(snow globe)

Antoine Goudreau

Designed to be experienced on a digital device equipped with a webcam, (snow globe) invites the user to observe the changes of his or her own onscreen image in a soundscape of multiple resonances. More specifically, the artist carried out recording sessions—mostly improvised—with the Indonesian composer Arya Deva Suryanegara, notably making use of the gender wayang, an instrument associated with the Balinese puppet theatre. Goudreau’s subsequent editing of these recordings resulted in three audio tracks that he integrated into the online work, which also allows viewers to control the various volume levels by way of cursors.

The percussive and cyclical character of these three tracks—Atmosphere, Bells and Scratch metal—reinforces the singular perceptual experience of the whole. In fact, to the extent that our onscreen body image is gradually modulated by an algorithm devised by the artist, what at first appeared as a simple mirror effect leads to a playful observation of a changing morphology. The work thus brings about a shift towards a more contemplative and meditative register, with some psychotropic overtones. The title—a reference to the transparent globes one shakes to simulate a snowfall—is also an allusion to what the artist associates with the snow settling on our neural pathways, thereby affecting our modes of perception and taking us beyond the everyday rut.

An experimental music composer and performer, Antoine Goudreau explores the perceptual constructions of sound, movement and image as a means to stimulate the audience’s conscious and unconscious thought. He views his works as personalized experiments which guide participants towards the liminal spaces of human experience. As a musician, he questions the ritualistic conventions of the concert through the use of atypical spaces, and by including multiple viewing and listening vantage points as compositional elements. As a media artist, he uses physical and synthetic spaces to enable an interaction with the sound medium.

Since 2019, Goudreau has been pursuing studies in mixed composition in the Music Department at Université de Montréal. He also works in music education, and has collaborated with several community centres in the Outaouais region, notably with the Bizarre Love Triangle collective at Artengine.  Active in the Montreal music scene, he is a member of Vivier InterUniversitaire executive committee and sits on the Codes d’accès artistic committee. He lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Antoine Goudreau
(snow globe)
Interactive online work
Algorithm, sound, webcam
2022

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