Matthew Cardinal & Stephanie Kuse^CA

Matthew Cardinal is an amiskwaciy (Edmonton) -based musician, composer, and sound designer, known for his work with Polaris Short List nominee group nêhiyawak. Cardinal’s solo full-length album Asterisms was released in October 2020 on Arts & Crafts. His music moves from delicate, minimalist pieces to vast drones and sparkling, modular synthesizer compositions.

Stephanie Kuse is a Saskatoon-based media artist working with digitally manipulated video footage of natural textures to create painterly abstract video art. She amplifies and distorts details pulled from patterns and textures found in nature. The resulting compositions are vibrant and synthetic, maintaining the organic energy and movement derived from the source material. She has produced multiple audio/video installations, created projections for music videos and theatre productions and performed live projections on several tours throughout Canada in addition to touring Germany in the fall of 2019.

Matthew Cardinal & Stephanie Kuse ^CA — Asterisms
World Premiere

For MUTEK, amiskwaciy (Edmonton) -based musician, composer, and sound designer, Matthew Cardinal recreates his debut album Asterisms live, accompanied by projections created for the project by media artist Stephanie Kuse. Asterisms contemplates emotional textures with constellations of synthesizers dancing around atmospheric themes and rhythmic accents. The visual component features softly distorted natural textures, hypnotic motion and vibrant synthetic colours. The pairing of Cardinal’s meditative audio journal entries with Kuse’s sparkling visuals results in an enveloping and otherworldly A/V experience.