LASER 8 Hexagram Montreal
Co-Chairs Nina Czegledy and Gisèle Trudel

Tuesday November 5th, 7 pm
Biological Sciences Pavillon (SB)
141, avenue du Président-Kennedy
4th Floor, Room SB-4105
Metro Place-des-arts

In French
Free admission

How do the arts and sciences inflect each other or perhaps even coalesce in an exhibition format? The LASER Hexagram Montreal’s 8th edition will address this topic through a selection of themes, including organ transplant as explored in artworks and the role of design in communicating scientific discourse and knowledge to different publics.

The core orientation of this round table is to open a discussion about the processes and outcomes of collaborations between artists, designers and scientists for the captivating production of art and design exhibitions. How can the different fields contribute to forging new interdisciplinary research?

Hybrid Bodies
Few organs are as charged as the human heart. Perceived as the seat of human identity and the archetypal symbol of love, this organ has been given qualities and associations that go far beyond its anatomical functions. Today, the medical model is well understood and the heart transplant is an almost common intervention. However, the emotional and psychological impact on transplant recipients is less well understood. For this presentation, Ingrid Bachmann will discuss her twelve years of research with an interdisciplinary team based in Toronto, the University Health Network. She is part of a group of artists to whom access to research results and some of the personal experiences of transplant recipients have been granted, in order to create artworks.

La Station scénographique
La Station scénographique is a research and experimentation project for Master students in design, art and social sciences, conducted since 2016 by l’École supérieure des beaux-arts de Bordeaux (EBABX), École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon (ENSBA), l’Université Lyon 2 and the Haute école des arts du Rhin à Strasbourg (HEAR).

The project questions the role of design in the appropriation of contemporary scientific knowledge and the issues surrounding public dissemination of scientific discourses and representations. In this framework are organized workshops with researchers from different fields (anthropology, quantum physics, astrophysics, meteorology, physics of the atmosphere) during which students imagine and realize exhibition and mediation instruments (spatial, objects, graphics, digital) for public exhibitions. Franck Houndégla and Didier Lechenne (EBABX) as well as Olivier Poncer (HEAR) will discuss their upcoming project, a collaboration with UQAM Professor René Laprise.

Contribution of sciences to understanding climate and projecting anticipated climate changes
Based on his upcoming collaboration with the members of La Station scénographique, René Laprise will describe the scientific approach to anticipate future changes in climate and weather hazards. It is now well recognized that the Earth climate has warmed significantly in recent decades, faster than ever before in its history. Research shows that this warming is caused by the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases released by the combustion of fossil fuels to produce energy. The consequences of observed warming (and even more so for the projected warming of the next decades) are causes for concern for the natural environment, ecosystems, and the health and safety of the population.

Bios

Ingrid Bachmann is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the complicated relationship between the material and virtual realms. Bachmann uses redundant as well as new technologies to create generative and interactive artworks, many of which are site-specific. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. She is a founding member of Hexagram.
http://www.hybridbodiesproject.com/

Franck Houndégla is a designer, scenographer and teacher in Design at EBABX. He designs exhibitions, museums, public and private spaces, and heritage sites in France and abroad. In this context, he regularly works on scientific and technical, historical and artistic content. He is Artistic Director of Liaisons urbaines, a program dedicated to the development of public spaces of African cities, conducted in partnership with the City of Architecture and Heritage, the French Institute and the School of African Heritage. He also develops writing activities (literary texts and articles) and is pursuing doctoral research in architecture about the evolution of urban forms (Université Paris-Est, laboratoire IPRAUS)..
https://site.franckhoundegla.com

René Laprise is Professor in Sciences de l’atmosphère et physique du climat at UQAM. He is recognized as a leader in regional climate modelling, a research theme he initiated in Canada 30 years ago. His research team has developed several generations of a sophisticated software to simulate high-definition climate; the latest version of the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5) is currently being used by the Ouranos Consortium to conduct high-resolution projections of climate change in North America. He was the only Québec scientist to be invited to act as the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report (AR4) that was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
http://www.mrcc.uqam.ca/membre.php?pkMembre=1

Didier Lechenne is a graphic designer and teacher at EBABX. His work is translated by websites, digital objects, interfaces, publications, visual identities. A graduate of the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, he co-founded the Labomatic and Ultralab workshops. His latest productions are: “Design is? With Jeanne Queheillard (digital application), talitres.com (website), Le 308 (Artistic Direction, Ordre des Architectes de la Nouvelle Aquitaine)..
www.lechenne.fr

Olivier Poncer is a teacher/chair of the visual didactic workshop at HEAR since 1998. The author and illustrator of children’s books, he has developed the “the tactile image,” an original illustration mode for the hands of the blind and the sighted. His present research is concerned with educational innovation, and artistic and technical developments of didactic apparatus. At HEAR, he is the initiator and head of the research program Didactique tangible – Convergences et interaction entre arts et sciences. Since 2014, Olivier Poncer is Associate Researcher at the Archives Henri Poincaré- Philosophie et Recherches sur les Sciences et la technologie (Université de Strasbourg, Université de Lorraine, CNRS).
http://didactiquevisuelle.hear.fr

Image : Ingrid Bachmann, A/Part of Me, 2014. Détail. Sculpture sonore interactive. Centre Phi, Montréal. Photo : Bec Dean.

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)