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THE EXHIBITION

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Free
Virtual reality & art installations
Curator: Nathalie Bachand

March 24th — April 30th, 2023
at Le Livart
3980 Saint-Denis St, Montreal

Nature, this raw material of the terrestrial environment, is the self-generating whole comprised of all the earth’s materials—at least for the time being so long as the environmental parameters have not been completely disrupted by the climate change currently underway. It is also a subject-object that has been—through every era and in every current—widely depicted, shown, quoted, transformed, remixed through artistic representation. The sublime subject par excellence, the natural event is one that we have the least influence over. If nature is a facet of our reality that often escapes us—and by the same token fascinates and obsesses us—its interpretation through the workings of the digital brings about an almost ontological reversal: its very materiality is put into question, it becomes malleable and immaterial all at once.

3D animation, modeling and photogrammetry are the vectors of a transition to the digital where nature becomes the intangible and untouchable material of worlds in which human destruction no longer exists.

On the contrary, the human gesture—which here becomes an artistic one —is rather one that constructs, makes and arranges, composes and develops. The change takes place here only at the price of a perceptive variation: nothing is ever lost, we only see/show differently.

New Surroundings: Approaching the Untouchable brings together works that, each in their own way, question the materiality of the world through an exploration of digital material. With Virtual Reality as their common denominator, these universes belong to an order where the most distant seems to also be the most accessible, while the impalpable offers the appearance of being at hand. This world, revealed by the digital—modified, reorganized, and augmented—is, however, less and less foreign to our own, which changes, deteriorates and gradually disappears. Far from being immutable, the nature we move about in —its sky, its lands and its seas—is perhaps at the dawn of its own ontological reversal and, in any case, certainly at the threshold of an irreversible turnaround.

Nathalie Bachand

Autofading_Se disparaître

Caroline Gagné

2020

The work draws on virtual reality technologies and non-linear sound composition to question, in a poetic way, the presence of the human being in their environment. The spectator is immersed in the heart of a forest generated in “cloud points,” which evolves according to the attitude of observation and attention that he privileges. The experience begins in a windswept and foggy virtual environment where snow is falling from the sky. As the spectator adopts slow movements, the wind calms down and the fog dissipates. Noises gradually appear: a stream flows, a fluttering of wings, a cracking or crumpling of dry grass appears at their feet. The more the viewer slows down their movements, the more the micro-movements of the forest become perceptible and multiply. This quietude full of delicate details collapses as soon as the viewer makes a sudden move. Triggered by human presence, the storm then unleashes, leaving only the shadows of disappearing volatile particles perceptible.

MYRa: a gift for Rym

Olivia McGilchrist

2019

Screen edit of a virtual reality artwork, 4 minutes.

MYRa: a gift for Rym combines digital underwater worlds with performance art, where viewers remain still amidst a virtual tidal wave, represented through fragments of 360 videos and 3D animations moving around them. This virtual wave is inspired by the Caribbean’s complex relationship with water: from geographical dependency to environmental precarity. It is also inspired by the loss of a close friend, the feeling of being submerged by grief.

Sans titre (artefacts)

Autofading_Se disparaître

Caroline Gagné

2020-2023

Laminated wood fiber with computerized numerical control (CNC) cuts based on a modelized rock, vinyl, iPhone and monotrack.

Sans titre (artefacts) is a material extension of the virtual reality work Autofading_Se disparaître. With a synthetic rock as a central element—which is also at the heart of the VR work—the installation proposes a form of anchoring in the real. The object in question thus coexists in both worlds, activating a mental and physical round-trip between the artistic proposals. Visitors are here invited to sit on it, a headset placed on the rock allowing them to hear a sound composition linked to a video sequence— excerpted from the virtual work—displayed via the screen of a cell phone, which can be seen nearby. Similar to the VR work – in which stillness and silence are the triggers for virtual events—the digital image and sound are closely intertwined: in this case, it is the audio frequencies that have transposed this wavering quality to the image (through a pre-recorded process, not in real-time). This shakiness is the invisible yet physical link that runs through these artefacts that have emerged from the work Autofading_Se disparaître.

Floralia

Sabrina Ratté

2021

With Floralia, Sabrina Ratté is continuing her exploration of the materiality of the digital and what it can convey as content in evoking uncertain worlds and evasive and fluid universes. With this VR work she is generating a sort of digital sublime that questions our relationship to the tangible world. Drawing inspiration, among other things, from the writings of Donna Haraway (Staying with the Trouble), Greg Egan for the virtual aspect, Ursula Le Guin and Bruno Latour, she focuses on questions pertaining to Virtual Reality and speaks of an ecosystem in which the interrelation between technology and nature becomes a temporal entanglement that intermingles the past, present and future.

Cinématographie de la matière virtuelle

Baron Lanteigne

2023

Computer generated virtual environment, screens, cables, synthetic grass.

Cinématographie de la Matière Virtuelle is an installation made up of an arrangement of screens, whose contents were created in parallel with the virtual reality work Ascension. The visuals that unfold in it are the result of an exploration of “digital matter’s” behaviour, particularly when it comes to simulating translucent elements such as liquids. Light refraction effects distort the generative visual environment and cross the screen-portals. Laid out on the floor and suspended, these interfaces evoke a data flow exchange, metamorphosing the simulated liquid into a metaphor proper to the digital world. Baron Lanteigne is interested in the particularities that allow an image to be interpreted as a physical place, whether it be according to perspective, horizon, or Euclidean architecture. With Cinématographie de la Matière Virtuelle and Ascension, he proposes various elements that thwart the expectations we base on our experience of reality on, in favour of a pervasive and proactive virtuality.

Crédits : Discord integration: Maxime Alexandre Gosselin
The artist thanks Agence TOPO.

Ascension

Baron Lanteigne

2022

Ascension invites the visitor to explore an environment whose behaviour revolves around a central element: an ascending/descending liquid that refracts light. Counter-intuitive but based on an internal consistency, the core of this suspended landscape unfolds through the manipulation of a data flow exchanged by connected devices. By moving, it is possible to slow down the movement of this substance in order to better observe it, or to be carried away by the dizzying acceleration of the scene. An ceaseless blossoming of hands all around, reminds us that these are both the source and the condition of the continuous omni-connection that characterizes our actual relationship to the world. Baron Lanteigne is interested in the particularities that allow us to interpret an image as a physical place, whether it be perspective, horizon, or Euclidean architecture. With Ascension, he revisits this logic by structuring a space and a “nature” according to other rules.

This artwork is presented as a world premiere.

The Conservatory: Bouquet for Maxime

Laurent Lévesque 

2017-2023

Digital rendering, inkjet print.

Stemming from the vast body of work entitled Le Conservatoire, bouquet pour Maxime brings together a few floral specimens chosen from the collection of nearly 270 digital plants, gleaned and preserved from 33 video games. The latter are also the digital environments—first-person shooter games created between 1998 and 2017—that were searched and combed through to create Le Conservatoire : autre horizon, the virtual reality work presented in the context of this exhibition. The floral assemblage proposed here is a gesture of remembrance, a modest tribute through which the preciousness of a memory is inscribed and preserved—a still-life to evoke what remains alive.

from many sides

Olivia McGilchrist

2016

Single channel video with sound (10 minutes).

The cyclical ebb and flow of Caribbean waters sifts through layers of inherited histories, painting the physicality of time through light, colours, textures and sounds from nature. This ephemeral audio-visual blend offers an immersive experience in the liquid and fantasy space of the screen. A staged sequence of a contemporary River Mother (or Mermaid) evokes profound connections across the region by referring to the presence of this shared mythical figure embedded within the region’s cultural space.

Trailer (45 sec.)
Commissioned by the Davidoff Art Initiative for the 2016 Art Edition

Lieux de mémoire

Sabrina Ratté

2023

Extendable pole, screens, Raspberry Pi and pico projectors.

Lieux de mémoire is a proposal that brings together sketches and video sequences from the production of the virtual reality work Floralia. In parallel to the VR experience, this material is presented as a body of archives: a selection of visual elements testifying to the process of exploration that led to the creation of the work. Consisting of an installation of small video screens and projections, the whole is a complement to the VR work, tracing a common thread between the virtual and real spaces. This work draws its inspiration from the works of Donna Haraway, Ursula Le Guin, and Greg Egan. Lieux de mémoire and Floralia immerse us in a speculative future, where samples of henceforth extinct plant species are preserved and displayed as virtual specimens. Their arrangement is sporadically transformed by interferences triggered by the memory emanating from the listed plants, thus revealing traces of a past that continues to haunt the place. It is a simulation of ecosystems born of the fusion between technology and organic matter, where past and future share quarters in the perpetual tension of the present.

Crédits : Digital Lutherie: Guillaume Arseneault

Érosions 2

François Quévillon

2022

This second iteration of François Quévillon’s Érosions invites us to explore spaces located on the coast of the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The disaggregations, deformations, distortions, and stratifications of the visual and the sound evoke the geomorphology of coastal landscapes and their transformation processes. The work connects different spaces and plays on the physiological and psychological effects of virtual reality, such as sensations of disorientation and disembodiment. The formal aspect of these landscapes, composed of millions of small particles, amplifies this reference to immateriality, making all the more unreal our relationship to this moving environment —on the brink of transmutation—that time works to metamorphose.

This artwork is presented as a world premiere.

The Conservatory: Other Horizon

Laurent Lévesque & Olivier Henley

2017-2022

The Conservatory: Other Horizon by Laurent Lévesque and Olivier Henley is a proposal where the public explores a digital environment made up of a collection of plants extracted from first-person shooter video games made between 1998 and 2017. Moving through a generative “forest”—in which the computer is, in a way, the real-time gardener—the visitor can move in any direction, retrace their steps or keep a single direction. Accompanied by a detailed directory of nearly 270 plants, the work is presented as a vast collection of digital plants, preserved by the artists, in the manner of botanical gardens around the world. Finally, the virtual universe is no more safe from disappearance than the natural world is from an environmental catastrophe.

This artwork is presented as a world premiere.

Météores 3542, 3647, 3686 et 3763

François Quévillon

2017-2018

3D Animations with sound.

Inspired by the cosmos and geology, Météores is a body of works that probes space-time and the complexity of matter, both physical and digital. The works result from a residency in the Tablelands in Newfoundland, one of the few places where the Earth’s upper mantle is exposed. Rich in heavy metals and poor in nutrients required to sustain life, the orange barren peridotite evokes extraterrestrial landscapes. Météores 3542, 3647, 3686 and 3763 (2017-2018) works are looped animations that show 3D scans of these rocks that defy gravity, solidity or opacity. They are reminiscent of robotic explorations of Mars as well as certain physiological and psychological effects of extended reality (XR) devices, such as dizziness, disorientation and dream-like state. Each scene is a world onto itself, with its own atmosphere wherein the laws of physics are reinvented.

Virtual ISLANDs

Olivia McGilchrist

2022

Virtual ISLANDs explores the relationship between the experience of virtual immersion in VR and the physicality of being submerged, offering viewers audio-visual interpretations of the ebb and flow of water around them. The project invites a reading of VR’s virtual space—foregrounding submersion alongside immersion—to highlight the relation between water and the fluidity of hybrid identities, inspired by the artist’s dual Caribbean and European heritage.

In the 6DOF VR experience of Virtual ISLANDs, viewers enter an aquatic scene to observe the choreographed movements of Newfoundland aerial performer Keely Whitelaw, rendered as a particle effect. A large tidal wave traverses the visual plane, inviting viewers to navigate alongside Whitelaw’s gestural response to this virtual underwater experience.

This artwork is presented as a world premiere.

Self 1

Laurent Lévesque 

2023

Mirror, glass, engraving, laser.

Both a common object and a material, the mirror occupies a singular status in our relational ecology to reality. Its reflection power is also one of doubling and thus of representation. To look at oneself in the reflection of a mirror, to turn one’s eyes on oneself, is also a way to seize what is at once present inside and perceivable from the outside: an idea of oneself which can cross the surface while also being inscribed upon it. Self 1 uses the grey and white checkerboard pattern of the “digital void”—usually associated with Photoshop software—etched on a transparent glass surface, which is superimposed as if floating on a mirror background. The polished glass checkerboard thus filters a partial reflection, where fragments of clarity and opacity hybridize, while suggesting that it is possible to make the invisible visible on this surface. With its 16:9 ratio, which is the official international high-definition digital format—the HD with its promise of a heightened visibility—the work notably questions what the digital universe does to our perception of identity, and the effect of producing an excess, or, on the contrary, a deficit of self-knowledge, thereby contributing to how we define ourselves.

Presented with