Philippe Pasquier

Longing + Forgetting is an innovative exhibition that explores the relationship between humans and machines. Through a combination of physical and algorithmic choreography, the work challenges the idea of artificial intelligence and questions how technology controls and measures our bodies. The exhibition uses architectural projection to animate dance and create an emotional and embodied response in viewers. The collaboration between media artist Matt Gingold, Philippe Pasquier, and Thecla Schiphorst brings together expertise in machine learning and digital choreography to create a thought-provoking and immersive experience.

Prepared for the Dystopie Sound Art festival 2021, Autolume Mzton is a meditation on the theme of dystopia. The piece is figuring generative analogic music, and generative AI-driven video. This automated creation process is the paroxysm of media art: when the medium is litterally autonomous, and the human creator made remote and removed from the content produced by algorithmic means. In fact, the dynamic of the network production is also reminiscent of cell cultures, and biological growth, adding a layer to this sensation of distopic, a-human, or post-human autonomy. Yet, musical gestures, patching, training data, and codding are all expressions of human creativity, and the generative visuals are surprisingly referring to horizons and sunsets, new beginnings, and the antonymic notion of utopia!

Autolume Acedia is a hallucinatory meditation on the ancient emotion called acedia. Acedia describes a mixture of contemplative apathy, nervous nostalgia, and paralyzed angst. This emotion first described by Greek monks two millennia ago captures the paradoxical state of being simultaneously bored and anxious. Inspired and controlled by the music of Monobor, lost into winter soundscapes, the Autolume video generation system dreams about bodies, organs, and bones. Autolume is literally listening to the music to produce abstract imagery that seems to be dancing. A product of the latest Creative AI and Deep Learning algorithms from the Metacreation Lab, the piece is also a reflection on the analog and the digital, and how they can meet so as to portray this emotion that has resurged during the current pandemic.

Ouchhh created IOTA AI Performance collaborated with Canadian Data AI Scientists Assoc. Prof. Philippe Pasquier Phil Pass, Kivanç Tatar (Engineer Artist) and MASOM. For this piece, MASOM is trained on the compositions of Mehmet Ünal AudioFil. Can machines totally replace humans, or is there a need for just the right combination of human and artificial intelligence—hybrid intelligence? CREDIT: Direction_Design_Animation: Ouchhh (www.ouchhh.tv) Creative coder and AI artists: Kivanç Tatar and Philippe Pasquier (MASOM) Sound design and music: Mehmet Ünal from AudioFIL.

Respire brings together three components: a virtual environment (via head-mounted display-HTC Vive), embodied interaction (via a respiration sensor), and an intelligent musical agent to listen to breathing patterns and generate the sound with affective properties. Respire guides its users to reconnect with an embodied experience, often lost in our interaction with new and emerging technologies. Built upon mindfulness principles, in this piece breathing is utilized as an object of the user’s attention through impermanence of virtual landscapes and audio environment. The changes in Respire are generated directly from changes in breathing patterns, as the user becomes aware of their breath and the agency they have in the environment. The musical agent listens to the user’s breathing and takes the user on a journey through abstracted worlds with different affective qualities creating a user-dependent narrative. From the calm to stormy oceans and ambiguous architectures that one is immersed in and that elicit curiosity; this is a journey within one’s own breathing. The environment allows each audience member to create their alternate realities based on the interaction between two dynamic systems: the user and the system. This makes each journey unique and unrepeatable. duration: ~ 5 minutes Authors: Mirjana Prpa, Kivanc Tatar, Philippe Pasquier

This installation is a collaboration with Matthew Gingold and Thecla Schiphorst. Video characters inhabit the west wall of Chuck Bailey, climbing the wall, sitting on window ledges, and looking out towards the passing SkyTrain.

Audio Metaphor is an interactive system that presents itself as a search engine in which the audience is invited to enter an expression or a sentence that will serve as a request to an automatic soundscape generation system. Enter “The waterfalls inundate the city” or “The marshmallows explode in the campfire” and it will sound like it in quadraphonic! This interactive audio installation is questioning the ubiquity of information, be it real or fake, actual or synthetic. Using state of the art algorithms for sound retrieval, segmentation, background and foreground classification, automatic mixing and automatic soundscape affect recognition. Audio Metaphor is a powerful system that generates believable soundscape at interactive rate. The piece points at issues around big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technoscientific advances, and their impact on our perception and experience of the world.

Bear Creek Park, City of Surrey, Canada
A collaboration with Michael Filimowicz, Melanie Cassidy and Brady Marks, Lingua Aqua is a public artwork combining sculptural, architectural, and audiovisual media to materialize the original "bath of sounds" from which language emerges. It is a self-enclosed fountain utilizing flowing water, single channel video, four-channel audio, and engraved transparent panels to create a space for contemplating the variety and complexity of languages.

Montalvo Art Center, California
This installation is a collaboration with Carlos Castellanos, Luther Thie and Kyu Che. In the line of the Acclair project, NAOS proposes a critical reflection on the growing use of physiological monitoring in our technophilic society. The installation is presented as a bio-pod in which the audience, equipped with various biometric sensors, is confronted with selected images. After several iterations, machine learning algorithms are used to classify the user's reactions into one of the four following categories: passive, aggressive, loyal, subversive. (DIMEA paper, Web page)

BUS Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
This installation is a collaboration with physicist and visual artist Martina Mrongovius. Two "holographic films" containing 160 "holographic frames" each are disposed on the sides of a 5 meter long linear path. Walking along this path at a normal pace unfolds the two three dimensional films and their sound track. The use of distance sensors allows the viewer to 'scratch' time. By going backward, the viewer can rewind images and sound, by standing still he can freeze both. In this simple interactive setting, the viewer's movement becomes the motor of the audiovisual experience.

Carriage Work, Sydney, Australia
A collaboration with Matthew Gingold, this 6-channel audio video installation shows bodies flying, falling and floating on architectural elements of the hosting building. It was presented for three weeks during the 2008 Sydney International Festival.

Beamforming technology
Developed in the context of an artistic residency at Videograph and in collaboration with Philippe-Aubert Gauthier, this system combines hardware (an array of 16 loudspeakers) and software (developed using PureData) allowing the user to create and manipulate up to 8 sound beams. Beamforming is a relatively new sound spatialisation technology resting on very short delays (but that differs from Wave Field Synthesis). This device has been used and exploited for the Auditory Tactics sound installation.

Espace Delrue, Nantes, France.
Nint & Do was also presented at the Blockhaus D.Y.10, on 28.01.1999.
In this interactice audio installation, the audience is invited to play with various vintage video games. The sounds made by these video games are processed, mixed and diffused in real time. This installation thus proposes a ludic introduction to "musique concrète" and electronic music.

Blockhaus DY10, Nantes, France
This wall of sound has nothing to do with Phil Spector's recording and production technique. Here, a wall of heteroclite speakers is used to diffuse the output of a network of vintage analogue synthesizers. Each speaker broadcast the sound of a single synthesizer. The various synths are linked so as to make different parts of the wall interact, thus creating an unusual spatial effect for the audience.

CD, Mutek 03, MUTEK_REC, Montréal, Canada.

Promotional DVD, produced by P: research, creation and diffusion in media arts.

Produced at Groupe de Musique Électro-Acoustique d'Albi-Tarn (GMEA). Albi, France.

CD, Alterfow/Déluge, Québec, Canada

MP3 CD, Excavation Sonore, available through OHM editions, Reference OHM / AVTR 032, Québec, Canada.

projet MEHR de DDM : www.merh.fr.fm, Web release.

CD, The Age of Venus Records, Nantes, France.

Distributed with the Plastiq poetry book, CD, DDM, Paris, France.

LP vinyl, Invasion planète - IP005, Toulouse, France. (sold out)

CD, DDM, Nantes, France.

CD compilation "Super Post electronica", +CROSS, Osaka, Japon (sold out). re-edited by Instinct Records, New york, USA.

CD, DDM [Les disques de Merkel], Nantes, France (sold out).

Robonom, EP vinyl, Vlan! Records, Paris, France (sold out).

DVD (PAL/NTSC). Available through OHM editions. Reference OHM / AVTR 040.

Catalogue, book and DVD Mois Multi 2005. Available through OHM editions. Reference OHM / AVTR 037

Catalogue-DVD. Available through OHM editions. Reference OHM / AVTR 036.

Catalogue, book and DVD, Available through Recto-Verso productions.

Revive is an live audio-visual performance project that brings together a musical artificial intelligence architecture, human electronic musicians, and audio-reactive visual agents in a complex multimedia environment of a dome view with multichannel 3D audio. The context of the project is live audio-visual performance of experimental electronic music through structured improvisation. Revive applies struc- tured improvisation using cues and automatized parameter changes within these cues. Performers have different roles within the musical structures initiated by the cues. These roles change as the performance temporally evolves. Sonic actions of performers are further emphasized by audio- reactive visual agents. The behaviours and contents of sonic and visual agents change as the performance unfolds.

Reliquary: a shrine to keep sacred relics which have survived destruction. Reliquary draws upon the connections between Australian Indigenous and Korean spirituality to create a unique contemporary dance theatre piece using puppetry, media projection and aesthetic sound design. Reliquary brings together two unique choreographic talents in Korean Australian Soo Yeun You and Indigenous Australian Gina Rings, a Kakutha woman and former member of Bangarra Dance Theatre. They have collaborated with accomplished designer and puppeteer Hamish Fletcher, innovative sonic artist and sound designer Philippe Pasquier, and a talented cast of Indigenous and Asian dancers including the acclaimed Albert David, also a former Bangarra member. Reliquary was presented at Dancehouse in Melbourne in June, 2011.

Miji is a young company directed by the Korean choregrapher Soo Yeun You, the puppeter Hamish Fletcher and the audio artist Philippe Pasquier. Reliquary is Miji's first project and it is a collaboration with the aboriginal choreographer Gina Rings (a founding member of Bangara Dance Theatre).

Reliquary is a multidisciplinary project that brings together traditional and contemporary dance, puppetry, audio and video art. Korean shamanistic ritual and Australian indigenous spirituality come together in dance and puppetry to explore the embodiment of belief and heritage in a culturally diverse context. Reliquary - a container for important mementoes that have survived destruction - explore the connections and disconnections of the Korean and Aboriginal traditions.

Reliquary has been shown at Ausdance in Adelaide in February 2007, at Fortyfive Downstairs in Melbourne in July 2007, at the NorthCote Townhall in July 2008, and at the Dreaming Festival in June 2009.

"Reliquary is a work full of ideas, some moments of profound beauty and pathos, and some exquisite synthesising between the various art forms." Hilary Crampton, The Age, Australia.

A promotional DVD is available upon request.

P: Media Arts is a young organisation devoted to research, creation and diffusion in media arts founded by Martin Renaud and myself in 2004. Faisceau d'épingles de verre was P's first project.

The research is based on Quebec surealist poet Claude Gauvreau's Faisceau d'épingles de verre, a text written in "exploreen", an automatist language that came from the subconscious and imagination of the author. This text gave us the opportunity to explore text-to-speech technologies in an artistic context.

Considered too complex to learn, Gauvreau's dramatic text was never performed before. The lack of semantics in his poetic text was balanced by a greater visual and sonic immersion of the audience. Attention was given to the development of sound spatialisation devices, set and scenic multi-channel video systems. The question of art typology is raised by this work which blends multi-disciplinary theater, performative audio art, performative visual art and contemporary dance.

Developed during a research residency at LANTISS and a production residency with Recto-Verso, the piece was presented on the 9, 10 & 11 February 2005 during the leading North American multidisciplinary festival: Le Mois Multi, organized by Recto-Verso production in Quebec.

A second version of the show oriented toward Butoh dance was developed during a residency at DanceHouse in March 2006 and presented on the 20-24 March 2006 in the context of the NextWave Festival.

A promotional DVD is also available upon request.

This project was developed in 2004-2005 with the Montreal-based dance company Corps Indice.

At the artistic level, the dancers developed a new gestural language that mixes traditional street dances with contemporary dance. These influences from regional Capoeira, dances from Bali and African folkloric dances challenged the frontality (inherited from Italian staging) that defines occidental shows by putting forward a three-dimensional language projected in an arena-like set up.

At the aesthetic level, the choregraphy is a postural study inspired by cubist masters (e.g.,Picasso) who exploded the human body offering multiple simultaneous views. This project was interested in exploring new technologies so as to allow the "real body", the "light body" and the "sound body" to interact. In order to reify that idea, I conceived a new type of contact sensors (see the hardware and software systems section above). This new captation device consists of a 6 meter wide circular carpet, an aquisition circuit (realized with Steeve Lebrasseur) and some data treatment software. Using that system, dancers can interact with sound and lights in an organic way without being physically distracted by the device (e.g., no flexsensors).

This project has been developped incrementaly within artistic residencies at the Modern Dance School of Montreal (Fall 2004), at La cite des Arts at LANTISS and UQAM (Summer 2005). It has been presented at UQAM and at the International Danse and New Technologies Symposium at the Centre des arts in Enghiens les bains (Paris, Fall 2005).

Interested in non-narrative, experimental cinema - cinema without camera - Phylm proposed a live audio-art/cinema performance in which sounds and images are generated and diffused in real time. A simple home-made device linked three film projectors with an audio generation system. This performance was presented in 2003 during the Vidéastes recherchés festival (La Bande Vidéo, Salle multi de Méduse, Québec, Canada) and commissioned by Antitube in 2004 (Salle Multi de Méduse, Québec, Canada).

Following the steps of the experimental film maker Anthony McCall (Light Describing A Cone), Phylm has also developed an immersive installation which explores the space between the film projector and the screen. This installation, entitled "Survie", was presented in 2004, during the fifth Manifestation Internationale de Vidéo et d'Art Électronique de Montréal (MIVAEM, Champ Libre, Canada) as well as in 2005 at the BétonSalon gallery (Paris).

Founded in 1998, robonom is an artist collective and geographically dispersed network of musicians and electronic devices (analog & digital), manufacturing sound installations and experimental music (IDM, electronica, ambiant, ...). robonom has done artistic residencies including Blockhaus DY10 and GMEA and has performed numerous concerts, exhibited several installations, and delivered workshops in various contexts.

Please visit robonom's web page for details on robonom's discography or browse the online MP3 label www.martialfunk.com to discover some of robonom's members' work.

It is in the north that the soundscapes and rhythms of the Canadian Millimetrik (a.k.a. Pascal Asselin) and the digital experiments of Monobor (a.k.a. Philippe Pasquier) met. Together, they offer the warmth of their compositions to brave the storms of Samiland in a continual interaction of experimental music, electronica and popular electronic music. Their tunes are usually made from sliced samples that are automatically re-sequenced using Pure-Data patches. Pure-Data is an open source MAX/MSP-like real time signal processing environment. Their sources are various, ranging from robonom's analogic sounds to Millimetrik's cymbals. Samiland has performed in various circunstances, including the electroacoustic event "Rien a voir" (Nothing to see) at the Montreal contemporary art museum and the Mutek electronic music festival.

Machines, abstract electronic sounds.

The International Workshop on Movement and Computing (MOCO15) was an event that took place on August 14-15, 2015, at Simon Fraser University in the city of Vancouver, Canada. MOCO15 brought together a diverse group of experts and enthusiasts to explore the intersection of art, meaning, cognition, and technology.

http://isea2015.org/
Symposium Director
Installations curated: Algorave, AV Disruption, Hakenai, Deepening Scenery, Emergence, and Soundwalks.
Full catalogue available at: http://isea2015.org/publications/art-catalogue/