Silverfish Stream
Maison de la culture Frontenac
From January 20th to February 20th, 2005
Groupe Molior presents Silverfish Stream, an interactive sound and robotic installation by Constanza Silva. Silverfish Stream, at the Maison de la Culture Frontenac, knits together formal simplicity with the technical complexity of a network of self-propelled spheres.
Andrée Duchaine
Andrée Duchaine has worked in the visual arts area since several years. From 1974 to 1984 she was involved in setting up the video section at Vehicule Art Gallery and organized and curated VIDEO 84, the first international video encounters in Montreal. Mrs Duchaine curated several video art exhibitions in Europe, the United States and Canada. Between 1985 and 1995 she settled in Paris where she founded a short film distribution company. She worked with T.V. channels across the world.
Andrée Duchaine taught at Paris VIII, at the Université du Québec à Montréal and at the Ottawa University. In 2001 she founded a non-profit company Le Groupe Molior producing, curating and disseminating new media works.
Artist & work
Constanza Silva
Silverfish Stream
2005
Interactive installation
Description of the work
Silverfish Stream is a sensual, poetic exploration of the potentials of human-machine interaction. Communicating robotic spheres move through the gallery space, adjusting their behaviors in relation to each other; the result is an awkward and unpredictable pas de deux that both absorbs and excludes the viewer. Within this field of metal and fleshy bodies that adjust and readjust to each other, a complex sound environment emerges. Sonic vibrations from the machines are transformed and modulated by the movements of bodies within the multi-centric system.
Biography
Constanza Silva is a new media artist who creates complex, sound and robotic environments by setting minimal forms in motion within networked, interactive systems. Since 1995, she has integrated performance, video, sound, and electro-mechanical elements to explore embodied experience and agency within natural, technological and political ecologies. The environments she creates are dynamic fields in which the concrete and the incorporeal—metal forms, fleshy bodies, information and sensation—pass into and transform each other.
Silva holds an MFA from Concordia University, Montréal and a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. Her works have been exhibited in Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal. Over the last decade she has participated in numerous projects, exhibitions and performances, some of which include: Iguana/Iguana Confirmed (2004) Techno experimentations in gallery, DARE-DARE, Montréal; Sin ruido, en memoria (2002), Transito, Marché Bonsecours, Montréal; and Flagrante Delicto (2001), Planet In Focus, the Toronto International Environmental Film and Video Festival. She has received awards from private foundations, the B.C. Arts Council, le Centre interuniversitaire des arts médiatiques, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Silva was born in Colombia and raised in Canada. She is currently working and residing in Montréal.
