ALMA^FR/QC+CA/QC

Alexandre Saunier is an artist and researcher, navigating the frontier of human perception and digital automation processes by studying their forms of correlation, interaction, and destabilization. His audiovisual compositions question the limits of the perceptible, combining sound design with Artificial Life algorithms, AI, and forms of live lighting. A graduate in Sound Design from ENS Louis Lumière (Paris), and a former researcher in Robotic Design and Interactive Lighting at ENS Arts Décoratifs (Paris), he is presently undertaking a Ph.D. at Concordia, studying live lighting practices within computational systems.

Marc-André Cossette is a digital artist and experimental media researcher interested in the sensorial interplay between live performance, moving bodies, and semi-autonomous algorithmic life. By recording movements with AI, Cossette infuses technology into choreography, to code and aestheticize the dancing body. After completing a Master's degree in Experimental Media at Université du Québec à Montréal, he is now pursuing an individualized PhD in the Fine Arts department at Concordia. Since 2016, he has been a member of the Hexagram network as a Programming Coordinator.

ALMA ^FR/QC+CA/QC — Fragments: The Shape of Things
World Premiere

ALMA is the union of artists and researchers Marc-André Cossette and Alexandre Saunier. Fragments: The Shape of Things questions how automated data processing systems impact the perception of social relations and global conflicts, notably in terms of their anonymization and aestheticization. Audiovisual fragments composed or extracted from the news meet an amalgam of analog and electronic instruments, video game engines, photogrammetry, and sophisticated AI and A-Life techniques. ALMA conceptualizes a two-part live performance, where the realism of urban components is mystified through technological processes, recalling the distance between our bodies and the digital alterations of our realities.

In collaboration with Suoni Per Il Popolo