2015 Participants | Subtle Technologies

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ALEXANDRA GELIS is a Colombian-Venezuelan, media artist based in Toronto with a background in visual arts. She is a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University, she also holds an MFA degree from the same university, Toronto, Canada. Her work predominantly involves photography, video, electronic and digital processes. Gelis’ work addresses the use of image in relation to displacement, landscape and politics beyond borders or culturally specific subjects. In her latest works she has expanded her practice using electronics and programming for interactivity. In her installation work she creates immersive sculptural spaces, using video projections and complex sound designs. She also works as an educator/facilitator, leading video and photography workshops aimed at youth in marginalized communities in Canada, Colombia and Panama. Because she works as a workshop facilitator in several countries, in many cases her teaching practices determines the artistic work that she creates. She has been concerned with the role of the artist as multidisciplinary inquirer who engages in multiple explorations of diverse methodologies in fieldwork. Her work has been shown in several venues in Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Argentina and the United States. She has developed curatorial projects and video screenings, and programs for festivals in Latin America and Canada.

ANDREW ZEALLEY is a Toronto-based artist whose work expands beyond audio and music methods to inform mixed disciplines and media. His practice has been situated at the shifting nexus of HIV/AIDS, queer identity, and the body since 1990. Zealley s audio installation, Nature: This Is A Recording, is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. He has recordings published by labels Art Metropole, Fine & Dandy, How To Explain Silence To A Dead Hare, Old Europa Cafe, Public Record/Ultra-red, Tourette Records, and Vague Terrain. Zealley holds an MFA in interdisciplinary studies from OCAD University. He is currently pursuing doctoral research through the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University; Program of Study: Safe and Sound: Art, Queer Listening, and Biopolitics of HIV/AIDS.

COSMIN MUNTEANU, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (University of Toronto at Mississauga), and Associate Director of the Technologies for Ageing Gracefully lab. His area of expertise is at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Automatic Speech Recognition, Natural Language Processing, Mobile Computing, and Assistive Technologies. He holds PhD (2009) and MSc (2004) degrees in Computer Science from University of Toronto, as well as MASc (2000) and Dipl-Eng (1999) degrees in Computer and Software Engineering from Politehnica University Timisoara, Romania. Between 2009 and 2014, Cosmin was a Research Officer with the National Research Council Canada in Fredericton, NB.

Cosmin has extensively studied the human factors of using imperfect speech recognition systems. His main research goals are to facilitate natural, meaningful, multimodal interactions between humans and information-rich media, computing devices, and technology in general. Cosmin’s multidisciplinary interests include speech and natural language interaction for mobile devices, mixed reality systems, learning technologies for marginalized users, assistive technologies for older adults, and ethics in human-computer interaction research. His recent contributions include a mobile application in support of adult literacy and workplace essential skills training, an immersive gaming environment for public safety training through multimodal interaction, an intelligent and adaptive app for seniors in support of asynchronous reading together of e-books, user-motivated quality metrics for natural language interactive systems, and an investigation and recommendations for a situational approach to ethics in human-computer interaction fieldwork.

Cosmin plans to dedicate his future work to researching natural and intelligent interfaces enabled by fluid and organic interactions that are beneficial to their users and that transcend the confines of specific technologies. In particular, he aims to address the challenges faced by several marginalized users group, such as learners adapting to the rapid changes of today’s digital society or elders whose enjoyment of life and participation in society could be better supported by advances in interactive assistive technologies.

DAFYDD HUGHES is a musician, artist, programmer and educator based in Toronto. He has performed and recorded with some of Canada’s most notable artists, including Feist, Esthero and Jacksoul. He is active in Canada’s jazz, pop and experimental music scenes through solo work and various collaborations. His work, both musical and visual, playfully explores the unpredictable intersection of analog and digital experiences of the world.

He is a member of the Board of Directors at Toronto’s InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, where he teaches workshops and spends time exploring the interface between technology and the creative impulse, which generally involves taking things apart and finding himself unable to put them back together.

DAVID BOBIER has an MFA from the University of Windsor and a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States and England, and has been the focus of prominent touring exhibitions in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. Bobier has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Grand NCE, Ontario Arts Council and New Brunswick Arts Council.

He is currently partnering with Inclusive Media and Design Centre at Ryerson University and Tactile Audio Displays Inc. in researching and employing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. As an extension of this research Bobier has established and is Director of VibraFusionLab in London, Ontario, Canada. The Lab emphasizes a holistic approach to considering vibration as a language of creation and exploration and to investigating broader applications of the sensory interpretation and emotionality of sound and vibration in art making practices. He is also Founder and Chair of London Ontario Media Arts Association, Director of Development for Toronto International Deaf Film and Arts Festival, and a Board Member of Media Arts Network Ontario.

Reflecting on this adaptive technology, originally designed for deaf consumption, VibraFusionLab specializes in researching and implementing the considerable potential of the vibrotactile along with other sensory elements in generating artistic development and innovative research in the broader arts community and thus impacting greatly on our larger society as a whole. The use of this type of interactive multi-sensory approach provides those with different abilities to experience equal participation and enjoyment and provides the potential to make various forms of artistic expression more accessible.

DAVID CECCHETTO is Assistant Professor (Critical Digital Theory) in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada, where he is also a founding member of the Sonic Research Institute; he was previously Assistant Professor at OCAD University. David has published numerous articles and chapters in a variety of settings, and also co-edited Collision: Interarts Practice and Research (CSP, 2009). His monograph, titled Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism, was released in 2013 on the Posthumanities series of the University of Minnesota Press.

David’s research critiques constructions of technological posthumanism, and sound-based readings of media art are often featured prominently. Presently, he is working on a monograph—titled The Sonic Effect: Sound, Politics, and New Media—that examines the strange potentials of accessing digital technology through aurality, demonstrating—practically and theoretically—that an aurality-informed approach to digital technologies can reveal certain perceptual biases that underwrite these technologies. The monograph takes flight from broader collaborative research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) which aims specifically to develop and study “beta versions” of sound-intensive networks and digital communities.

David is also a member of The Occulture (with Marc Couroux and Eldritch Priest), a Toronto-based experimental theory collective investigating the esoteric imbrications of sound, affect, and hyperstition. The collective functions primarily as a virtual atelier for the thinking-acting of its three core members who together not only invent mutant thought-forms that coagulate and circulate through www.theocculture.net, but have organized numerous international workshops, conferences, installations, performances, publications and interventions to create a critical noise that resonates (or interferes) with today’s expanded media environments. The Occulture+ (with Ted Heibert) has a collectively authored book—titled Ludic Dreaming: How to listen away from contemporary technoculture—under review for publication; the book uses (sometimes fictional) dreams as a method for examining the decussation of sound and contemporary technoculture.

As an artist working with sound, David has presented his work in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia.

DENISE MIREAU is a dance artist and teacher of Middle Eastern dance, an Alexander Technique Teacher (member of ATI), and a Pilates and Yoga instructor. She has been involved in Middle Eastern dance for 25 years. From 1992 until 2006 she performed throughout North America and overseas as a lead dancer with the Arabesque Dance Company. In 1996 she began teaching creative movement to adults, sparking a love of teaching. Over the years she has had the opportunity to share movement and dance with a range of students, from children to seniors. Denise draws upon a wide array of training and experience from modern dance to Tai Chi and improvisation. Her work as a certified Alexander Technique Teacher inspires and informs her approach to teaching movement and dance. Her philosophy towards teaching allows her students to explore movement with greater awareness, acceptance and ease. She is the owner and director of The Studio For Movement.

DIPNA HORRA’S background is in architecture and multi-media installations. Areas of primary investigation in her practice are space, storytelling and migration as they relate to cultural identity. Her ancestry is Indian and she was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1974, immigrating to the suburbs of Ottawa in 1976. She began her career as an architect in New York City and holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa. In her art practice, she is drawn to the way that architectural elements can be used in installations to speak of deeper cultural and social contexts.

Her projects investigate sculptural hybridity, and transcultural identity, synthesized with inventive audio technology. Her sound installation work has been showcased in national and international exhibitions, including ‘Dhunia: Septet’ in the exhibition la presencia del sonido at the Botin Foundation in Spain in 2013 and ‘Dhunia: Part One’ in the Open Sound exhibition at the Surrey Art Gallery in British Columbia in 2011. These works offered the sense of hearing to evoke visual spaces that investigated layers of cultural landscapes.

Horra’s projects explore ephemeral boundary conditions where memory in sound proposes an elsewhere, an in between dwelling, an uncanny home. These ideas are elaborated in her book chapter, “Sounds of Dislocation: practice based studies in the art of unhomely spaces”, published in 2013 by Cambridge Scholars publishing. This paper was presented at international, peer-reviewed conferences at the College of Arts, University of Glasgow and at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam in 2012.

Recent projects have involved the creation of spaces with sound sculptures relating autobiographical narratives, performances, and field and voice recordings. ‘Dhunia’ is an ongoing series of sculptural sound installations made with architectural found objects that are combined with video. ‘Dhunia’ is the Punjabi word for the material world in contrast with the spiritual realm. These works are meditations on storytelling and translations based on parables recounted by the artist’s Grandmother. She tells tales of the goddess Parvati’s futile quest for material wealth. The rhythms of her voice are combined with audio recordings portraying sounds such as birds, trains, streets and subways. Old storm windows are mysteriously transformed into multi-channel audio speakers that reverberate with age-old sayings and sounds of the everyday.

For more information: www.dipnahorra.com, https://vimeo.com/dipnahorra/videos

ERIN FORTIER is an artist and scientist who is based in Montréal. Fortier is trained as a biochemist, and studied chronobiology during her doctoral research. She pursues an autodidactic art education through experience, creation, and collaboration. Her work leverages the body’s ability to sense and perceive to play with the limits between fixed objective time and dynamic subjective time.

Fortier advises on the influence of artificial light on human rhythms, for projects such as CBC’s The Nature of Things. Her work has been shown internationally, including exhibitions at XPACE (CA), FOLD (GB), Begehungen Festival (DE), KUL• (HR), Museum Night Europe, and e-flux (online).

Fortier’s work appears in the permanent collections of the Polish Academy of Art, the University of Pennsylvania sound archives, and in print with the Museum of Broken Relationships. She has staged performances at Broken City Lab (CA), Ford City (CA), Phi Center (QC), and Ars Bioartica (FI).

FAREENA CHANDA is an interdisciplinary artist, designer and researcher who uses a process-based inquiry to explore themes of self-knowledge through time-based media and installation-art practices. Her work incorporates materiality, hapticity and spatiality to create immersive and embodied experiences. Through her research, Fareena questions the definition and teleology of Islamic art while positioning a contemporary studio-practice within the historical discipline.

Fareena holds a BFA in photography from the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) and an interdisciplinary MFA from OCAD University (Toronto, Canada). She is the recipient of several Ontario Arts Council grants and has most recently exhibited at The Gladstone Hotel’s ‘Come Up To My Room’ alternative design event. In addition to her art-practice, Fareena is the co-founder of The Friday Collective, a paper goods company that celebrates timeless wisdom through art; and works with various art organizations in the GTA on arts programming and events.

FRANK A. RUSSO, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology and Hear the World Research Chair at Ryerson University. He also holds appointments at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (Adjunct Scientist) and the University of Toronto (Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Music). He has published widely in journals spanning psychology, neuroscience, acoustics, music, and engineering. He is also committed to the dissemination and translation of research beyond journals through creative collaborations with artists, community-based groups, and industry. Successful translations of his research include a Canadian train-horn standard, a cognitively based software engine for music generation/analysis, a sensory substitution technology supporting music perception by the Deaf, singing therapy for communication disorders, and a series of exhibitions/concerts featuring music without sound. He has received Early Career awards from the Ministry of Research and Innovation and the Canadian Society for Brain Behaviour and Cognitive Science. He is currently on the Editorial Board of six journals (Canadian Acoustics, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, Frontiers in Emotion Science, Music Perception, Psychomusicology, and the Journal of Music Therapy) and President of the Canadian Acoustical Association.

IAN JARVIS is a Toronto-based sound artist, composer, songwriter and media producer. He is often the mouthpiece of frAncIs, who is best described as an Audio Being and the illegitimate offspring of the right side of Ian’s brain and the slightly abused digital media that authenticates his life. Their interaction often results in what might be described as music and sound art. Much of the work is motivated by the implications of technology on creative practices and the development of personal identities. Recent works are included on the NAISA Deep Wireless 8 CD, the Cybernetic Orchestra’s debut CD ESP.beat, and have been presented at the Hamilton Art Crawl, the Sheridan Gallery, and the 2012 Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium. He creates “The Becoming of an Audiophile” for NAISA webcast, and composes and produces various audio projects under the names Audio Being and Caught In The Groove.

JAMES ROLFE has been commissioned and performed by ensembles, orchestras, choirs, and opera companies in Canada, the USA, Europe, and New Zealand. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000), the K. M. Hunter Music Award (2003), the Louis Applebaum Composers Award (2005), the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music (2006), and SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award (2009).

In 1999, the Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company production of Mr. Rolfe’s opera Beatrice Chancy won audience acclaim and rave reviews in Toronto, Dartmouth, and Edmonton. In 2009, the Puddings produced the opera Inês, which was nominated for a Dora Award. His operas Orpheus and Eurydice and Aeneas and Dido were premiered by The Toronto Masque Theatre in 2004 and 2007. Elijah’s Kite, an opera for children, was co-produced in New York in 2006 by Tapestry New Opera Works and the Manhattan School of Music, and later given its Canadian premiere before the Governor-General at Rideau Hall. His opera Swoon was premiered in December 2006 by the Canadian Opera Company, which has since commissioned a new opera, Donna.

Current projects include a music theatre work with writer André Alexis for Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, a dance theatre work with choreographer James Kudelka and writer Alex Poch-Goldin for Coleman Lemieux Compagnie, a song cycle for baritone Brett Polegato with Canadian Art Song Project, and a piece for Victoria’s Aventa Ensemble.

Cree Métis Visual Artist JASON BAERG graduated from Concordia University with a BA in Fine Arts (Drawing and Painting) and subsequently completed Graduate Studies in New Media from George Brown College. Formally, he pushes new boundaries in digital interventions in drawing, painting and installation. Baerg has presented at international art events such as the Luminato Festival, the Toronto International Art Fair, and Art Basel Miami. Baerg has given formal artist talks at such institutions as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, New York City’s Parsons School of Design and the University of Toronto. In 2008, Baerg won the Emerging Artist Award for the Premier’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts, granted on behalf of the Ontario Ministry of Culture. He has sat on numerous art juries and won awards through such facilitators as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and The Toronto Arts Council. Dedicated to community development, Baerg currently is completing an Aboriginal outreach curatorial project at the new Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery in his birthplace of Sarnia, Ontario.

DR. JAYANNE ENGLISH has been an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manitoba since 2000. She investigates the motion of galaxies in order explore how galaxies change with time and to help trace elusive Dark Matter. Galaxies that have peculiar shapes, because they are gravitationally interacting with each other, are among her favourite phenomena. With respect to popularizing science, her forte’ is producing striking astronomy outreach images from research data. At Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, she co-ordinated the Hubble Heritage Project’s first 2 years of image production. Her images appear in prestigious magazines, popular and educational books, and numerous websites. Her outreach work is well-served by her education at Ontario College of Art and Design University as well as her astrophysics degrees from University of Toronto (B.Sc) and Australian National University (Ph.D).

JIMMIE LEBLANC has completed a doctorate in composition at McGill University. Ensembles that have performed his music include Ensemble Contrechamps, Esprit Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini, Ensemble Transmission, Camerata Aberta and Trio Fibonacci. He took part in Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s Forum 2008 in Lyon, where he was also in residence at Grame. In the last few years he was the recipient of the Lutoslawski Award 2008, and won the 2009 Canada Arts Council Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, for his work L’Espace intérieur du monde. He is the author of Luigi Nono et les chemins de l’écoute (L’Harmattan, 2010), “Xenakis’ Æsthetic Project: the Paradoxes of a Formalist Intuition” (Xenakis Matters, Pendragon Press, 2012), and contributed two chapters to La création musicale au Québec (PUM, 2014). He is currently composer in residence at La Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur (Montreal), and is writing a solo piece for Berlin-based pianist Moritz Ernst.

JO SIMALAYA ALCAMPO is an interdisciplinary artist who explores cultural/body memory and the healing of intergenerational soul wounds through community storytelling, installation-based art, and electroacoustic soundscapes.

Jo has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries including: A Space Gallery, FADO Performance Art Centre, The Images Festival, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Nuit Blanche-Toronto, and Xpace Cultural Centre.

Jo studied Integrated Media at OCAD University and advisors in the Indigenous Visual Culture Program inspired Jo to reconnect with her roots. For her undergraduate research, Jo travelled to Baguio, Bontoc, and Sagada in the Cordillera mountain region in the Philippines. She met with traditional teachers and indigenous rights organizations to learn how to develop an ethical code of conduct when integrating Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices within an art practice.

One response to this ongoing inquiry is Singing Plants Reconstruct Memory—an interactive installation in which living plants are keepers of story, cultural history and memory. When participants touch the plants, they sing Hudhud chants of the Ifugao People, play instruments indigenous to the Philippines, and tell a story of Paalaala/Remembrance.

Jo will present Singing Plants Reconstruct Memory at the 4th Annual Asinabka Indigenous Arts Festival in the Nations Capital from August 19 to 23, 2015. For more info, please visit www.asinabkafestival.org

KATHY KENNEDY is a sound artist with a background in classical singing. Her art practise generally involves the voice and issues of interface with technology, often using telephony or radio. She is also involved in community art, and is a founder of the digital media center for women in Canada, Studio XX, as well as the innovative choral group for women Choeur Maha. Her large scale sonic installation/performances for up to 100 singers and radio, called “sonic choreographies,” have been performed internationally including the inauguration of the Vancouver New Public Library and at the Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Series.

Her solo performances include a high level of improvisation over lush soundtracks of painstakingly mixed vocals and other sounds to create an immersive world of different voices.

LITTLE OAK ANIMAL is an audio/visual collaboration between Toronto artists Robert Cruickshank (projections) and Dafydd Hughes (sound). Our improvised performances blend computer-generated audio with hand-manipulated images from slides and Super-8 film. Rather than allow one element or the other to take precedence, we try to set up a performance space where we follow each other, with the goal of collaboratively building some kind of narrative in real time.

LORETTA FAVERI is a Canadian artist with a vision: to turn human bodies into moving musical instruments. With the assistance of OCADU’s Social Body Lab and the Imagination Catalyst, she created SOMO, a wireless, wearable sensor that turns body movement into sound. She and her team are developing the device as an open platform for artists and musicians as well as an educational tool for the performing arts. Her collaborations with Ballet Jorgen, Undine Dance and the Studio for Movement led to the creation of several dances where SOMO was integrated into their performances. She was a speaker and presenter at the Toronto Reference Library’s Digital Innovation Hub, Digifest 2014 and most recently at the OMDC Digital Dialogue conference. Faveri is a graduate of OCAD University with a BDes in Material Art & Design. Ironically, in her spare time she loves to pursue low-tech arts like weaving, printing and felting.

MARC DE PAPE is a designer, artist and researcher focused on digital innovation with experience spanning human centered design and interactive media production. He is interested in creating novel representations of data to simultaneously engage, delight, and empower.

Prior to completing a Master’s in Design in Digital Futures at OCAD University, Marc studied Computation Arts at Concordia University. Between studies Marc worked as a music video director and editor (Tegan and Sara’s Alligator) in addition to his role as Video Producer / Audio Visual Specialist at the Royal Ontario Museum where he helped produce video and interactive content for numerous permanent and special exhibitions (notably Schad Gallery of Biodiversity and Terracotta Warriors).

His master’s thesis, titled The Chime, has been featured on Creative Applications, PopSci, Designboom, iQ (intel blog) and Mashable, among others. He currently works as an Experience Designer at ThoughtWorks, where he continues to explore the spaces at which people and technology meet. In short, he crafts meaningful experiences.

MITCHELL AKIYAMA PhD is a Toronto based composer, artist, and scholar. He has released over ten records on such labels as Raster Noton, Sub Rosa, and Alien8 in addition to works on his own imprint, Intr.version Records. He has scored and contributed music to many films (including El Huaso by Carlo Proto, Puffball by Nicholas Roeg, and The Corporation by Mark Achbar) and dance performances (including Slicing Static by Victor Quijada and Rubberbandance). Akiyama has received commissioned from, among others, the Akousma Festival (in conjunction with the Canada Council for the Arts) and the Nouvel Orchestre D’aujourd’hui. Akiyama’s artwork questions received knowledge about the senses and perception. Grounded in his research on technological mediation and storage, his installations and multimedia work investigate the relationship between historical narrative and sensory experience. His recent work was featured in the solo exhibition, Ur-sound, or, the noise no writing can store, at Gendai Gallery in Toronto. He has participated in group exhibitions and media arts festivals including the Vienna Museum of Modern Art, Howard House Gallery in Seattle, Le Centre de Culture Val David, and the Signal and Noise festival in Vancouver.

Akiyama is recently completed his PhD at McGill University in Communications. His doctoral research examined “field recording” across a variety of disciplines, from biology to folklore to sound art. He has published on numerous subjects, from sound art to urban ecology in journals and magazines including, Leonardo Music Journal, The Canadian Journal of Communications, Canadian Art Review (RACAR), Offscreen, Locus Suspectus, and Matrix. A book chapter entitled “The Recording that Never Wanted to be Heard’ and Other Stories of Sonification,” co-written with Jonathan Sterne, was recently published in the Oxford Handbook to Sound Studies.

Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation”, Montreal based composer NICOLE LIZEE creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including early MTV videos, turntablism, glitch, rave culture, and 1960s psychedelia.

In 2001 Nicole received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. Her commission list includes the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, the San Francisco Symphony, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, NYC’s Kaufman Center, So Percussion, Eve Egoyan, the Gryphon Trio, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Her music has been performed worldwide in renowned venues including Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and Muziekgebouw.

Nicole was awarded the 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. She is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (New York City/Italy). Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus and the Canada Council Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition.

STEPHEN MORRIS is the J. Tuzo Wilson professor of Geophysics at the University of Toronto. His research interests include geophysical pattern formation, ice morphology and fracture networks. He sometimes passes off his scientific photographs as art.