Music and
art collide
SURPRISINGLY MUSICAL: Begin’s sound installationWhen music and sound collide with visual elements such as imagery and light, something magical happens. As viewers, we are thrust into the event. Instead of simply looking or watching, we are invited to experience the work with all of our senses engaged.
Tomorrow night, Friday, April 24, the folks behind the relatively new performance venue and arts space Lab Synthèse (435 Beaubien W., #200) host what looks to be an incredible evening of audio-visual entertainments.
First up is Braids, a collective of musicians transplanted from Calgary whose songs have been described as a perfect marriage of pop hooks and improvisational discord. Basic, a collaboration between Ben Borden and Aidan Jeffrey, follows with a quadraphonic choir of instrumentation, vocals and sound samples.
The evening is rounded out by Brooklyn-based artist and musician Byron Westbrook and local sound artist Thomas Begin. Westbrook's project, Corridors, uses multi-channel sound and image collage to explore how the redistribution of aural and visual elements can alter perception on the part of the viewer. While Begin creates inventive and affecting audio-visual works that use unexpected materials such as halogen bulbs, bug zappers, spinning blades and plastic disks to produce rhythmic and surprisingly musical sound.
by STACEY DEWOLFE
Random human
math dada poetry
COMPUTERS STILL NEED US!: Auer
German web artist Johannes Auer brings a concoction of human and computer-generated randomness together in an interactive digital poetry project at the Blue Met this Saturday, April 25 (at 3:30 p.m. in English and noon in French) at the Delta Downtown (777 University).
Free Lutz! will take words from Franz Kafka’s novel The Castle and generate random sentences enhanced by audience-suggested nouns and adjectives that will be garnered from a Web interface the audience will access via computers and cell phones.
“What I want to show is that real interactivity needs a real counterpart that can act freely and not only by rules (“random” is just another rule in an algorithm). And a computer can only act after rules,” says Auer. “Computer generated art is very interesting but only with a strong human factor (in this case the speaker). And you can make this experience as a part of this performance.”
Whatever text emerges from these formulae will be recited in English by Montreal poet Kaie Kellough and in French by slam poet Mathieu Lippé. See metropolisbleu.org for details.
by MATT JONES
18 and over
dance for charity
“It’s something you’ve never seen before,” says Ashley Dana, one of the producers of Enigma, an event that brings emerging choreographers and dancers together to raise funds for the oncology wing of Montreal’s Jewish General  Hospital.
Melanie Weinstein, a dancer and producer of the show, came up with the idea after losing her friend Ian Samberg to cancer in 2007. “Melanie wanted to give back so she contacted choreographer Candice Simpson, who helped her put Enigma together.”
“Everyone in the cast has their own story to tell, so some of the pieces are really emotional and heavy, which is why the event is 18+,” Dana says. Proceeds from the performance, which takes place Tuesday, April 28 at Club Soda (1225 St-Laurent), go to the hospital. Tickets are $30–$60.
by SACHA JACKSON
Arts
hole
HER DARK MATERIALS: Choreographer and dancer Crystal Pite returns to the stage with her latest show Dark Matters at l’Agora de la danse (840 Cherrier).  The show, which opens this Wednesday, April 29 at 8 p.m., explores human significance in the wake of planetary frailty and focuses on the themes of chaos and disaster, both personal and global. • SOUND OF VIOLENCE: Concordia’s VAV Gallery (1395 René-Lévesque W.) gets pulled in two conflicting directions with Moral Dissonance, a joint show with a sculptural installation by Matt Goerzen and Mark Stroemich, which examines violence in our culture, and Nimalan Yoganathan’s sound installation Quantum Prayer Bells, a meditation on a more beatific reaction to violence. The vernissage takes place Tuesday, April 28 at 7 p.m.
Artistat
The number of days left to catch Liminal, the latest exhibit of paintings by Amy Swartelé showing at Gallery Kérozène (372 Ste-Catherine W., #420): 16 |
