FROM MAY 16 TO 21, 2023, HEXAGRAM WILL BE IN PARIS FOR THE 2023 EDITION OF ISEA : SYMBIOSIS.
ISEA2023 will host 28 Network members through panels, presentations, workshops, and art exhibitions, providing fabulous international networking opportunities for our members.
We strongly encourage you to check out the event program!.
Here is an overview of our members’ activities
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SHORT PAPERS
- 16.05 | 17:30 – 17:45 – Salle 100
Mona Hedayati
Intelligent Sensibility: Human-Machine Symbiotic Agencies
The focus of this paper is the codes of human-machine interaction as a way to lay down the qualities of this emerging ecology while recognizing the importance of human accountability and situatedness. Consecutively, the implications of such a coupling for human and machine sensoria is taken into account to envisage the qualities of a distributive sensorium that this regenerative agency can put forth while alluding to practices of situated computing.
- 17.05 | 15:25 – 15:50 – Salle 500 + En ligne
Gisèle Trudel
Ecotechnologies of practice: in-forming changing climates
How do ecotechnologies of practice actualize? This paper traces the material/theoretical operations of an ongoing long-term research-creation project concerned with changing climates. It mixes in-formation of collectivities: trees, data visualizations, media arts, forest science research (Smartforests Canada, led at UQAM by Daniel Kneeshaw) and publics. An individuation of symbiotic modulations, the paper crafts a thinking-with Balsam Fir, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, cameras, Domingo Cisneros, Dendrometer, Erin Manning, Isabelle Stengers, Gilbert Simondon, Light Emitting Diodes, Numbers, Microphones, Recorders, Scaffolding, Sapflow, Sensings, Sensors, Speakers, Sugar Maple, Temperature, Yellow Birch.
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LONG PAPERS
- 16.05 | 16:35 – 16:55 – Salle 100
Christophe Lengelé, Philippe-Aubert Gauthier
Live 4 Life: A dream for a free and open spatial performance tool towards symbiosis or death?
The paper presents the motivations, evolution, and directions behind the spatial sound performance tool named Live 4 Life. It aims to simplify the creation and control in real time of masses of spatialised sound objects on various kinds of loudspeaker configurations (stereo and particularly quadriphonic or octophonic setups, as well as domes of 16, 24 or 32 loudspeakers). This spatial research, which questions ways of associating rhythmic and spatial parameters, is based on the concept of free and open works, both from the point of view of form (improvisation) and in the diffusion of the code. The tool, which was initiated in 2011 and distributed in open source in 2022, has been conceived as a long-term dream against capitalism and loneliness. Several scenarios between (technical, social) death or symbiosis of this tool (with other programs, works and the visual representation field) are presented.
- 16.05 | 11:20 – 11:40 – Salle 300 + En ligne
Maurice Jones et al.
Curation as Research-Creation: Speculating on the Future of Art and Technology Festivals
This paper explores a renewed approach to curation as research-creation (CRC) through its practical application in the annual art and technology festival. CRC envisions a shift in curation from a care for objects to a care for the emerging social relations of the curatorial project in a shared quest of meaning making.
- 18.05 | 11:50 – 12:10 – Salle 100
Chris Salter, Timothy Thomasson et al.
Animate: A Theatrical Exploration of Climate Transformation through the Medium of Extended Reality (XR)
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- 19.05 | 10:10 – 10:30 – Salle 100
Brice Ammar-Khodja
Symphony of the Stones: activating the metallic pollutants of the urban landscape in an urban art installation practice
In the late 1980s, the Canadian Pacific Railway abandoned a rail yard on the outskirts of Montreal’s Mile End district. Within a few years, the return of animal and plant species encouraged the citizen community to reinvest in this site known as Le Champ des Possibles. Despite community efforts to rehabilitate this wasteland, hydrocarbon and heavy metal pollution persists in the soil and thus needs rethinking the engagement with the imperceptible mutations of ecosystems. Symphony of the Stones was created in response to this context. This research-creation project consists of several urban art installations that activate residual metals in soils by their magnetic characteristics to make these imperceptible pollutants visible. The following paper unfolds the different processes, methodologies and strategies that led to in-site interventions blending art installation, collaboration with different communities and associations and leading to a rethinking of art practices in the urban environment.
- 20.05 | 15:35 – 15:55 – Salle 500 + En ligne
Yan Breuleux, Alain Thibault et al.
The Enigma A/V performance & the concept of Agnostic Media Environment (AME)
We present the storytelling of the Enigma project and explain how producing a matrix of 3D environments, which can be deployed on a very wide variety of media, supports the proposal of the Agnostic Media Environment (AME) concept.
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PRÉSENTATIONS INSTITUTIONNELLES
- 17.05 | 9:00 – 11:00 – Salle 100
Ricardo Dal Farra
Balance-Unbalance: Ecology + ArtScience in a time of needed Symbiosis
The frequency and severity of certain weather and climate-related events around us are increasing, and the ability of human beings to modify our adjacent surroundings has turned into a power capable of altering the planet. How can the media/electronic/emergent arts play a relevant role in changing the escalating ecological crisis?
- 17.05 | 9:00 – 11:00 – Salle 100
Manuelle Freire, Sofian Audry
Hexagram Network 2020-2027
In its current programming cycle (2020-2027) Hexagram Network is invested in understanding and promoting more interdisciplinary, inclusive and diverse models of research-creation. The Network seeks to develop knowledge-sharing and mediation tools and strategies for broader reach, and more effective dissemination and valorization of the research outcomes and artistic productions that emerge from our communities of practice.
- 17.05 | 16:30 – 18:00 – Salle 100
Christopher Salter
Zurich univ. of the arts (CH) : Immersive Arts Space – Between Research, Teaching, Production in the Emerging field of “Immersive Arts”
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Plus d’informations par ici.
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ARTIST TALKS
- 16.05 | 11:40 – 12:05 – Salle 100
Samuel Bianchini et al.
Present.able: An image-based public presentation with the .able journal platform
How can we account for practice-based research at the intersections of art, design, and sciences in ways other than text-based format?
The traditional methodologies and forms for journal articles are not always adapted to research that explores sensorial and singular forms. Arising from this observation, the .able journal is designed as an innovative valorization of interdisciplinary practice-based research, thanks to image-based formats.
- 16.05 | 15:10 – 15:25 – Salle 300 + En ligne
Juliette Lusven
Exploration.135 (ocean history telecom invisibility)
Inspired by bathymetric archives from the Atlantic Ocean, Exploration.135 investigates the relationships between the history of telecommunications, marine geosciences, and terrestrial imagery, through visual and media art. Articulating from the current undersea infrastructure of the Internet, this project interrogates our technological and environmental relationship to the world.
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WORKSHOPS
- 17.05 | 9:00 – 18:00 – Salle 20
Christophe Lengelé
Open source spatial sound creation and improvisation, particularly with the SuperCollider tool Live 4 Life
Participants will learn how to create and improvise with spatialized sound on multiple speakers using the open source tool Live 4 Life, which the author has been developing in SuperCollider since 2011. After a short introduction to the tool on its goals and possibilities, you will learn 1. how to install and configure the tool, 2. how to interact with the GUI and controllers, 3. how to define your own personal spatial configuration, 4. the code structure in detail, and finally 5. how to send the generated pattern data to another program like Processing via OSC to generate visuals. This workshop is very hands-on. After the presentation of each section of the tool, participants will have some time to manipulate the tool on their own computer. At the end of the workshop, a workshop survey with questions about spatial preferences can be completed on a voluntary basis. The survey takes 5-10 minutes to complete, if you wish to answer all the questions.
- 18.05 | 9:00 – 18:00 – Salle 50
Sofian Audry, Manuelle Freire, Danny Perreault
Arts-Sciences collaborative Research-Creation: Conceptual, Methodological and Organizational Strategies
The imperative for interdisciplinary research has been around and growing, promoted by major research funding bodies for a few decades. As a result, we can now begin to study how such research operates and compare case studies to study effective modes of interdisciplinary collaboration. However, in the majority of existing reports the disciplines assembled are from relatively close epistemic cultures and the effectiveness of collaborations usually correlates with applied results or scientific breakthroughs. Furthermore, in most reports, institutional and organizational considerations are set as the background conditions for the research that is conducted (Stokols, Hall, Taylor, & Moser, 2008 ; Cooke and Hilton, 2015). Fewer studies pertain to collaborations across the arts and the sciences, and rarely address how the institutional structures change or are affected by new types of research.
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FOCUS QUÉBEC – SPECIAL PROGRAMME
- 18.05 | 14:15-16:45 – Salle 500 + LIVE STREAM
Alain Thibault, Juliette Lusven, Jean-Philippe Côté, Victor Drouin-Trempe, Yan Breuleux, Louis-Philippe Rondeau, François-Joseph Lapointe, Timothy Tomasson et al.
FOCUS QUÉBEC ARTIST TALKS
For this session, ELEKTRA proposes a series of short presentations highlighting the work of a selection of international Quebec artists present at the symposium. Covering a range of current topics such as artificial intelligence, biology, participatory robotics, soft robotics, deep-sea infrastructures, questions of nature in an increasingly virtualized society and more, the afternoon will provide an overview of contemporary digital creation in Quebec. In addition, a selection of works by Quebec artists will be on view inside the Forum des Images (May 16 to 21) as well as under the Canopée of the Forum des Halles (May 17 and 18). Presented in collaboration with Hexagram.
- 18.05 | 17:00-18:00 – Salle 500 + LIVE STREAM
Victor Drouin-Trempe, Francois-Joseph Lapointe, Alain Thibault et al.
FOCUS QUÉBEC PANEL: Intelligence / Vie artificielle – Une nouvelle espèce planétaire ?
Focus Quebec afternoon will round up with a panel on artificial intelligence / artificial life. Often cited as a nerve center of production for contemporary digital art as well as for research and development in artificial intelligence, Quebec has become a hub for explorations of possible intersections between AI and art. In this panel we gather Quebec and international experts: artists, curators and critics, to interrogate recent developments of AI from a perspective of artificial life. To what extent can we think of AI as not just a new kind of intelligence but as a new kind of species, and what can the cultivation and manipulation of the living teach us about contemporary AI tools and their possible futures. Considering that intelligence, like all forms of life, is necessarily situated in a material substrate, can artistic and critical practices in the field of artificial and synthetic life point us to imagine an artificial intelligence more situated and embodied, one that perhaps operates less in the polarities of control and dominance. This panel is organized in collaboration with Hexagram.
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EDUCATION FORUM
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POSTER
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ROUNDTABLES
- 16.05 | 10:30 – 11:00 – Salle 500 + En ligne
François-Joseph Lapointe et al.
Introduction to the Symposium: Symbiosis by the ISEA2023 Academic Chairs
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- 18.05 | 10:30 – 11:30 – Salle 300 + En ligne
Ionat Zurr et al.
Nourishing and Nurturing: Placentas, Incubators, and the Politics of Life Ex-Vivo
This panel explores the placenta, its past and its future in human reproduction. Presentations will probe the symbiotic relationships between mother/fetus and human/non-human. The talks will include ongoing artistic research on incubators and the placenta, and prompt questions about the socio-cultural impact of ectogenesis and the body politic.
- 18.05 | 14:15 – 15:15 – Salle 300 + En ligne
Jean-Ambroise Vesac, Hélène Duval, David St-Onge, Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon, Chris Salter
Imaginaries and engineering through bodily and digital experience with experimental matter for artistic outcome
This panel offers a space of reflection on the art & science forms of expression to be touching, imaginative, emotional, interactive, playable, and even joyful. The panel discusses imaginary and conceptual bounding, decision-making approach, and the involvement of the public at different levels of the research in art and science project.
- 19.05 | 16:50 PM to 17:50 – Salle 500 + En ligne
Samuel Bianchini et al.
Useful Fictions: An experimental platform for creative co-production of artwork by artist-scientist teams
Useful Fictions began as a two-year collaboration between artists, designers, and scientists from the University of California, Davis, USA, and the Chaire Arts et Sciences of the École polytechnique and École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, France. In 2019, gathering a coalition of artists, designers, humanists, and graduate students to work with globally acclaimed climate scientists in their labs, the project culminated as a week-long multidisciplinary symposium at École polytechnique and a temporary public art project titled The Speed of Light (SOL) Expedition, which took place in Montmartre, Paris, France. The goal of the collaboration was to design and implement an experimental platform suitable for bringing artists and scientists together to exchange shared concerns of critical ecological and societal importance. The vehicle that carried the discourse forward was the creative co-production of artwork by the artist-scientist teams. In pursuit of shared inquiries, the teams worked side-by-side with an attitude toward embracing the complexity of the problem and modeling radical openness to research in which tools, laboratories, and studio work are shared between the team members.
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Guest Keynote
- 17.05 | 9:00 – 10:00 – Salle 500 + En ligne
Ionat Zurr
Symbiosis and the fallacy of a nature-free existence
In times of ecological emergency, solutionist fantasies of nature-free human existence promise salvation and repair. The innovative paradigm offers “products” such as lab-grown (animal free) meat and artificial automated surrogates to replace reproductive biological bodies.
These so-called innovations require special artificial environments to host, nurture and culturally articulate this “new” nature-free, decontextualized and colonised life. The entanglement of life with its surrogate environment/apparatus, echoing human relationships with living and semi-living agents; when control and care is employed to counter resistance.
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