© Agence Topo , 2006

EXTRAITS VIDÉOS:

DVD_01 Pascal Grandmaison + Jérôme Minière Daniel Olson Gennaro De Pasquale + Jean-sébastien Roux DVD_02 Gabriel Coutu-Dumont + Marc Leclair

 

The Post-Audio_DVD project is a compilation of audiovisual projects created by Montreal-based artists. It is a testimony to a bourgeoning practice that combines sound and moving images. Though this is in no way an exhaustive presentation, it does, however propose a panorama by presenting a variety of artistic approaches that bear the singular stamp of their creators.

The Post-Audio_DVD is an extension of the Post-Audio Esthetic project (followed by the online project Post-Audio NetLab: www.agencetopo.qc.ca/postaudio) that focused on the mutating spaces of the musical object and sound, their representational codes and their multiple relations to the visual arts. However, unlike the Post-Audio NetLab, which provided an open-ended and interactive forum for the creative convergence between images and sound, the Post-Audio_DVD project features a selection of complete and fully crafted audiovisual works. These works are characteristic of an emergent artistic practice that involves collaborations between the visual arts and sound artists. It must be said from the outset, and with all due respect, that these practices are quite distinct from VJing or video clips, in which the visual aspect tends to be relegated to a secondary illustrative function that carries the musical content. The nucleus of these artistic investigations consists of a more sophisticated aesthetic approach that is based on the interweaving of visual and sound components to create works that are greater than the sum of their mediums; and that are perhaps best called audiovisual works.

The Post-Audio_DVD project intention is to present a panorama of such audiovisual works. The works featured on the DVDs provide a variety of angles from which to approach the artistic interplay between sound-based and image-based practices. With the exception of Daniel Olson's solo image/sound experimentations, the works here are primarily the fruit of collaborations between visual and/or media artists and electronic musicians; they are based on elective affinities, shared and complimentary aesthetics and an appetite for transmedia experimentation. It is hoped that the DVDs will provide a solid platform for these works to be appreciated for both their visual and aural qualities. Above and beyond the works' respective qualities this ensemble also bears witness to the rich Montreal context at the beginning of the 21st century and the burgeoning scene of collaborative endeavors which it has given rise to.

Too often these collaborations are ephemeral and are washed away with time's passing. It is for this reason that we have chosen to capture the selected works on DVD. The DVD format is ideally suited to provide lasting access to these practices that are rarely witnessed outside of live performance settings or the confines of gallery and museum spaces. Given the broad spectrum of innovative works straddling sound and image the project does not have the ambition to be exhaustive or all inclusive, it is rather based on highlighting specific aesthetic qualities and a diversity of singular artistic approaches. The works presented, inscribe themselves both within the particular Montreal microclimate and the broader current of an ongoing evolution of creative audiovisual explorations that are taking shape within a landscape of accelerated technological change, shifting sensibilities and convergent aesthetic and artistic practices. With time always having the final word, for now we can only hope that this project opens a new window from which to explore the horizon where sound and image converge and then slip away again into their strangely parallel vanishing points.