Category Archives: Artist, students, researchers 2014-15

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Nima Navab

Since his years at Ontario College of Art & Design studying Environmental Design, Nima Navab has become increasingly focused on spatial design, and more specifically, examining the role of art and technology in enhancing both intimate and large-scale public interactions. Through a variety of mediums and means, Nima investigates the various roles humans play in shaping both the ecological, political and sensorial landscapes of our built environment. His increased attention to everyday spatial interactions has brought to light the importance of field research, discussion and collaboration with those occupying the space as well as the space itself, highlighting the importance of spatial experience and theoretical research, both which continue to form the basis of his creative process. He is currently an active member at the Topological Media Lab, and working as a research assistant for Carmella Cucuzzella, examining the emerging aesthetics of sustainability, in today’s architectural competitions.

www.nimanavab.com

David Somiah Clark

David Somiah Clark is a Montréal based composer and performer with a professional background in audiovisual systems integration. Working as a consultant, he has designed and integrated solutions for clients including the Canadian Space Agency and CAE Healthcare. His compositional work can be heard in his collaboration with the Montréal electroacoustic band Pang Attack. Currently completing a B.F.A. in Computation Arts, David’s research involves exploring ways in which technologically mediated communication may confuse arbitrary boundaries between living and non-living systems and enrich our ecological experience.

Elysha Poirier

Elysha Poirier is a visual artist, designer and illustrator working in various forms of new media. Her techniques in painting and design have been adapted to video for live performance. This includes experiments in stop-motion animation, and translating the essence of painterly techniques into a digital environment. Elysha has produced several installations and has engaged in live performances locally and abroad. She has performed with a diversity of artists stemming from experimental music, film and dance.

Her work has been described as organic and playful and embraces strong relationships to sound, design, and movement. As an image collector, Elysha has been accumulating an ongoing reserve of image libraries – often collected from nature, society, and her own personal experiments in graphics, shapes and illustrations. 

Elysha holds a diploma in graphic design. Her love of design has given her a natural eye for composition and arrangement of imagery both in static and moving applications. She has taught various workshops, runs her own freelance business: Peartree Design, and is presently a Technology Strategist for Zata Omm’s Dance and Technology Research Lab, funded by the Metcalfe Foundation.

http://www.elyshapoirier.com/

Oana Suteu Khintirian

Oana Suteu Khintirian’s work encompasses films, installation and media scenography. A professional filmmaker and editor for two decades her work focuses on movement as well as on the human body and its correlation with the environmental elements, structures and dynamics. Oana’s films have screened in international film festivals around the world and she participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Montreal, Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt and Image Forum, Tokyo, among others. She received prizes from ArtFIFA, Montreal, Moving Pictures in Toronto, Golden Prague and a Prix Italia for Creativity. She has equally been nominated by the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television for direction and editing. She is currently working on a highly personal project that deals with paper and memory.  She lives and works between Montreal and Paris.

http://khintirian.com/

Jérôme Delapierre

Jérôme Delapierre is a visual artist and interactive designer working in Montreal, studied Computation Arts and Interactive design at Concordia University as well as Contemporary Arts and new media at IMUS University in France. Currently the artistic director of Active media inc and Anartistic, and a freelance visual designer and researcher at Topological Media Lab and Alkemie Atelier. He has collaborated with differents artists and researchers, like Pk langshaw, Sha Xin Wei, Michael Montanaro and Jean Derome, and have been presented at festivals and events in various countries. His research is based on the relationship between human and technology and non linear interactivity, focusing on the experiences of urban social behavior. He is interested in new ways to create visual sets and environments by exploring eclectic projections techniques. Jérôme work on responsive video, interactive installations, performances and scenography.

www.jeromedelapierre.com

Navid Navab

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

 

Elizaveta Solomonova

Individualized PhD

University of Montreal
Areas of study: neuroscience of sleep and dreaming, philosophy, media arts http://umontreal.academia.edu/ElizavetaSolomonova

Liza is currently pursuing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. at University of Montreal: thesis directors: Tore Nielsen (Psychiatry, University of Montreal, Sha Xin Wei (Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University), committee: Bettina Bergo (Philosophy, University of Montreal), Don Kuiken (Psychology, University of Alberta). Her work is a collaborative initiative between the Topological Media Lab and the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, she is exploring the phenomenology of embodied subjective experiences, in dreams and during wake, focusing on kinesthetic sensations and body movement within the lived space. Her M.Sc. thesis in Psychology (University of Montreal) focused on memory sources and agency in dreams. She holds a B.A. from McGill Univerisity, with a double major in Art History and Psychology, and a minor in World Religions.

Nikos Chandolias

M.Sc in Electrical & Computer Engineering, currently enrolled in M.A., Special Individualized Program (INDI).

During his studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering, he has developed strong skills and knowledge in programming and designing software systems. His experience as a volunteer in various European student organizations made him aware of the cultural diversity and the wealth of different perspectives in research and learning. His participation to several collaborative projects as well as many student and artistic groups cultivated a truly collaborative perspective and the understanding of common interest. His former research experience is in the fields of nature language processing and semantics. He is currently looking at expanding his knowledge in the fields of interactive media art and developing installations at an international multicultural level.

Omar Faleh

Omar is an interactive media developer and architect with an interest in designing responsive environments, interactive media installations, and public interventions. His work investigates the phenomenology of perception, embodiment, and presence in responsive spaces, and is interested in the two-way relations between body and space in performative settings, as well as everyday practices.

Omar is currently pursuing an MA in individualized studies at Concordia University in Montreal, studying the areas of architecture, arts, technology, and philosophy. He is a member of the Hexagram research institute in Montreal, Canada, and is currently a part-time faculty at the department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University.
He holds a bachelor degree in Architecture, with a master of science in Virtual Environments from the Bartlett, University College London. He also holds a second bachelor degree with a major in Computer science and Computation Arts from Concordia University.

Omar has been involved with the Topological Media Lab as a research assistant since 2006, worked in several R&D projects for the web and mobile devices, and is a consultant and analyst for interactive development projects for mobile and web applications.

http://www.morscad.com

Harry Smoak

Harry Smoak is a Montréal-based American artist, PhD candidate in Fine Arts Special Individualized Program (Supervisors: Chris Salter, Sha Xin Wei, and Erin Manning) at Concordia University, and senior research associate at the Hexagram Institute for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies. His current interests revolve around the development of experimental sensor-based interactive media environments. Harry is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology having received his Masters in Human-Computer Interaction in 2004. He was the founding Research Coordinator for the Topological Media Lab at Hexagram-Concordia.

www.harrysmoak.com