Murmurate: Sight & Sound 2016

Past the red gateway on Clark Street, two steps from De Castelnau metro, one quickly finds the familiar floorboards of Eastern Bloc, the heart and brain ofthe international digital art festival Sight & Sound. Although some activities took place atSite Outremont and at Temps Libre on Avenue de Gaspé, most of the program, held from September 28 to October 2, was at Eastern Bloc. An important event in the digital underground scene, Sight & Sound annually welcomes nationally and internationally recognized artists for cultural activities. Nearly 80 artists took part in performances, talks and festive evenings during this 8th edition. A relaxed opening. When I arrived around 7 p.m.,^several dozen people were

already there for

the launch of the five days of activities, an opening of digital art installations. Visitors moved quietly between the bar, cold bites and the works displayed in Eastern Bloc’s space, a mix of visual, conceptual and digital art. For more details on the opening, click the link. By 8:45 p.m., more than sixty people were impatiently waitingfor Murmurate, presented as a Canadian premiere. Murmurate, an interactive audiovisual composition. Installedin the centre of the

mainroom, artists Tim Shaw

and Sébastien Piquemal each had a station made of a laptop, interfaces and other gizmos with blinking lights. Spectators satin a circle around them, smartphones in hand. They connected to a page designed by the two artists, transforming their phones, tablets or laptops into independent speakers. Firmly rooted in noise and experimentalmusic, the performance mixed radio waves, white noise and pure sinusoidal waves, broadcast through each of the audience’s devices. The devices displayed black-and-white images, essentially scrolling bits of code, a kind of computer score for the music being heard. With the room plunged into darkness, the effect of faces lit by glowing screens was beautiful, but soon one stopped looking and preferred to listen with eyes closed. After the somewhat uncertain first minutes, the piece entered a more minimal segment made mostly of flickering pure waves. We sank into a nearly contemplative listening of fragile music, accompanied by a rumble of low frequencies carefully balanced so as not to bury the audience’s speakers. The composition then fully took flight and finally carried us away. Warm applause marked the end of the performance. Web link to the Murmurate page at Sight and Sound. Photo credit: Geoffroy DBK. For full details, consult

the related page, event page, exhibition page and partner links

provided here.