This year, MUTEK returns from August 20th to 25th with a unique programming to celebrate its 25th anniversary. From panel discussions and workshops to artistic performances, this milestone edition will feature an array of events. Here is a guide to help you discover the various contributions of our members to this year’s festival!
The Village numérique:
The festival will kick off its 25th edition with an urban circuit of 22 digital art installations in the Quartier des Spectacles, turning the area into a vast art gallery showcasing Quebec’s digital creativity. TAG Minecraft Bloc will present What is the Fun Palace?, a reimagining of the 1964 architectural project. Showcased at the windows of the Goethe Institut, passers-by will discover two versions of the 1964 Fun Palace: the historical one, that was never built but remains in archives through plans and drawings, and the one from the present reimagined by the Minecraft Bloc research group.
LePARC member Nora Gibson will present Transplant, an installation that explores the intersection of technology and human physiology by merging dance movement data with brain activity to produce real-time bio-reactive visuals and sounds. The work encourages reflection on the evolving relationship between our physical selves and technology
The Future Festivals Summit:
On August 19th, the Future Festivals Summit will gather festival organizers, artists, and audiences to explore innovative ideas for shaping future festivals. This initiative arose from the need to rethink festivals in a post-COVID world, involving a series of workshops, labs, and surveys to identify challenges (such as inclusivity, sustainability, and funding) and map out ideal future trajectories. The Summit will bring together creatives, thinkers, and organizers to brainstorm and establish resilient festival futures. TAG Co-Director Dr. Rilla Khaled will participate in a session titled Imagining Technological Festival Futures.
The Forum:
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Forum will run from August 20th to 23rd at Monument National and Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT), featuring over 90 speakers, artists, and digital experts reflecting on this year’s theme: Utopia or Oblivion: Crafting Human-Centered Technological Futures. The 4-day event will inspire new collective reflections on what it means to be human in a hyper connected world. Each day of the Forum will focus on a key theme of digital creativity.
The first day, Into the Wild: Towards AI Ecologies will feature interactive sessions on responsible AI and co-creativity. Milieux Co-Director Dr. Alice Jarry will participate in a panel session titled Into the Wild: Designing AIs in Retrograde, where participants will remember the beginnings of generative AI and its fortuitous impact on artists and digital creativity.
Into the Wild: Designing AIs in Retrograde
📅 August 20th
📍Monument National | 11 a.m – 12 p.m
On second day of the Forum, Abundant Intelligences intermedia artist and IFRC member, Scott Benesiinaabandan will join a roundtable discussion on the impact of spatial computing in territorial acknowledgment. Taking place at the SATophere, this session will address key questions: What type of territorial recognition would be appropriate to express this new alliance between humans, the living, and the entirety of nature? How can we conceive, realize, and inhabit these new open, living territories?
Hybrid Utopias: Territorial Acknowledgment in the Era of Spatial Computing
August 21st
SAT | 11 a.m – 12 p.m
On that same day, VR filmmaker, storyteller and composer Skawennati (IFRC) will participate in Indigenous Immersive Futures, a panel discussing how Indigenous creatives use extended reality (XR) to tell their stories and navigate Eurocentric production and distribution modes.
On the last day of the Forum, don’t miss two major events curated by the institute showcasing Milieux’s impact on discussions about AI: Abundant Intelligences’ panel exploring the intersections of neurosciences, AI, art and Indigenous Knowledges (IK), and the first edition of the Wilding AI Lab in partnership with the Applied AI Institute.
The Abundant Intelligences research-creation program will lead a panel discussion on the conceptualization and design of AI based on Indigenous Knowledge systems. The event will feature Abundant Intelligences members Dr. Mélanie Cheung, Prof. Karim Jerbi, Jason Edward Lewis and prof. and artist Jackson Two Bears discussing the intersection of AI, art and Indigenous Knowledges.
Abundant Intelligences at the Intersections of Neuroscience, AI, Art and Indigenous Knowledges
August 23rd
📍Monument National | 9:30 – 10:45 a.m
Finally, Milieux, in collaboration with the Concordia Applied AI Institute, will present the Wilding AI Lab. Building on discussions initiated earlier in the week by the Into the Wild: Designing AIs in Retrograde panel, the lab will provide students with an opportunity to present their research-creation projects exploring the artistic potentials of generative AI. Rowena Chodkowski, Luciano Frizzera, Maurice Jones, Kamyar Karimi, François Lespinasse, Hamidreza Nassiri and Aurélie Petit, have been working collaboratively on projects involving new generative, creative AI. Head over our Instragram account to get a preview of the different projects!
Composite #40:
Composite is a quarterly networking event that brings together key players in Montreal’s digital sector. Co-hosted by MUTEK and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), this edition will feature TAG Minecraft Bloc! In conjunction with their participation in the Village numérique, the Minecraft Bloc will present their project at the intersections of video game, utopian architecture, and academic research. Member Nora Gibson will also present more in details her project Transplant also on view at the Village numérique until August 29th!
The Nocturne series:
From August 20th to 25th, MUTEK will take over the SAT for a series of performances in both the SAT space and in the SATosphère dome. Post Image member and new media artist Allison Moore will present Mystic Vale, a video piece inspired by the forest in Victoria. For over eight years, Allison has used photogrammetry techniques to capture the forest ecosystem’s diversity. Using digital tools, she creates generative animations from these images.
Choreographer Nora Gibson will present a fulldome work titled Tree of Life. This piece explores the idea of connection as a profound aspect of life by merging data from human and natural sources to generate animations and sounds. The sounds were created using electrodermal activity of two dancers, while the visuals were produced by capturing the movements of a small tree in winter using photogrammetry techniques.
On the second Nocturne night, member Timothy Thomasson will present Panorama: I’m feeling lucky, a piece co-created with Canadian artist Tatum Wilson. This fulldome animation examines our relationship to image, geography, virtual space, and mass data collection systems. Panorama: I’m feeling lucky features a 3D virtual landscape populated with figures sourced from Google Street View and transformed into 3D models using AI, questioning the implications of mass image collection.
On August 22nd, mesocosm trio, Emma Forgues, Joël Lavoie and Milieux member Philippe Vandal will present Terra Flecta, an immersive work inviting the public to explore the flora and fauna of extraterrestrial environments based on photogrammetric and sonic samples of contaminated sites in Quebec.
