Visions of the Future II was a night that explored the creative use of technology to reveal provocative new visions of the future. It was directed by Hyphen Hub and presented by CultureHub and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
It was co-curated by Hyphen Hub and Alain Thibault, artistic director of ELEKTRA Montreal, and featured three extraordinary audio-visual acts from Montreal, as well as two New York-based artists.
Nicolas Bernier
Nicolas Bernier creates audiovisual performances, installations, musique concrète, noise improvisation, and video art within interdisciplinary contexts. Frequencies (A)—the work for which he won the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica in 2013 opened the evening. This audio-visual performance combined the sound of mechanically triggered tuning forks with pure digital sound waves. Streams of light burst in synchronicity with the forks, creating a truly unique sound and light composition.
Myriam Bleau
Myriam Bleau is a composer, digital artist, and performer who explores the limits between musical performance and digital arts. Myriam presented Soft Revolvers, a mesmerizing audiovisual performance with four spinning LED tops built with clear acrylic. With their large circular spinning bodies, the interfaces strongly evoke turntables and DJ culture, hip hop, and dance music. Myriam received an Honorable Mention at Ars Electronica 2015.
Matthew Biederman
Matthew Biederman has been performing works that explore themes of perception, media saturation, and data systems from a multiplicity of perspectives since the mid-nineties. For this performance, he teamed up with Alain Thibault — composer, sound designer, electronic music artist, and director of ELEKTRA — to present Physical, an audio-visual performance that explored the liminal edges of perception where the senses begin to dissolve. By using techniques which overload the eye and ear, the work explored the question of where perception actually occurs.
Merche Blasco
Merche Blasco is a Spanish interdisciplinary artist and composer who builds digital instruments for electronic music performance. Her instruments are designed to expand the performer’s gestural vocabulary beyond the constrictions of traditional hardware. For Visions of the Future II, Merche created an electroacoustic improvisation with home-made controllers based on an array of natural elements and repurposed household objects!
The event began with a live set by Kamron Saniee, a musician and electronic producer based in New York City. Kamron creates his techno and electro-instrumental performances through a combination of original synthesis methods and formal experimentation.
The night was introduced by Christiane Paul, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.