All posts filed under: projects

Colloque : « Les arts du sommeil » (The arts of sleep)

Dans le cadre du colloque Les arts du sommeil à Paris les 12–14 octobre, je co-présente une conférence avec Albertine Thunier intitulée : Création automatique et restitution des rêves surréalistes : le sommeil (les rêveries) de Desnos (re)vu par TikTok et Dream AI. // As part of a symposium in Paris on “the arts of sleep”, I’m giving a presentation with Albertine Thunier that can be loosely translated as “Automatic creation and the restitution of surrealist dreams: Desnos’s sleep and dreams revisited by TikTok and Dream AI.” ABSTRACT In an effort to restore the work of the Surrealists into popular culture, and in particular that of Robert Desnos, we reimagine his hypnotic sleep experiments using the protocols of digital automation. We understand applications like Wombo.art and TikTok as sites of memetic culture, and as technologies of cultural glanage that recuperate, rework, reframe, remediate, and recirculate cultural works and logics of different periods. In this sense, we align ourselves with Nova and Kaplan (2016), who present internet memes as matrices for generating cultural innovations. This presentation will …

Sleep Salons – Winter 2022

Detailed information for all the salons and speakers on the dedicated page of the Sociability of Sleep website. Eventbrite to register You Tube channel for video recordings of the salons. Salon no. 5 : Sleep and Labour Speakers: ✦ Sarah Barnes (Cape Breton University)✦ Debra Skene (University of Surrey) The rise of the modern, industrial workday also put sleep “on the clock.” As an optimizable activity of rest and recovery, sleep has arguably become as much a part of our work lives as work itself. This salon explores sleep as an experimental (and monetizable) zone of performance enhancement and bodily entrainment, considering the seemingly extreme cases of professional athletes and hospital shift workers to reveal the tensions we all experience between the social and biological demands of work and rest. Salon no. 6 : Performing Sleep Speakers: ✦ Amara Tabor-Smith (Stanford University + Ellen Sebastian Chang (iIrector, Producer, Educator)✦ Jasmeen Patheja (Artist) Sleep is usually associated with personal environments and the literal and metaphorical withdrawal from the outside world; so the spectacle of sleeping in …

Sleep Salons – Fall 2021

Salon no. 1 : The Social Lives of Sleep How might we begin to think the sociability of sleep? Speakers: ✦ Matthew Wolf-Meyer (Anthropology, Binghamton University)✦ Carmela Alcántara (Social Work, Columbia University) Register on Eventbrite How and why should we conceive of sleep in social terms? Sleep appears to be a way that the body leaves behind the social world for an inner and highly individualized landscape. Yet much sleep research has also attended to the ways sleep reinforces the social, political, and environmental forces that govern our waking lives. Here we invite two distinguished researchers to share how their research approaches the social and collective dimensions of a seemingly singular experience. ✦ Matthew Wolf-Meyer is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University. His book The Slumbering Masses: Sleep Medicine, and Modern American Life uses ethnographic and archival materials to explore the history of sleep and sleeplessness in 20th century American life against the backdrops of modern medicine and industrial capitalism. ✦ Carmela Alcántara is Associate Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean for Doctoral …

Paperology RAG

The Paperology Reading and Activity Group started over Zoom during the 2020-2021 academic/pandemic year. I co-organized it with my colleauges Juliette De Maeyer and Ghislain Thibault, along with postdoctoral researcher Alysse Kushinski. To find out more about our activities and the amazing community that gathered around the material that is paper, this page has all the links you need.

The Sociability Project

Website We received the exciting news that our project The Sociability of Sleep has been awarded a New Frontiers for Research Fund grant. This new research is an interdisciplinary research-creation project exploring the epistemologies and equities of sleep that runs from 2021–2023. I’m working with a fantastic team, starting with Alanna Thain at McGill. More about everyone involved here. ABOUT THE PROJECT With the SoS project, we are interested in both the everyday and the exceptional experiences of sleep and its disturbances. In sleep, we all become radically vulnerable in a way that requires social forms of care: individuals are experts of their somatic experience, and yet access to the sleeping self relies on the perception of human and technological others. How might exploring a sleeper subjectivity—the quotidian ways we navigate time, space, ourselves, and others—help us rethink and reanimate the sociability of sleep itself? From the cyclical rhythms of productivity and rest to shiftwork to overwork; from racial and gendered inequities to cultural alterities; from the stigmatisation and performance of fatigue to the medicalization …

Nano-Verses landing page

Nano-Verses website…LIVE and in the news!

For the past few years I have been working with artists and scientists to explore optics and substrates at the nano scale. The project is called Nano-Verses. Working with with web designers in Montreal, we then produced an accompanying website that brings it all together. There are a few elements to fix here and there, but for the most part it’s ready for show. Works best on Chrome, a desktop, and with the sound on 🙂 >> https://nano-verses.com/  Here is a longer blurb on the partnership and the web project: Nano-Verses is an ongoing project working across disciplines to explore optics and substrates at the nano scale. The team of researchers and artists has been working together since 2015 to produce nano-optical objects based on the principles of structural colour to display unprecedented interactions between light and matter. Originally inspired by the nano scale structures that produce the iridescent blue of morpho butterfly wings, nano-optical devices have been primarily developed and used as an authenticating feature by the black-boxed security industry. Working from a desire …

The Bricolab is open!

The Bricolab is a space for creation and making of all kinds located in the Department of Communication at the UdeM that aims to encourage a variety of research-creation approaches. It equally supports activities using digital fabrication (e.g. Arduinos), experimentation with new forms of storytelling (e.g. VR), or more traditional crafts like sewing, for example. It  renforces practices of active pedagogy, prototyping and l spéculation, critical making, and DIY projects. We had an open house is on Thursday September 26, 1pm – 5pm. bricolab.org Facebook (/bricolabmtl) Some of the equipment available: 2 3D printers (Ultimaker 2 & Zortrax) 3D scanning machine Vinyl cutter Sewing maching Embroidery machine Oculus Rift GoPro Fusion iMacs, Macbook, large computer screens Arduino, Raspberry Pi MakeyMakey Various electronic tools (soldering, etc.) Arts & crafts supplies Projector and TV screen

Archive/Counter-Archive website is live

Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Moving Image Heritage brings together over 25 co-investigators, a dozen collaborators, and a network of Partners from across Canada to research and remediate audiovisual archives created by women, Indigenous Peoples, the LGBTQ2+ community, and immigrant communities. I’m a co-applicant (SSHRC Partnership Grant) and part of the Education and Outreach working group. Political, resistant, and community-based, A/CA creatively engages with archives through its dynamic network of Canadian archives, artist-run centers, community organizations, and Universities. Together, the goal is to create best practices and lay the foundation for innovative cultural policy. You can visit the website to sign up for the newsletter or to follow the activities on social media.

Artefact Lab

The Artefact Lab is new space for research and exploration in the field of media studies in the Department of Communication at the UdeM. Privileging a reflection on media materialities across scales, time periods, cultures, and practices, the activities of the lab are located at the intersection of the following research axes: Media archaeology and history Technical and biological materials and matters of mediation Imaginaries, representations and cultural dimensions of the technical universe Practices and aesthetics at the crossroads of art and technology, including electronic, media and bio arts Digital infrastructures and emerging technologies Media spaces, environments and milieux Philosophy and epistemology of the arts, science and technology The lab is organized and directed in collaboration with my colleague Ghislain Thibault. It will host monthly meetings of its members and graduate students, reading groups, invited speakers, and other special events. Website