Proposed workshops should have a clear link to Hexagram-Concordia’s research-creation mandate. They should contribute to the development of the media arts field, help with the training of the next generation of artist-researchers (undergraduate/graduate), and further the development of creative work using current research tools while demonstrating the uniqueness and necessity of other forms of knowledge production. Workshops can be thematic in nature, and should provide an opportunity for advanced skill building and knowledge transfer among researchers, students and other Hexagram community members. The focus may be on technical skills, such as electronics or programming, or on exploratory processes for creative production.

Anyone may submit a proposal. If you are interested in organizing and leading a workshop, we want to hear from you. We also want to hear from you if you have ideas about specific topics for workshops you are interested in taking.

All of the information needed to apply is in this PDF. The deadline is Wednesday, May 15, 2013.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

Photo credit: Johnson Ngo

Description: My artwork evolves out of experiments I conduct in my studio where I explore the physics of electricity and look for ways I can use it as a raw material. This includes harvesting electrostatic transmissions, tapping into electromagnetic emissions, and manipulating live flowing current. In my recent work I have been repurposing trailing-edge communication technology and transforming it into electro-mechanical sound installations and experimental instruments for audio performances. This presentation focuses on my current research that involves repurposing obsolete Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TVs and using them as static electricity generators. The static charges they produce are used as a kinetic force that drives the movement in my works Electrostatic Bell Choir and Electrostatic Birds. Documentation of the works can be viewed here: www.darsha.org

Bio: Darsha Hewitt is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. She was  recently awarded an International Stipend for Young Artists in Sound Art from the Federal State of Lower Saxony and Braunschweig HBK (DE) (2013). In 2011 Darsha received an International Work Stipend from The Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (DE). She has exhibited her artwork across Canada, in Mexico, Scandinavia and Europe – including presentations at: Make Art Festival (FR), Piksel Festival (NO), La Periferia (MX), MUTEK (CA), Studio XX (CA) and Interacess (CA).

For more information contact us at *protected email*

To view the complete Winter 2013 calendar, go here.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

Description: My research-creation project entitled “Sneaking Up on Time” constructs performative scenarios for imagining history anew. Working across studio practices and anthropological methods in tandem with contemporary global and media art histories, I explore a “migratory aesthetics” of exile. In this talk, I present my studio process and past artworks, as well as my thesis project’s starting point and methodology.

Bio: In her artwork, Dana Samuel raises questions of history, politics and cultural identity through exploring narrative and storytelling, futility and failure and relationships between digital technologies and obsolete media. Dana holds an Associate Degree from the Ontario College of Art & Design and a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Western Ontario. She has shown her work at galleries and festivals across Canada and in Europe. She is presently an artist-researcher in Concordia’s PhD Humanities program.

For more information contact us at *protected email*

To view the complete Winter 2013 calendar, go here.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

How do we remember? As technology advances we are provided with new formats for recording moments. Does this recorded media, transform how we remember? How can we know that our memories are accurate? Memory Process is an exploration of the ways we remember and forget. It is a collection of qualitative research recorded in various formats such as; photography, video, found footage archive, audio, and animation. During this Hexagram talk I will explore these epistemological questions, illustrate my methodological approach, and share my work.

Bio: A. Megan Turnbull is a Winnipeg-bred Montreal-based artist and director, currently pursuing her MFA in Film Production at Concordia. She has created paper worlds for her films ‘Evolucity,’ ‘Frolic,’ and the National Film Board stereoscopic 3D film ‘Unlaced Délacé.’ Her work has been screened across Canada and internationally. Megan’s work explores the evolving relationship between memories, time and place.

For more information contact us at *protected email*

To view the complete Winter 2013 calendar, go here.

HEXA_OUT: When Forms of Life Collide
Roundtable with Nell Tenhaaf and Hexagram | CIAM researchers and students:
Sofian Audry (PhD Humanities, Concordia), Aurélie Besson (Doctorat, Études et pratiques des arts, UQAM), Tagny Duff (Hexagram-Concordia), Louise Poissant (Hexagram-UQAM) Moderated by Chris Salter (Hexagram-Concordia)
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm

Hexagram | CIAM announcements
3:00 – 3:30 pm

When Materialities Multiply: Chaos and Promise between the Computational and Biological Arts
Talk by Nell Tenhaaf, Hexagram-Concordia Distinguished Speaker Series
3:30 – 5:00 pm

Friday, March 22, 2013,
1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Phi Centre
407, Saint-Pierre Street, Montreal
Free admission
In French and English (without translation)

See below for more info:

HEXA_OUT is one of Hexagram | CIAM’s public events which aims to stimulate the transfer of knowledge and methodologies through discussion and exchange between media arts researchers. This event is an opportunity for the public to witness the vibrant research-creation being produced at Hexagram | CIAM.

For this edition of HEXA_OUT, Hexagram | CIAM will collaborate with Hexagram-Concordia’s Distinguished Speaker Series and the final speaker of the 2012-2013 year, artist, researcher and York University professor Nell Tenhaaf. These events will examine the current trend in new media art practice in which notions of life and materiality are increasingly blurred between the computational and the biological.

Tenhaaf’s early evening lecture will accompany an afternoon round table with Hexagram | CIAM researchers and students working with processes of the living and exploring the friction and attraction of new forms of matter and life.

There will also be announcements for Hexagram | CIAM members and a preview of events to come between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm.

This is Hexagram | CIAM’s second public event in its partnership with PHI Centre, which focuses on their complementary mandates, bringing academic research-creation and quality dissemination to the Montreal community.

When Materialities Multiply: Chaos and Promise between the Computational and Biological Arts, Talk by Nell Tenhaaf: As new forms of art practice emerge and slide in under the broad umbrella of “new media” (bioart, DIY science, nanoart, etc.), a truism becomes obvious: the “new” of new materialities compounds that of new media art (NMA). In other words, the already challenging project of bridging a multitude of differences within NMA, prior to this burgeoning of new forms, now becomes somewhat formidable. Materialities in NMA art practices have been pulling apart, even those that conceptually operate in the same zone because they are characterized by their dynamics, lifelikeness, vitality, agency, behaviour, performativity. Some strategies for negotiating this terrain may be more apt than others for maintaining open assemblages of intent, circulation and impact.

Bio: Nell Tenhaaf is an electronic media artist and professor at York University in Toronto. Her studio practice over several decades has focused on the intersection of art, science and technology, including a pioneering research interest in biotechnology and genetics by the mid-1980s. Well-known internationally for her published articles on these topics, Tenhaaf has been jury member for the VIDA art and artificial life competition since its inception in 1997. She is represented in Toronto by Paul Petro Contemporary http://www.yorku.ca/ tenhaaf/Home.html

Hexagram | CIAM
For over a decade, Hexagram | CIAM is internationally recognized as a Canadian pole of excellence for interdisciplinary research in media arts. More than 80 researchers are members of its two main centers located at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Concordia University, extending out to Université de Montréal and École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS). Many fruitful collaborations have emerged between individuals and institutions in the cultural sector and also with private companies in Québec, Canada and around the world.

PHI Centre – For art in all its forms
The PHI Centre is a smart building with a host of production studios and creative spaces – the most sophisticated technical resources available in the hands of artists and innovators. It is a place for producing work that is inspiring and thought-provoking; work that is responsive and edgy, that wakes you up and is a motor for change. It is also a place for the presentation of art and the exchange of exciting creative ideas of all manners, for all manner of people, coming from all manner of context possible – from the neighbourhood to the other side of the planet.

Hexagram | CIAM
hexagramciam.org

Phi Centre
phi-centre.com/fr/index.sn

Hexagram-Concordia
hexagram.concordia.ca

Hexagram-UQAM
hexagram.uqam.ca

Hexagram | CIAM Contact:
Sophie Le-Phat Ho, event coordinator
*protected email*

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

Image: Claire Brunet, Salmon triangle

Artistic creation has mutated from its introvert nature to become a collaborative act merging the scientific and artistic domains into an extrovert process of creation. This talk addresses the Impact of 3D digital technology on artistic creation. Referencing research creation, we explore sensory knowledge inspired by environmental concerns from ecological to technological perspectives. The sculpture installation project proposes opposing temporal forces—a 3D digital and technological approach as a mode of production, in opposition to an ecological statement on the vulnerability of the living environment—which stress the opposing values of an hypermodern society, reflecting on a culture of paradox.

Bio: Claire Brunet is a sculptor, associate professor at OCAD University, and PhD Candidate in the Individualized Program (INDI) at Concordia University. Brunet’s research investigates the impact of a 3D digital and technological environment on sculpture and installation art practices. Currently Brunet is working on ecological concepts addressing the vulnerability of the living environment through 3D digital and technological modes of production.

For more information contact us at *protected email*

To view the complete Winter 2013 calendar, go here.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

Description: A colleague once told me that Duchamp once quipped, “art is pretty easy.” In the contemporary landscape, art isn’t as easy, probably. We have now entered the age of the interdisciplinary. You can no longer only exist as an “artist.” You must now be a curator, writer, philosopher, theorist, critic, government-subsidized body, scientist, factory worker, foreman, psychologist and political economist. We now call the ability to create artwork and pair it with theory, “research-creation.” This is a wonderful turn in contemporary thought, because it legitimizes everything. This talk will explore explorations in contemporary research as an inherent quality and by-product of labour and the ways in which artists currently utilize sub-systems and structures of thought as a medium of expression, whilst expanding the field of relationships between critical interrogation and making. The medium of this creative talk is standard Powerpoint presentation.

Bio: Matthew Palmer is a transdisciplinary (blasting through disciplines) artist who addresses themes of making and why we think it necessary to question why. His work has been shown across a very limited portion of Canada. He holds almost no accolades with the exception of one friend calling him a, “pretty good guy.”

For more information contact us at *protected email*

To view the complete Winter 2013 calendar, go here.

  Collective Body: Ascetic Ritual in Performance Art investigates different modalities of alternative temporal communities that emerge in the process of aesthetic and ritualistic experience in particular in the mode of ritualistic performance art by examination of the work of three contemporary performance artists: Marina Abramovic, Linda Montano, and Ron Athey, as well as my own work. I see the works of these performance artists as different models of what I will argue constitute a model of the collective body, a concept that encompasses the multiplicity of approaches to non-structural immediate communities based on the collective affect and desire produced in performative context. The concept of the collective body, as I will employ throughout this research, derives from a number of theoretical concepts involved with the studies of ritual by Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, George Bataille and Antonin Artaud and my critique of them. A crossover between experimental anthropology and avant-garde theater studies provides an essential background for the analysis of alternative communities that emerge on the margins of the dominant social paradigm in religious ritualistic practices and in a particular strain of Western avant-garde theater associated with ritualistic performance. Bio: Tatiana Koroleva is a performance artist and researcher born in Western Siberia. Her works explore various ways of resistance against dominating standards for individual body in post-capitalist culture. Tatiana has graduated from the Visual Arts Department of SUNY, Buffalo, USA as the Fulbright Program scholarship holder. Currently she is working on her PhD research at the Department of Humanities at Concordia University.

For more information contact us at *protected email* To view the complete Winter 2013 calendar, go here.

Wednesday, 27 February from 12 noon – 1:15pm
Hexagram Resource Centre, EV 11.705

Invited respondents: Joanna Donehower, Natalie Doonan, Jaclyn Meloche, Matthew Palmer, Harry Smoak, Oli Sorensen and Rickie Lee Owens.

This event is an opportunity to pause half-way through the term and consider some of the questions brought forward so far. Everyone from the Concordia community is welcome to join us for this opportunity to engage in important debates surrounding the nature of research-creation, its definitions, methods and more. We’re concerned with ways of sustaining exchange between disciplines and departments. Regulars and newcomers are all encouraged to attend and participate from any program: HUMA, INDI, MFA, faculty, more. Light snacks will be provided.

We’ve invited a few past-presenters to kick-off discussion, respond to a small constellation of themes, and hope that you’ll bring your ideas and questions, too, and join in. Some food for thought to get us started:

• Collaboration and research-creation: how does collaboration change the nature of academic research?
• Curating/creating: how can a curatorial practice inform research-creation methodologies? Must the “creation” aspect of research-creation imply making something new?
• Accessibility/dissemination: how can researchers from diverse disciplines understand each other? Is a common vocabulary useful? How do we make our research public? Why are other terms, like “practice-based” used elsewhere?
• “Artistic research” and “institutional critique”: how do studio artists reconcile their practices with the structure of the institution? Or is “institutional critique” an outmoded problematic? Does “studio practice” necessarily mean “artistic research”?
• Problematizing language: phrases like “research-creation” and “knowledge production” have clear links to economic questions of the “creative city” and immaterial labour. No one likes to talk about money, but are all these topics are embroiled in questions of economics and public funds?

Come to the Brown Bag and join in the discussion. And have some snacks! 

Lisa Moren

public lecture + reception:
Phenomena, Ecology and Technology
Friday, February 8, 2013
4:00 – 6:00 pm

seminar:
Ecology and Economy:
The Outback Stock Exchange
Thursday, February 7, 2013
4:00 – 5:30 pm

location for both:
Hexagram Resource Centre
EV Building, 11.705
Concordia University
1515 St. Catherine St. W.
Montreal QC

everyone welcome
no rsvp required

for more info: *protected email* or 514-848-2424 ext 5939

See below for talk and seminar descriptions and Lisa Moren’s bio:

February 8 Lecture:
Phenomena, Ecology and Technology

Like the magnetic head of a tape recorder reading a cassette tape, the viewer draws audio from a portrait to hear the anecdotes from citizens of former Eastern Europe remembering their Communist past in Lisa Moren’s project “Récord, recórd, recollection.” Moren will present several projects that intersect technologies, phenomena and compelling narratives, and range from fading prints, to the moment analog tv died, to pigments collected from polluted sites such as various urban waterways that feed into the Chesapeake Bay. Moren will talk about her production of marbleized papers from oil collected in the Gulf of Mexico during the BP Deep Water Horizon Rigs oil spill that devastated the region, and her latest work exploring a coded system of ecology and economy in the Australian outback.

February 7 Seminar:
Ecology and Economy: The Outback Stock Exchange

Lisa Moren will describe her work in progress “eLAND” that explores socio-techno and economic culture as coded within the Australian outback. Moren collected pigments in areas where pigments have been collected for thousands of year by the Dieri people, and she created coded etchings where the observer becomes part of a system larger than the prints that they are observing.  Using GPS to display an interactive map of the originally mined location, and a live feed of the increased or decreased value of that pigment, this project looks at the interconnectedness of ecology and economy emphasized by the Dieri people of South Australia. This project is supported by Visual Art Centre of Bendigo, Victoria Australia; the Artist Research Network of LaTrobe University, Melbourne; Lukeworks Inc., and Pyramid Atlantic in Maryland.

Biography

Lisa Moren is an artist who has been making interactive installations, works on paper and public interventions for over 20 years. She has exhibited her work widely at American institutions including the Chelsea Art Museum and Cranbrook Art Museum and in many venues abroad such as Ars Electronica and Akademie der Kunste, and is currently working with the Artists Research Network, part of LaTrobe University in Melbourne Australia. She is a Fulbright Scholar and has received numerous awards including from the National Endowment for the Arts and multiple awards from both the Maryland State Arts Council and CEC Artslink International. Her writing has appeared in Performance Research, Visible Language, Inter Arts Actuel, and her own books on Intermedia and Issues in Contemporary Theory 16, distributed by D.A.P. for the exhibition she curated, “Command Z: Artists Working with Phenomena and Technology.” She is an Associate Professor of Visual Art, and lives in Baltimore with her husband and two children.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

Description: Game scholar Ian Bogost argues for an analysis of the “procedural rhetoric” of games. His claim is that the rules and systems of representation in games lead us to behave and believe in certain novel ways. While I would not dispute this, there are few games designed with the intent to leverage their rules to do their communicating. More often than not it is the sounds and visuals of games which transfer information. My theoretical work explores the limits of procedural rhetoric, both in design and in play. My findings prompt me to make games which I feel are missing from the set of possible games. This talk will discuss the limited quantity of board game art, such as Brenda Brathwaite’s Train, Takako Saito’s Spice Chess  and Yoko Ono’s Play It By Trust and attempt to position my most recent piece Poor, Ugly, Gay, Stupid, Sick in relation to this medium’s history.

Bio: William Robinson completed his MA in the Special Individualized Program at Concordia University in 2012. He is currently a PhD Candidate in the Humanities Program where his research focuses on player creativity, digital labour and aesthetic analytic philosophy. Housed by the Research Center for Technoculture, Art and Games, Will plays, writes, makes and thinks games all day.

Wednesday February 6th, 2013

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

Description: In this talk I expound on how outrageous, artistic manipulation of an audience can kindle a conversation on the agency of the objects in our life. The art objects I make are always games, giving the audience a safe-space, a field of unimportance, to consider the particular power structures at play in each piece. I will use 4 of my previous installations to demonstrate how art that can be played (or unplayed) can deliver insights into behaviours that co-shape the power dynamics of the world we live in.

Bio:  Rickie Lea Owens is an artist and technologist who creates toys and animated images for the public consideration of play and power. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, and screened in American and European theatres. She lectures and teaches workshops for people of all ages on the subjects of interactivity and animation and also works professionally as an animator, programmer, installation technician, and consultant specializing in new media. She lives and works in Montréal, Québec. www.rickieleaowens.com

“Google: Originality”, by Oli Sorenson, Inkjet Print, 15x31cm, 2012.

Wednesday January 3oth, 2013

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

In this talk, Sorenson will discuss his return to gallery based projects as well as his research/creation PhD at Concordia, to articulate his interest towards network media, intellectual property and remix culture. More particularly he is fascinated by the overabundance of online content, which he thinks discourages artists to create anymore new or original works, but instead promotes the practices of sampling and sharing.

Bio: Born in Los Angeles, Oli Sorenson started his artistic career by addressing themes of non-identity and hedonism in his video works, which quickly caught the attention of club culture audiences. Thus he first shot to international acclaim under the moniker “VJ Anyone”, and was celebrated as one of the world’s top ten VJs between 2003 and 2008.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

In my own creative work, I have often observed that productive aesthetic “decisions” result less from particular theoretic needs (where one’s mind is already made up) and rather more from practical ones (held by reason that one must act when faced with a genuine dilemma). In this talk I will review William James’ “option” theory proposed long ago for humanist psychology in order to try out its application for practitioner and audience concerns especially in the context of “responsive” media and environments.  Specific examples drawn from current work will be presented for further discussion.

Bio: Harry Smoak is a senior research associate at Hexagram and PhD candidate in the newly inaugurated Individualized Program (INDI) at Concordia University. His artistic and research interests revolve around the conceptualization and development of experimental sensor-based interactive media environments.

12:00 – 1:00 pm
EV 11.705, Hexagram Resource Centre

This discussion with Ollivier Dyens will introduce the Concordia Mindscape, a joint project from the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies. Concordia Mindscape aims at bridging the gap between research and teaching, undergraduate and graduate education, the classroom and the outside world. It will be a laboratory/hub/incubator dedicated to knowledge exploration and will examine how the ubiquitous presence of information (from media to materials, from inorganic amalgams to organic compounds) generates different knowledge structures and calls for large and creative dissemination activities. This is an opportunity for graduate students to give feedback on the project and understand more about the potential implications for their own work, including those involving the processes of research-creation.

Ollivier Dyens is Concordia’s Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning and a former faculty member in the Département d’études françaises. He is an award-winning author and digital artist, and in 2010 was named to the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation of Quebec.

Please join our facebook page for regular updates:

See below for more information on the winter 2013 brown bag schedule:

January 16, 2013:  “The Concordia Mindscape” by Ollivier Dyens (Vice Provost, Teaching and Learning)

Description: “This discussion with Ollivier Dyens will introduce the Concordia Mindscape, a joint project from the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies. Concordia Mindscape aims at bridging the gap between research and teaching, undergraduate and graduate education, the classroom and the outside world. It will be a laboratory/hub/incubator dedicated to knowledge exploration and will examine how the ubiquitous presence of information (from media to materials, from inorganic amalgams to organic compounds) generates different knowledge structures and calls for large and creative dissemination activities. This is an opportunity for graduate students to give feedback on the project and understand more about the potential implications for their own work, including those involving the processes of research-creation.”

Bio: Ollivier Dyens is Concordia’s Vice-Provost for Teaching and Learning and a former faculty member in the Département d’études françaises. He is an award-winning author and digital artist, and in 2010 was named to the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation of Quebec.

January 23, 2013: “Notes toward an event selector theory for design” by Harry Smoak (INDI)

Description:  “In my own creative work, I have often observed that productive aesthetic “decisions” result less from particular theoretic needs (where one’s mind is already made up) and rather more from practical ones (held by reason that one must act when faced with a genuine dilemma). In this talk I will review William James’ “option” theory proposed long ago for humanist psychology in order to try out its application for practitioner and audience concerns especially in the context of “responsive” media and environments.  Specific examples drawn from current work will be presented for further discussion.”

Bio: Harry Smoak is a senior research associate at Hexagram and PhD candidate in the newly inaugurated Individualized Program (INDI) at Concordia University. His artistic and research interests revolve around the conceptualization and development of experimental sensor-based interactive media environments.

January 30, 2013: “Post-creativity” by Oli Sorensen (PhD HUMA)

Description: In this talk, Sorenson will discuss his return to gallery based projects as well as his research/creation PhD at Concordia, to articulate his interest towards network media, intellectual property and remix culture. More particularly he is fascinated by the overabundance of online content, which he thinks discourages artists to create anymore new or original works, but instead promotes the practices of sampling and sharing.

Bio: Born in Los Angeles, Oli Sorenson started his artistic career by addressing themes of non-identity and hedonism in his video works, which quickly caught the attention of club culture audiences. Thus he first shot to international acclaim under the moniker “VJ Anyone”, and was celebrated as one of the world’s top ten VJs between 2003 and 2008.

February 6, 2013:  “Power\Play” by Rickie Lea Owens

Description: In this talk I expound on how outrageous, artistic manipulation of an audience can kindle a conversation on the agency of the objects in our life. The art objects I make are always games, giving the audience a safe-space, a field of unimportance, to consider the particular power structures at play in each piece. I will use 4 of my previous installations to demonstrate how art that can be played (or unplayed) can deliver insights into behaviours that co-shape the power dynamics of the world we live in.

Bio: Rickie Lea Owens is an artist and technologist who creates toys and animated images for the public consideration of play and power. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, and screened in American and European theatres. She lectures and teaches workshops for people of all ages on the subjects of interactivity and animation and also works professionally as an animator, programmer, installation technician, and consultant specializing in new media. She lives and works in Montréal, Québec. www.rickieleaowens.com

February 13, 2013:  “The Rhetoric of Board Game Art” by William Robinson (PhD Candidate, Humanities)

Description: Game scholar Ian Bogost argues for an analysis of the “procedural rhetoric” of games. His claim is that the rules and systems of representation in games lead us to behave and believe in certain novel ways. While I would not dispute this, there are few games designed with the intent to leverage their rules to do their communicating. More often than not it is the sounds and visuals of games which transfer information. My theoretical work explores the limits of procedural rhetoric, both in design and in play. My findings prompt me to make games which I feel are missing from the set of possible games. This talk will discuss the limited quantity of board game art, such as Brenda Brathwaite’s Train, Takako Saito’s Spice Chess  and Yoko Ono’s Play It By Trust and attempt to position my most recent piece Poor, Ugly, Gay, Stupid, Sick in relation to this medium’s history.

Bio: William Robinson completed his MA in the Special Individualized Program at Concordia University in 2012. He is currently a PhD Candidate in the Humanities Program where his research focuses on player creativity, digital labour and aesthetic analytic philosophy. Housed by the Research Center for Technoculture, Art and Games, Will plays, writes, makes and thinks games all day.

February 27, 2013:  Positioning Research-Creation: A mid-term roundtable discussion on practices of making and thinking 

Invited respondents: Joanna Donehower, Natalie Doonan, Jaclyn Meloche, Matthew Palmer, Harry Smoak, Oli Sorensen and Rickie Lee Owens.

This event is an opportunity to pause half-way through the term and consider some of the questions brought forward so far. Everyone from the Concordia community is welcome to join us for this opportunity to engage in important debates surrounding the nature of research-creation, its definitions, methods and more. We’re concerned with ways of sustaining exchange between disciplines and departments. Regulars and newcomers are all encouraged to attend and participate from any program: HUMA, INDI, MFA, faculty, more. Light snacks will be provided.

We’ve invited a few past-presenters to kick-off discussion, respond to a small constellation of themes, and hope that you’ll bring your ideas and questions, too, and join in. Some food for thought to get us started:

• Collaboration and research-creation: how does collaboration change the nature of academic research?
• Curating/creating: how can a curatorial practice inform research-creation methodologies? Must the “creation” aspect of research-creation imply making something new?
• Accessibility/dissemination: how can researchers from diverse disciplines understand each other? Is a common vocabulary useful? How do we make our research public? Why are other terms, like “practice-based” used elsewhere?
• “Artistic research” and “institutional critique”: how do studio artists reconcile their practices with the structure of the institution? Or is “institutional critique” an outmoded problematic? Does “studio practice” necessarily mean “artistic research”?
• Problematizing language: phrases like “research-creation” and “knowledge production” have clear links to economic questions of the “creative city” and immaterial labour. No one likes to talk about money, but are all these topics are embroiled in questions of economics and public funds?

Come to the Brown Bag and join in the discussion. And have some snacks!

March 6, 2013: “Collective Body: Ascetic Ritual in Performance Art” by Tatiana Koroleva (HUMA)

Description: “Collective Body: Ascetic Ritual in Performance Art investigates different modalities of alternative temporal communities that emerge in the process of aesthetic and ritualistic experience in particular in the mode of ritualistic performance art by examination of the work of three contemporary performance artists: Marina Abramovic, Linda Montano, and Ron Athey, as well as my own work. I see the works of these performance artists as different models of what I will argue constitute a model of the collective body, a concept that encompasses the multiplicity of approaches to non-structural immediate communities based on the collective affect and desire produced in performative context. The concept of the collective body, as I will employ throughout this research, derives from a number of theoretical concepts involved with the studies of ritual by Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, George Bataille and Antonin Artaud and my critique of them. A crossover between experimental anthropology and avant-garde theater studies provides an essential background for the analysis of alternative communities that emerge on the margins of the dominant social paradigm in religious ritualistic practices and in a particular strain of Western avant-garde theater associated with ritualistic performance.”

Bio: Tatiana Koroleva is a performance artist and researcher born in Western Siberia. Her works explore various ways of resistance against dominating standards for individual body in post-capitalist culture. Tatiana has graduated from the Visual Arts Department of SUNY, Buffalo, USA as the Fulbright Program scholarship holder. Currently she is working on her PhD research at the Department of Humanities at Concordia University.

March 13, 2013:  “Research is an Intellectual Chore: Using Powerpoint to Blast Through Art History” by Matthew Palmer, (MFA/Open Media)

Description: A colleague once told me that Duchamp once quipped, “art is pretty easy.” In the contemporary landscape, art isn’t as easy, probably. We have now entered the age of the interdisciplinary. You can no longer only exist as an “artist.” You must now be a curator, writer, philosopher, theorist, critic, government-subsidized body, scientist, factory worker, foreman, psychologist and political economist. We now call the ability to create artwork and pair it with theory, “research-creation.” This is a wonderful turn in contemporary thought, because it legitimizes everything. This talk will explore explorations in contemporary research as an inherent quality and by-product of labour and the ways in which artists currently utilize sub-systems and structures of thought as a medium of expression, whilst expanding the field of relationships between critical interrogation and making. The medium of this creative talk is standard Powerpoint presentation.

Bio: Matthew Palmer is a transdisciplinary (blasting through disciplines) artist who addresses themes of making and why we think it necessary to question why. His work has been shown across a very limited portion of Canada. He holds almost no accolades with the exception of one friend calling him a, “pretty good guy.”

March 20th, 2013: “Paradox in Sculpture Practices: Perspectives on a 3D Digital Medium” by Claire Brunet (INDI)

Description: Artistic creation has mutated from its introvert nature to become a collaborative act merging the scientific and artistic domains into an extrovert process of creation. This talk addresses the Impact of 3D digital technology on artistic creation. Referencing research creation, we explore sensory knowledge inspired by environmental concerns from ecological to technological perspectives. The sculpture installation project proposes opposing temporal forces—a 3D digital and technological approach as a mode of production, in opposition to an ecological statement on the vulnerability of the living environment—which stress the opposing values of an hypermodern society, reflecting on a culture of paradox.

Bio:  Claire Brunet is a sculptor, associate professor at OCAD University, and PhD Candidate in the Individualized Program (INDI) at Concordia University. Brunet’s research investigates the impact of a 3D digital and technological environment on sculpture and installation art practices. Currently Brunet is working on ecological concepts addressing the vulnerability of the living environment through 3D digital and technological modes of production.

March 27, 2013:  “Memory Process: Examining the impact of Contemporary Media on Memory” by Megan Turnbull (MFA-Film)

Description: “How do we remember? As technology advances we are provided with new formats for recording moments. Does this recorded media, transform how we remember? How can we know that our memories are accurate? Memory Process is an exploration of the ways we remember and forget. It is a collection of qualitative research recorded in various formats such as; photography, video, found footage archive, audio, and animation. During this Hexagram talk I will explore these epistemological questions, illustrate my methodological approach, and share my work.”

Bio: A. Megan Turnbull is a Winnipeg-bred Montreal-based artist and director, currently pursuing her MFA in Film Production at Concordia. She has created paper worlds for her films ‘Evolucity,’ ‘Frolic,’ and the National Film Board stereoscopic 3D film ‘Unlaced Délacé.’ Her work has been screened across Canada and internationally. Megan’s work explores the evolving relationship between memories, time and place.

April 3rd, 2013: “Sneaking up on Time” by Dana Samuel (PhD Huma)

Description: My research-creation project entitled “Sneaking Up on Time” constructs performative scenarios for imagining history anew. Working across studio practices and anthropological methods in tandem with contemporary global and media art histories, I explore a “migratory aesthetics” of exile. In this talk, I present my studio process and past artworks, as well as my thesis project’s starting point and methodology.

Bio: In her artwork, Dana Samuel raises questions of history, politics and cultural identity through exploring narrative and storytelling, futility and failure and relationships between digital technologies and obsolete media. Dana holds an Associate Degree from the Ontario College of Art & Design and a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Western Ontario. She has shown her work at galleries and festivals across Canada and in Europe. She is presently an artist-researcher in Concordia’s PhD Humanities program.

April 10th, 2013: “Re-imagining Living Room Particle accelerators” by Darsha Hewitt (MFA Candidate, Open Media)

Description: My artwork evolves out of experiments I conduct in my studio where I explore the physics of electricity and look for ways I can use it as a raw material. This includes harvesting electrostatic transmissions, tapping into electromagnetic emissions, and manipulating live flowing current. In my recent work I have been repurposing trailing-edge communication technology and transforming it into electro-mechanical sound installations and experimental instruments for audio performances. This presentation focuses on my current research that involves repurposing obsolete Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TVs and using them as static electricity generators. The static charges they produce are used as a kinetic force that drives the movement in my works Electrostatic Bell Choir and Electrostatic Birds. Documentation of the works can be viewed here: www.darsha.org

Bio: Darsha Hewitt is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. She was  recently awarded an International Stipend for Young Artists in Sound Art from the Federal State of Lower Saxony and Braunschweig HBK (DE) (2013). In 2011 Darsha received an International Work Stipend from The Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (DE). She has exhibited her artwork across Canada, in Mexico, Scandinavia and Europe – including presentations at: Make Art Festival (FR), Piksel Festival (NO), La Periferia (MX), MUTEK (CA), Studio XX (CA) and Interacess (CA).