(curation, architectural video mapping)
For a second year, Manufacturing Entertainment curated and produced four large-scale projections for Lights on the Exchange, an outdoor winter art festival in the Exchange District of Winnipeg. The 2024 festival ran from January 21 to March 21, 2024. Find out more
We worked with the following artists:
1) Weavers Windows by Kristen Roos, IG: @kris10roos and @kristenroos_textiles, website: kristenroos.ca (top left)
Read the “Lights on the Exchange Artist Spotlight”
2) Tadǫetła ; Walk In A Circle by Casey Koyczan, IG: @caseykoyczanart website: caseykoyczan.com (top right)
Read the “Lights on the Exchange Artist Spotlight”
3) There Was a City by Sylvia Matas, website: sylviamatas.com (bottom left)
4) cosmos in flux by Diana Lynn VanderMeulen, IG: @dianalynnvdm, website: dlvdm.ca (bottom right)
Read the “Lights on the Exchange Artist Spotlight”
Artist bios and artwork descriptions are below.
Weavers Windows by Kristen Roos
Photo Credit: Kyle Thomas Creative
Kristen Roos is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose practice
includes a wide range of mediums including electronic music composition,
sound design, sound installation, radio and transmission art,
animation, printmaking, textiles, and media archaeology.
His creative exploration weaves a narrative that extends from the loom
to the screen, culminating in a captivating fusion of sound and visual
work. His artistic practice has drawn inspiration from the environment,
with a deep-seated interest in the unique sonic qualities of different
landscapes. His sound installations and radio transmission art utilize
sound as a medium to spark contemplation, inviting viewers and listeners
to explore the overlooked auditory dimensions of their surroundings.
The intellectual process behind his most recent work is rooted in media archaeology and the history of computers, examining the moments when computers were first employed for creative purposes. This can be seen in his textile work, which emphasizes the significance of the long history of abstract and pictorial weaving, its connection to the history of computers and the Jacquard loom, drawing further parallels to early paint software, pixel art, and early video computer systems.
This cross-pollination of art forms is reflected in his most recent music project – Universal Synthesizer Interface, composed using early algorithmic MIDI sequencing software, a testament to the changing connotations of the word “algorithm” over the years. Roos’s approach to music is driven by a combination of conceptual ideas, research, and experimentation. Universal Synthesizer Interface Volumes I and II reflect this approach as he delves into the limitations of vintage algorithmic MIDI sequencing software from the ’80s and ’90s. His music-making process is not just about creation; it’s a dialogue with technology, a symbiotic relationship where he sets parameters for the software and the software, in turn, shapes his musical output.
About the Weavers Windows
The title of the work refers to the windows that were in the top floors of weavers’ cottages in the UK prior to the industrial revolution and the automation of the loom, which were called weavers’ windows or lights. The video was designed using techniques found in vintage paint and animation software for early personal computers from the 1980’s and 1990’s, and uses Jacquard weaving patterns from the 1800’s. The Jacquard loom revolutionized weaving and the textile industry by using punch cards to facilitate automation of the weaving process. The designs in Roos’s video speak to the history of the Jacquard loom and its relationship to computers and data, making connections between weaving structures and the blocky pixelated imagery found in early video computer systems like the Atari 2600, early 8 bit computers, and the Commodore Amiga. The Jacquard loom is one of the first computers, and Jacquard weaving patterns are examples of some of the earliest images stored as data on a portable storage medium, situated in a history that has gone from stacks of paper punch cards, to floppy disks, to our current flash cards/SD cards. In this sense, these weaving patterns can be looked at as a kind of pre-mainframe computer art, in that they were saved on punch cards that were then fed into Jacquard looms.
Tadǫetła ; Walk In A Circle by Casey Koyczan
Photo Credit: Kyle Thomas Creative
To create with unrestricted freedom. To make the unrealistic a reality.
To imagine environments unbound by the laws of physics. To imagine our
people and stories within future generations.
Casey Koyczan is a Dene interdisciplinary artist from Yellowknife, NT,
that uses various mediums to communicate how culture and technology can
grow together in order for us to develop a better understanding of who
we are, where we come from, and where we are going. He creates with
whatever tools necessary to bring an idea to fruition, and works mostly
in sculpture, installation, 3D / VR / AR / 360, video, and audio works
such as music, soundscapes and film scores.
He has a Multimedia Production diploma from Lethbridge College, a
Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Thompson Rivers University, and a
Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba.
About Tadǫetła ; Walk In A Circle
This body of work was created by re-imagining materials from Indigenous
culture and Canada’s Arctic as an embodiment of human characteristics
and walk cycles within a 3D environment to bring out their spirit.
Drawing inspiration from such mediums and materials as moose/caribou
hair tufting, beadwork, hide-tanning and quillwork, these works showcase
surreal transformations of how they are interpreted and appreciated. As
an artist who has loved these materials since childhood but has not
avidly used them in a physical sense, my approach has allowed me to work
with them in a completely different way with digital influence and
being able to implement physics properties.
In creating these walk cycles, even though the materials I am working
with are digital, I am treating them with the same amount of respect as
if they were physical in the real world.
There Was a City by Sylvia Matas
Sylvia Matas is an artist working with images and language resulting in videos, books, texts, and drawings. Her work has been exhibited at Gallery 44, YYZ Artist’s Outlet, Mercer Union (Toronto), The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Plug In ICA (Winnipeg), Truck Contemporary Art (Calgary), and Útúrdúr (Reykjavik).
About There Was a City
There Was a City was created from satellite photographs taken from
Google Earth. I looked for images that felt ambiguous sites where it
seemed uncertain if what I was looking at was in a state of construction
or decline. After spending so much time inside in the past year and I
was thinking about the temporary nature of human-built environments,
relative to non-human time scales. These subtitles describe an amorphous
group of people and how they occupy these built spaces that are
transforming in time.
cosmos in flux by Diana Lynn VanderMeulen
Diana Lynn VanderMeulen is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and
works in Toronto, Canada. Her practice is fluid between analogue and
digital mediums with a focus on extended reality and cyclical material
use as she develops expansive, multisensory environments.
Through an artist creation residency at Société des arts technologiques
(Montreal) Diana was granted the time and tools to adapt ongoing project
A Boundless and Radiant Aura into an immersive audio visual performance
entitled I want to leave this Earth behind alongside collaborator
Stefana Fratila. Premiering at Satosphère 3 MUTEK x SAT, the 40 minute
experience was formatted specifically to the Satosphere’s immersive
360-degree projectors and multi-channel sound system. The first
iteration of A Boundless and Radiant Aura was presented in multimodal
exhibitions with Debaser at SAW Gallery in Ottawa, Toutoune Gallery in
Toronto, and for virtual audiences via the downloadable Magic Window
application. Other recent works include a solo hybrid physical-virtual
exhibition Shimmer of a Petal, Now a mountain Stream, with Sky Fine
Foods & ArtGate VR, and self released Augmented-Reality application
Swampy GoGo. Alongside a collaborative representation with Sky Fine
Foods, VanderMeulen has been involved in many public and DIY ventures.
She has shown at The AGO, The Canadian Embassy (Tokyo, Japan), CADAF
Paris, The Gardiner Museum, and Idea Exchange.
About cosmos in flux
cosmos in flux is multi-channel video developed from Expanded Reality
project A Boundless and Radiant Aura. With a specific focus on alternate
planetary realities, Diana strives to coax the digital sphere back into
an embodied physical presence. Extended from a series of physical
mixed-media artworks, virtuality is a means for her to challenge the
bounds of cinematic terrain while exploring landscape in relation to the
metaphysical. Intentional collaging of elements and embracing glitch
encourage a playful renegotiation of information and have become key
tools in confronting the artist’s sense of digital-cosmic corporeality.
A Boundless and Radiant Aura has been implemented throughout 2023-2024
in various iterations, including an immersive 360-degree audio-visual
experience, hybrid digital-physical gallery installation, alginate
treated artworks, an interactive Magic Window, and atmospheric
redolence. This work comes as a multi-sensory counterpart to the ongoing
project by sonic collaborator Stefana Fratila, entitled I want to leave
this Earth behind. This study is conceptual in that it centers on outer
space exploration and Stefana’s understanding of ‘Crip futures’.
Together, they work to engage audiences in an immersive exercise of
imagining interplanetary and sci-fantastical atmospheres– conditions
which are inherently unlivable, unbreathable, converting all human
body-minds into disabled-bodied-ness.
