Agence TOPO presents VÉVÉ, a web art project by Sofian Audry, at the 10th International Festival of Litterature Montreal Blue Metropolis, from April 30 to May 4, 2008

http://veve.sofianaudry.com

The International Festival of Litterature Blue Metropolis was hosting the new web art work VÉVÉ by artist Sofian Audry. This project of generative and interactive poetry is resulting from Sofian Audry's artist residency at the artist-run centre Agence TOPO. Audio artist Alexandre Quessy also contributed to this project with his musical signature

About VÉVÉ, a generative and interactive poetry project

Words are but amalgams of letters. It is the relationship between words that gives them life and meaning. In this project, visitors contribute to the creation of dialogical entities called vévés, taking a conversation based on the simple exchange of words. From this dialogue, the vévés learn, become more complex and evolve. They seem to be animated by their own will.

All along the festival, VÉVÉ was accessible in a friendly and cosy space at Hotel Delta, allowing visitors and invited authors to play, create their own vévé and teach it words making sense one with the other. The official presentation of VÉVÉ by the artist gave place to a spontaneous poetic performance with Pascale Malaterre and Nancy Labonté.

Sofian Audry - http://sofianaudry.com

Sofian Audry is a young Montreal artist. In 2003, he finishes a Master in natural language processing (University of Montreal). Since then, his practice has been focused on the concept of processing, through interactive web-based works and installations of his own or created within a collective, among them several with the collective Drone. His work has been presented in Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Slovenia and in many virtual spaces.

"As an artist working with new technologies, I am interested in this blured frontier between technology and poetics, the machine and the living." S.A.

Opening space to digital litterature

Notably with the presentation of this work, the Blue Metropolis Festival offered to the public an occasion to discover a new dimension of litterature, one that lives through technology and interactive processes. Two round tables on this topic have taken place on Saturday May 3, 2008, one in French and the other one in English, with several specialists and artists. For Agence TOPO, this participation at Blue Metropolis marked an important point after one year of involvement in promoting digital writing through the organization of the Sortir de l'écran/Spoken Screen series of conferences and hypermedia performances, in collaboration with the NT2 Laboratory (new technologies, new textualities) at UQAM.

http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/techno
(Recording of the discussions put online on May9, 2008, available in French in the Radio-Canada web site.
Saturday May 3, 2008, round table animated by Bruno Guglielminetti with: Hervé Fischer, Yannick B. Gélinas, Bertrand Gervais and Alice Van Der Klei, from the NT2.

Saturday May 3, 2008, round table animated by Nora Young with: J. R. Carpenter, Jason E. Lewis, Jeff Parker, Alice Van Der Klei.

Blue Metropolis
http://www.metropolisbleu.org