Geoweb – A body of artistic works on the geographic web

On Wednesday, May 26, 2010, at the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT ] in Montreal, Agence TOPO launched a body of four web art projects exploring the thematic of the geographic web. Nowadays, popular cartographic and earth visualization tools have become an increasingly tangible component of how we experience the web. Moreover, the use of geolocalization systems is spreading and increasingly present in the digital world. Artists are appropriating these technologies to explore the will to “situate” and their projects question the new geographic consciousness brought about by these network practices. Selected by curator Sylvie Parent, the artists Matthew Biederman (Montréal), Grégory Chatonsky (Montréal), Zahra Poonawala (Strasbourg, France) and Cheryl Sourkes (Toronto) benefited from support and production residencies at Agence TOPO to create web-based works on this theme in 2009-2010. With Spectrum Survey, Biederman investigates on the surrounding electromagnetic spectrum. In Circulation, Chatonsky uses urban traffic sites and their RSS feeds to control dialogues between a man and a woman. Poonawala proposes an unusual sight of the world with a collection of outside speakers in Public Address System, and Sourkes proposes GeoTag, a web version of the word game Geography.

In 2009 and 2010, at Agence TOPO, have worked on the project former director Michel Lefebvre and his interim successor Pascal Boucher, the web designers Guy Asselin and Vincent Archambault, as well as multimedia trainees Keshia Nau-Dominique and Alex St-Gelais.

An essay by the curator Sylvie Parent complements the project online.

Aether9 – Realtime remote performance
www.aether9.org

Also on the program for the night was Aether 9, a realtime telematic performance with artists from Quebec, Switzerland, Colombia, Belgium, Australia and Finland. Aether9 is a collaborative art project exploring the field of realtime video transmission. It was initiated in May 2007 during a workshop at the Mapping Festival in Geneva, Switzerland. Developed by an international group of visual artists and collectives working in different locations (Europe, North and South America) and communicating solely through the Internet, Aether9 is a framework for networked video/audio performance, and the collaborative development of dramarturgical rules particular to Internet modes of communication. The system functions as an open platform to transmit imagery in realtime and interact through a structured narrative performance questioning the issues of presence/absence, remote/local, identity and intimacy in the context of the electronic space.

In Montréal, Aether9 will be composed of Audrey Samson, hosted in residency at Agence TOPO this Spring as part of the Sortir de l’écran/Spoken Screen Program, accompanied by Jordan Arseneault and Christiaan Cruz.

Information : Agence TOPO – T (514) 279-8676 direction@agencetopo.qc.ca

Agence TOPO is supported by: Canada Arts Council, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal, l’ITI du Cégep de Maisonneuve, l’IMM du Cégep de Jonquière, Géographies variables, a cultural residency program between France and Québec, & the Society for Arts and Technologies which hosts its web site.