Navid Navab | navidnavab.net | is a Montreal based composer, media alchemist, audio-visual sculptor, perSonifier, gestureBender, phono-menologist, and all around multidisciplinary artist.
Interested in the poetics of schizophonia, materiality, and embodiment, his work investigates the transmutation of matter and the enrichment of its inherent performative qualities. Making the imperceptible palpable, Navid uses gestures, rhythms and vibration from everyday life as basis for real-time compositions, resulting in augmented acoustical-poetry and painterly light that enchants improvisational and pedestrian movements. A graduate of Ontario Royal Conservatory of Music, Concordia University’s Electroacoustics and Computational Arts program, and McGill Music Technology, Navid has been leading experiments for the past several years creating deeply expressive intermedia instruments synthesizing his research at IRCAM, CRIMMT, CNMAT, Topological Media Lab and Matralab, while using phenomenological studies to inform the creation of computationally-augmented performance environments.
His pieces, which which take on the form of gestural sound compositions, responsive architecture, site specific interventions, theatrical interactive installations, kinetic sound sculptures and multimodal improv-based performances, have been presented internationally at diverse venues including Canadian Center for Architecture, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, eArts Shanghai, MUMUTH Austria, Roulette New York, Western Front Vancouver, McCord Museum, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, Timisoara Romania, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, International Digital Arts Biennial, Musiikin Aika Finland, HKW Berlin, Festival International Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques, Suoni Per il Popolo Festival, CURRENTS Santa Fe, CCRMA Palo Alto, CINARS Biennale, Electric Eclectics Meaford, and TANGENTE mtl among others.
His currently ongoing decade long series such as Practices of Everyday Life, and GestureBending interventions reflect Navid’s continued interest in the enactment of dynamic performative ecologies that allow for poetic and virtuosic improvisation with computationally enriched materials and environments.
“Underlying this array imaginative creations is a playful awareness of the relationship between gesture, materiality, and sound. By enchanting the inherent properties of materials we know from everyday life with potential for play, Navid reacquaints us with the magic and wonder of our embodied experience.”
-Rachel Elliott, international institute for critical studies in improvisation
