Elektra 12: Visualizing Sound

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Music

Published on Monday, 02 May 2011 10:00

Written by Lynne Shannon

The 12th edition of Elektra, the Digital Arts Festival, powers up May 4 - 8, 2011 in Montreal (QC), Canada at Usine C, Cinémathèque québécoise and other venues around Montreal. Elektra is dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of digital art in all its forms.

This year‛s theme is Visualizing Sound, with audio-visual and immersive performances by over 30 artists presenting robotic, interactive and sound installations of state-of-the-art electronic music and visual creations using the latest technology.

The festival‛s founder, artist and composer Alain Thibault, said, "I'm fascinated with exploring the relationship between music and visuals. ... Yes, we're pushing at the boundaries of art, but Montreal is the North American capital of electronic digital arts, and our audience tends to be educated and young, between the ages of 20 and 35. There's a lot of curiosity among them to see where we're going."

Some of the Exhibitions are:

Sewing Machine Orchestra
Martin Messier (Performance)
Samuel St-Aubin (Electronics)
Entirely orchestrated with the acoustic noises produced by 1940's sewing machines amplified by means of microcontacts and process by computer.

Firing Squad (2.0)
Tasman Richardson
Live MIDI composed jawa performance. "The televisions generate a unique sound combined with a fingerprint, which are then micro-published in audio-video mode. What you hear is exactly what you see!"

"Jawa began as a violent reaction to the misuse of video as a literal, narrative, identity focussed and time-based medium. Fast, rhythmic edits of sex and violence, both catered to and encouraged the dissipation of the attention span of its audience. Today, jawa video seeks to transform and re-contextualise mainstream media. It has evolved into audio-visual musical and composited layers in which the clips are the source of both what is seen and heard. The sound track is now and always will be the image track." – Tasman Richardson

Color Form Movement Sound: The Films of Mary Ellen Bute
Sandra Naumann curates a series of films by Mary Ellen Bute, a pioneer of visual music and electronic art and one of the first abstract filmmakers in the 1950s. Naumann is co-editor of Audiovisuology: See This Sound: An Interdisciplinary Survey of Audiovisual Culture.

The Tiller GirlsLouis-Philippe Demers, Phillip Schulze and Armin Purkrabek
A robotic performance reminiscent of the celebrated (humanoid) synchronized dance troupe of the same name out of Manchester, England, that wowed audiences well over a century ago.

The International Marketplace for Digital Arts meets again this year, on May 5 and 6. The event puts artists in touch with digital arts professionals (producers, agents, presenters, curators, journalists and event organizers) and features speakers from all over the world. This event is intended to inspire collaboration and networking while the guests make short presentations in which they describe and discuss their work.

For more information, go to www.elektramontreal.ca/2011.

Elektra 12 Festival
May 4 - 8, 2011

Usine C
1345, Avenue Lalonde
Montreal (QC) H2l 5A9
Canada
Box Office 514-521-4493
www.usine-c.com

Cinémathèque québécoise
335 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Est
Montreal, QC H2X 1K1
Canada
514-842-9763