alchemical narratives is a workshop series hosted by Aaron Finbloom in collaboration with Navid Navab and the TML exploring material temporalities, rhythms of perception, and geodynamics of duration. Each workshop will be a collaborative investigation into these issues through texts and discussion alongside unique platforms of non-traditional theoretical performative activation. The workshop series can be attended sequentially or rhizomatically (you can attend one or all of them).
Scoring Philosophy — Or How to Choreograph Thought via Conversation, Action & Movement
Taught by Aaron Finbloom
Date:
Dec 14 – Dec 19, 12-2:30pm | Culminating in a Final Presentation on Sunday Dec 20th @ 6pm
Location:
The Topological Media Lab (Concordia University, EV Building 7.725)
Cost:
$40 for the entire course
Philosophy is typically regarded as a discipline full of wordy abstractions and complex theories bereft of life, action and practicality. However, this dominant paradigm forged by the academy over the past few millennia, has covered up another philosophy — a practice of philosophy whereby experimental thinking methodologies are created and enacted. This course will be an intensive exploration into this marginalized practice by focusing on philosophical and artistic techniques which structure conversation. These includes: Socratic Dialectics, Cartesian Meditations, Surrealist Games, Quaker Meetings, Dialogical Movement Practices, Tibetan Buddhist Debate Techniques and more. Each session will involve: discussing a short textual passage, a brief lecture, experiential introductions to 1-2 techniques, and then opportunities for participants to re-work the techniques via the creation of conversation scores or structured improvisations. The second to last session will be devoted to developing a final piece/presentation to be offered to a wider public on the last evening of the course.
Thinkers/Artists include: Tino Sehgal, Plato, Descartes, Freud, Donald Winnicott,
George Fox, Andre Breton, Heidegger, Pierre Hadot, Martin Puchner, Vilém Flusser, Purbujok Jampa Gyatso.
To register please email
aaron.finbloom@gmail.com
The class will reach capacity at 12 students so please register asap.
For more information visit:
topologicalmedialab.net
BIO
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, performance artist, musician and co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT), an artist/thinker residency program and experimental college. Much of his work involves re-kindling the connection between the philosophical and the performative by creating quasi-structured conversations through games, improvisational scores, booklets, audio guides, dance maps, theatrical lectures, existential therapy and philosophic rituals. Finbloom has taught philosophy at Suffolk County Community College, curated dozens of courses playing with radical pedagogy for SMT, and led numerous interactive workshops at places which include: EMERGE Residency Program, The Performance Philosophy Conference, Elsewhere, and Milk Bar. Finbloom holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Art from SUNY Stony Brook and currently working towards his PhD at Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program.
Artist Talk: Teoma Jackson Naccarato
Thursday November 5th / 5:00 – 6:30
Join choreographer Teoma Naccarato for a discussion of shifting attitudes and approaches towards embodiment and technology within interactive performance.
Naccarato will present her interdisciplinary research and creation practice, which involves contemporary dance with video, audio, and biosensor technologies, to investigate vulnerability, intimacy, and uncertainty in live and virtual encounters.
Naccarato will highlight her project Experience #1167, currently being developed in residence at TML, to be presented by Tangente Danse November 12-15, 2015. Further, she will reflect on her ongoing collaboration with composer John MacCallum, Choreography and Composition of Internal Time, in which she is investigating temporal relationality between physiology, such as heart rate and breath, with rhythms in movement, music, and mediated environments.
www.naccarato.org/dance
November 10th, 4:00 – 6:00
Open Meeting / Open House
TOPOLOGICAL MEDIA LAB
EV- 7.725
EV building, Concordia Univ. 1515 St. Catherine Street West (corner of Guy)
info: michael.montanaro@concordia.ca / topologicalmedialab.net
Come see what we’re up to?
InTime Call out for Researchers master
The Topological Media Lab (TML) was established in 2001 as a trans-disciplinary atelier-laboratory for collaborative research creation. In 2005, TML moved to Concordia University and the Hexagram research network in Montréal, Canada. Its projects serve as case studies in the construction of fresh modes of cultural knowledge and the critical studies of media arts and techno-science, bringing together practices of speculative inquiry, scientific investigation and artistic research-creation practices. The TML’s technical research areas include: real-time video, sound synthesis, embedded sensors, gesture tracking, physical computing, and active textiles. Its application areas lie in movement arts, speculative architecture, and experimental philosophy. Within a research setting that is both studio and lab, we look towards developing new lines of enquiry that both examine and apply artistic techniques and methods within an environment that doubles as rehearsal and experimental platform. Concepts and outcomes are imagined, conceived, explored, developed and transformed into public exhibits within a lab-studio space that is equipped with fully operational models of our interactive systems and instruments.
Call out for Researchers:
InTime – project title: (FQRSC Funded) The objectives of the research process-creation –
(1) To create time-conditioning installations or living environments embodying alternative modes of time
(2) Refine and develop techniques, instruments and compositional paradigms for modulating time-based media and its experience within interactive environments. This year’s research focus is on Material Temporality and Temporal Textures, the study and designing of systems that support responsive environments/ecologies that use the processes that drive the transformation of matter as a way of investigating temporality.
(e.g. creating a closed sensor based system where ice turns to water, water to steam, steam to water and water back to ice.)
Under the umbrella of the TML, the Intime project we will enjoy the privilege of daily contact and creative engagement with designers, theorists and artists from a broad spectrum of disciplines. We will use these exchanges as a means of identifying, expressing and articulating different exploratory paths around the subject of time as defined by its poetic and practical application within different disciplines.
Position:
Flow Systems Expert: Students with expertise in the following areas of research and practice:
• Fluid / Thermal Dynamics
• Material Sciences
• Mechanical Engineering
• Physical Computing – expertise in measurement technologies, sensors, actuators, etc.
• Closed System Design
• Chemistry / Alchemist: material transformation
• Material design and fabrication
Responsibilities: oversee innovation, design and fabrication of modular systems and techniques leading to the creation of responsive ecologies driven by material processes.
Education: minimal experience: Undergrad degree, Masters, PhD in the categories listed above. Professional experience in technical design and fabrication is an asset.
How to apply: Please submit your C.V to:
Michael Montanaro- michael.montanaro@concordia.ca and Navid Navab – navid.nav@gmail.com
Optional information: Link to past works, layman summary of relevant experience
* Compensation may vary based on experience
Position:
Interactive Visual Designer: Experience in installation and performance based work with a deep knowledge in technical design and practical experience in programming for responsive environments;
Areas of interest and responsibilities:
• Max/MSP (max 7, Jitter, gen, open GL, Jamoma, Syphon)
• Camera Tracking
• Projection techniques, mapping and image processing
Education – minimal experience: Undergrad degree, Masters, PhD in the categories listed above. Professional experience in technical design and fabrication is an asset.
How to apply: Please submit your C.V to:
Michael Montanaro- michael.montanaro@concordia.ca and Navid Navab – navid.nav@gmail.com
Optional information: Link to past works, layman summary of relevant experience
* Compensation may vary based on experience
‘Reflective Space’ is a working title of a new research project exploring performative elements of an environment, as an ephemeral and poetic landscape where light, sound and movement along with thin water surface form an actual architectural space. Layers and transparencies of ephemeral optical architectures interlaced with movement of bodies are constantly shaping and reshaping the performative nature of the environment. ‘Reflective Space’ attempts to combine three types of Spaces: ‘Cinematic Space,’ ‘Scenographic Space,’ and ‘Corporal Space’ into one performative unity where the technology along with the elements become the extension of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ as spatial performance and environment. The prototype developed during the P A R E residency in the Black Box is the first step of a new forward looking research of performative elements for ‘Reflective Space’ (2015-2016). Specific research elements will be also formed in junction with developing scenographies and scenographic studies for ‘Nuclear Sky’ and include creative discussions and experiments with the involved designers and researchers: Joe Browne, Omar Faleh, Cédric Delorme-Bouchard, and Nikolaos Chandolias.Elements developed specifically for the ‘Nuclear Sky’ will appear in scenography which will be further designed exclusively for Title66 Productions, and presented at ‘Theatre Rouge de Conservatoire’ Montreal, Quebec, June 3 – 7, 2014.
