In the course of an interdisciplinary practice and research my own work is constantly in progress and expands on different types of research endeavours as well as actions, interventions and collaborative work. In the recent months I have been experimenting with other collaborators in regard of what research-creation on a practice-based level might encompass. Some of the most current projects are:

May 2009 - May 2011, Montréal:
Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT)/ Université de Montréal
Nouveaux terrain d’apparition - SSHRC research project directed by Luc Courchesne and Brian Massumi

courtesy of Luc Courchesne

As part of the research team for Luc Courchesne’s ongoing project on the development of the Panoscope I am in the fortunate position to participate as theoretical and philosophical researcher. After the first technological period has been accomplished in December 2009, we are launching the first general meeting including Philippe Dubé co-researcher from Université Laval on January 7, 2010 at the SAT. My contribution to the project consists in theoretical reflections on the work and development of the technologies and the content of the project. At the same time I am approaching the developed system as generative assemblage for new thoughts concerning interactive media, telepresence and augmented mixed media environments. In the way the project evolves one can outline different dimensions that will be crucial for a sustained analysis of creative processes under way:

1) The generation of a comfortable ease of use of the system (how do we achieve a high level of navigation and comfortable immersion without necessary re-modelling existing realities).

2) The technological affordances and negotiations. At the moment the system works at the limit of its capacities in terms of computation (which is regarded as “enabling constraint”  rather than “harnessing”).

3) The potential content for the “worlds” to be created. Navigation and testing different tracking technologies will be backgrounded and the creation of possible worlds will become the main focus in phase two and three of the project.

4) The role of “affective engagement” (Jonas Fritsch) becomes a potential point of entry for conceptual contributions to the project. How might the interaction design at stake benefit from philosophical considerations such as embodiment, affect, research-creation, virtual potential, perception and reality.

5) How can we approach such a project as an ontogenetic process that includes different sets of practices, materials and concepts which shape each other and co-emerge in the process of creative research? Such considerations also include the creative environment of the SAT where the project is based and the technical assemblages and mentalities that are immanent in the project.

June 24-28, 2009 Zagreb:
PSI – Performance Studies International Conference
“(Un)folding Zagreb” – performance workshop together with Bianca Scilar
Mancini and Sarah Wookey

(Un)Folding Zagreb has been part of the Performance Studies International 15th Conference’s accompanying shifts program. Aim was to encounter a city not a predefined space but a a becoming through performative interventions in the city. Together with 10 participants we have approached the city through three different strata patched across three consecutive days: scales/bodies/heights, bridges/border/fences, silences/waits/(in)visibilities. The city re-emerged through each singular action and intervention and thus remained always a a collective becoming of bodies in motion and their ecologies. Conceptual points of entry have been facilitated through Arakawa and Gins writings on the concept of Landing Site from their work “Architectural Body” and William James’ article “A World of Pure Experience.”

May 16-23, 2009, Concordia University, Montréal
Sense Stage Workshop
Interactive installation “The Impossible Room” (together
with Jonas Fritsch, Nicholas Munoz and Nick Maturo)

As part of the Sense Stage workshop hosted by Marije Baalman, Harry Smoak, and Chris Salter, researchers from different domains had the possibility to test wireless sensor technology for interactive performances and to develop a piece during a one week period of experimentation. Sense Stage stands for a long term SSHRC-funded project that created a system and software for a sensor network comprising a software-based many-to-many mapping model and various sensing modalities varying from ambient sensing to movement, light and sound. The project “The Impossible Room” developed out of a desire to create a performative intensive zone for interaction that dislocates the interacting human body from its habitual states, postures and gestures. A narrow space has been equipped with sensing modalities that direct the human interacting body through the space. The visitor is exposed to sonic and visual cues that direct him/her through the space evoking almost impossible postures and gestures. The room and its sonic environment has a climax: The more and more successful the performer accomplishes the cues the more “pleasing” the ambiance of the room becomes.
The project established a first prototype that could be further developed to become an interactive installation in a gallery or other public space.

May 1-5, 2009, Society of Molecules (Sense Lab) Montréal,

Urban Camping // Lack of Information Kiosk Intervention
“Ephemeral Escapist Architectures” Performance/Installation (together with
Jonas Fritsch)

As part of the SenseLab Event Series “Technologies of Lived Abstraction” the micropolitical global event “Society of Molecules” was launched from May 1  to May 5, 2009. One of the two Montréal-based molecules dealt with the lack of information and the micro-events of a collective becoming through interventions effected by an urban camping at an unused lot in Montréal’s Little Italy. In addition to the urban camping and the Lack of Information as collective events Jonas Fritsch and Christoph Brunner initiated a first exprimentation with LED-lit balloons known as “floaties” to initiated an “Ephemeral Escapist Architecture” along marginalized spaces, such as train tracks, which the Molecule intensively dealt with. Spaces become performative and animated by lo-fi technology resonating the silent use of train tracks by Montréalers as pathways, shortcuts, and leisure space - the different layer of a zone of margins.