Artists Statement

Audiovisual performance with Tesla coil (2009)

Utilizing a bespoke Tesla coil, POWEr is a performance based on the sonics and striking imagery that offshoots from the machine’s high voltage emissions. Used as source materials, electrical ingredients are generated, captured, transformed and diffused live on stage through digital processing and manipulation of sound and video. Building on a context that sets it halfway  between a musical presentation and a media arts installation, POWEr demarks the continuation of artificiel’s development. Having charted a singular path investigating composition and electrical impulses with previous projects such as bulbes (2003) and beyond6281 (2004), as well as cultivating a performative dimension with such later works as cubing (2006) and artificiel.process (2008), POWEr takes its place among this oeuvre by raising the stakes of spontaneity and working with evermore complex musical structures and visual dramaturgy. Originally commissioned by MUTEK for its 10th edition, this project was made possible by funding from the Media Arts section of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et Lettres du Québec and has continued to tour the world since.

• For more than 15 years, Montréal artists Alexandre Burton & Julien Roy have been harnessing electricity to make art that blends live performance and installation work, music and image. Existing on the digital plane and in the wholly physical, they fashion new instruments and contexts while constantly examining the processes underlying their multi-layered discipline and its effects. They have built a practice unique to their backgrounds – both come from the electroacoustic music department at the Université de Montréal, Canada. Roy has produced electronic music in several guises, while Burton’s interest in science and technology has led him to invent unique digital instruments which he also deploys in his own projects.

Text with images (PDF) p. 183