Ec-lektra

>> Other highlights at the festival

by RAF KATIGBAK

Elektra opens tonight, Nov. 8, with a performance of Spin by Jean Piche and a new version of Faustechnology for three DVD players presented by PurForm (Yan Breuleux and Alain Thibault). Faustechnology is a 50-minute audio-visual piece aimed at drawing the spectator into a world where the traditional roles of artist and audience are rendered obsolete. Rather than having the audience going, "Ooooh, pretty colours," the idea is that through slowly progressing immersive audio and visual variations, the experience itself becomes the principal way we appreciate the piece. And like all good things in life, it's free!

On Saturday, Nov. 10, Elektra hosts musical mathematician Markus Popp under his Oval guise. Seeking to expose the media, processes and instruments used in digital music creation, his trademark sound of skipping CDs first made waves on the 1996 album Diskont. Now, with a new release Ovalcommers, Popp brings his self-proclaimed "structured and disciplined PowerBook performance" to Montreal. But don't expect to hear your standard cold, German minimalist sound à la farting nanorobots. Even though his methods are very calculated, Oval's sound comes off much more organic than the standard black-turtlenecked fare. Get ready for a chin-buffingly good time.

Next week, Elektra continues as Louis-Phillippe Demers premieres his much anticipated work entitled l'Assemblée. On Thursday, Nov. 15, an arena made up of 48 identical robot arms will change the way we think about our roles as an audience and as performers and make us think about our ever-growing relationship with machines. The robots will play various roles like audience, inquisitors, politicians and mob while one lucky (or unlucky) audience member will be the focal point of their scorn, judgement or accolade. The experience plays on many levels--how the robots relate to the subject, how the audience relates to the robots and empathizes with the subject--calling to mind a very Jean-Luc Picard/Locutus-versus-the-Borg scenario. At once foreign and familiar, this is an intense and unique experience not to be missed.

All shows take place at Usine C, 9pm