Artists Statement
Performance, Focus Québec Programme, Le Cube Garges, May 19-20
You are invited to live this human/ machine symbiosis by participating in this extraordinary robotic performance, Inferno, at Le Cube Gagres, executive producer of ISEA2023. Inferno is a participative robotic performance, an absolutely unique show. In this 75-minute involuntary choreography for 2 x 24 participants, the latter wear an exoskeleton that allows the artists to control their movements in synchronization with the music.
In addition to the 18 exoskeletons, electronic music and lighting, the version presented at the Focus Québec ISEA2023 is augmented, with the addition of video and robotic cameras. The result is a unique immersive experience that participants will not soon forget.
The specificity of the performance lies in the fact that the portable robotic structures or exoskeletons created by the artists are installed on the bodies of volunteers from the audience. The participants become an active part of the performance: sometimes they are free to move, sometimes they are in a position of partial or total submission, forced by the machines to act/react in a certain way.
Inferno takes its inspiration from the representation of the different levels of hell as described in Dante’s Inferno or the Singaporean Haw Par Villa’s Ten Courts of Hell (which is based on a Chinese Buddhist representation). In Inferno, the concept of “circles of hell” is mainly an artistic framework, a general working theme under which the different parts of the performance are grouped.
Focus Québec is presented with the support of the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications, the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie as part of the Year of Franco-Quebec Innovation, under the auspices of the Délégation générale du Québec à Paris.
Earlier recording of the performance:
- Born in 1959, Bill Vorn (CA) is a media artist who has been working since 1992 in robotic art under the aegis of Real Noise from Artificial Life. He received a master’s degree in communications from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) in 1993 and a Ph.D. in communications from the same institution in 2001. He is teaching new media in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Vorn was a founding member of the “electro-rock” group Rational Youth in 1980 and in 1988 founded a post-production company called Artefact inc. Since the 1980s, Vorn has collaborated with many different artists, notably Louis-Philippe Demers, Robert Lepage, François Girard and Monty Cantsin, and has experimented with a variety of media. He has worked on performance, interactive installations, experimental soundtracks, soundtrack scores, and sound editing, creating components for film, video, and various other artistic projects. https://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=261
- Louis-Philippe Demers (CA) Artist – Immersive, Experiential and Participatory Environments Creative Robotics Professor. He combines several profiles: Artist, Freelance Designer, Professor, Researcher and Entrepreneur. He is a multidisciplinary artist using hybrid and trans-disciplinary approaches. Louis-Philippe Demers makes large-scale installations and performances. He participated in more than seventy artistic and stage productions. https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-philippe-demers-517509/?originalSubdomain=qa