystal World, Psychogeophysics, Earthboot, Sketches towards an Earth Computer, and Dissolutions. For fifteen years, he has initiated numerous projects in the form of open laboratories and has performed, published, lectured, and exhibited internationally. He is also the creator of the skin-based sound divination module, The Dark Interpreter, as well as the ERD modular synthesizer series.
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CPM with Roxanne Turcotte
Date: Saturday, March 22, 2025
Time: 1: 00 PM to 2: 00 PM
Location: In front of the Jean-Lesage building, Hydro-Québec headquarters located at 75, René Lévesque West Boulevard
After studying piano at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal and the Université de Montréal, Roxanne Turcotte [QC-CA] specialized in composition and music technology, and in 1988, she became the first female acousmatician to enroll in graduate studies and obtain a master’s degree in electroacoustic composition from the Université de Montréal under the direction of Marcelle Deschênes and Francis Dhomont. She also studied instrumental composition with Serge Garant. She has also studied pedagogy (Université du Québec à Montréal) and a technology program (Musitechnic and SAT). Some residencies include the Sampo Academy, Saint-Etienne (France) for the production of mixed music. Composer and sound designer, her musical aesthetic is based on an art of integration with a cinematic and theatrical character. She also participates in the creation and execution of music for television, video, radio, dance, stage, media arts, and circus arts, as well as the creation of sound, musical, and visual installations.
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CPM: Presentation of Videograms, Action Findings, and Roundtable
Date: Saturday, March 22, 2025
Time: 4: 30 PM
Location: UQAM’s Agora of the Coeur des sciences
This three-day sound exploration concludes with a roundtable at Hexagram bringing together all participants and Professor Louis-Claude Paquin to share their impressions and present the collected documentation.
With: Brian McCorkle [US], Éric Létourneau [QC-CA], Hraïr Hratchian [QC-AR], Vagin Soleil [QC-PO], Nina Isabelle [US], Philippe-Aubert Gauthier [QC-CA], Roxanne Turcotte [QC-CA], Cham-Pang [QC-CA]
– ─▷○─
Modular Synthesis
This special program, curated by Éric Mattson, is a production of Eastern Bloc and Hidden Music – Sound Arts and Gender Transductions II, with live broadcast on Radio Bloc Oral. The roundtable provides 10 minutes per participant for a presentation/demonstration or micro-concert, followed by a collective discussion led by Éric Létourneau. The theme compiled by EB is: The evening, titled ─▷○─, explores the intersection between electronic audio synthesis and material processes. It begins with a roundtable with nine artists offering discussions and micro-concerts, followed by three performances including “Orphans and Voids,” an exploration of ritual and material transformations through light, smoke, and electromagnetic emissions.
This activity is paid, but the code MC45 gives you a 45% discount on the entry price.
