Abstract (Short paper)

Keywords: interactivity, participation, intervention, transgression, mind control, relational aesthetics, immersion, game, augmented reality, surveillance.

In this paper, we present Projet EVA’s artworks that focus on the interaction between social, synthetic and biological systems, outlining the inherently restrictive and subtractive aspects of the increasingly technological environment in which humans are situated. For over 10 years, we have used detournement strategies to explore the entanglements of digital technologies with human activities and psyches. In an attempt to suggest alternative modes of understanding these problematics, the Projet EVA collective has made transgressive use of media in order to ultimately build a critical discourse on how technology informs social and psychological realities. The different projects presented in this paper illuminate EVA’s singular approach to interaction design, one that produces experiential art that challenges the expectations of its discipline.                                                                                                                                                  Projet EVA is an art collective that was founded in 2003 out of a shared objective of creating critical, experimental and transgressive artworks in the new media sphere. The scope of the collective’s artistic activities spans robotics, electronics, video and audio. Projects are connected by the themes of loss and restriction and focus on problematics related to relationships among individuals, computer systems and their physical extensions. Projet EVA’s productions have been presented in Asia, Europe, South and North America and the Middle East.

• Simon Laroche is an artist and interaction designer. He teaches Electronic Arts at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and collaborates on theatre, fashion design, dance and cinema productions.
• Etienne Grenier is an artist working in the field of digital culture. He has taught audiovisual interaction design for many years at Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. He has
  collaborated as a designer with architecture and advertisement firms, dance and theatre companies and video producers.

Full text (PDF) p. 578-581