About the Artists
Sofian Audry is an artist, scholar, Professor of Interactive Media within the School of Media at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). Inspired from artificial intelligence, artificial life, biology and cognitive sciences, Audry's computational artistic practice branches through multiple media including robotics, interactive installations, immersive environments, physical computing interventions, internet art, and electronic literature. Their work and research have been shown at major international events and venues such as Ars Electronica, Barbican, Centre Pompidou, Club Transmediale, Dutch Design Week, Festival Elektra, International Digital Arts Biennale, International Symposium on Electronic Art, LABoral, La Gaîté Lyrique, Marrakech Biennale, Nuit Blanche Paris, Society for Arts and Technology, V2 Institute for Unstable Media, Muffathalle Munich and the Vitra Design Museum.
Istvan Kantor (a.k.a. Monty Cantsin) became interested in rebellion and radical artistic experiments at a young age, staging underground happenings, performances, and exhibitions under an Eastern Block dictatorship. Multidisciplinary artist, his practice includes media art, performance, installation, sound art, robotics, writing, and music. His video works have been recognized throughout the world, and have been presented at numerous festivals, including Documenta 8 (1987), the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (1992), Transmedial, Berlin (2001), and Osnabruck European Media Arts Festival (2009). In 1998, Kantor received the Telefilm Canada award for best Canadian video; in 2004, he won the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts—the highest accolade attributed in Canada to an artist in recognition of their contribution to the visual and media arts (biography written by Etienne Desrosiers).
Other Work
Sofian Audry
SENSEFACTORY
immersive installation
2019
SENSEFACTORY is a spectacular large scale performative installation combining architecture, sound, smell, light and AI technology into an immersive multi-sensorial experience. Created by an international team of artists, architects, designers and technologists, SENSEFACTORY sends visitors on an exhilarating sensory journey through a colossal, ever transforming pneumatic architectural environment that changes form and shape before your very eyes.
The Bauhaus sought a new relationship between humans and machines – a theater that would integrate the human spectator and actor into a new kind of rhythmic and dynamic media process. 100 years later, we are enveloped in these total environments of media that continually scan, surveil, record, monitor and transform us. SENSEFACTORY reflects on our radical times – creating a compelling event that oscillates between intensive sensual experience and meditative reflection; physical euphoria and nervous unease.
Artistic Team
Graphics & Communication Design: Erik Adigaard
AI / Software Engineering: Sofian Audry
Sound Design: FM Einheit
Concept / Artistic Direction: Dietmar Lupfer & Chris Salter
Architecture: Alex Schweder
Olfactory Design: Sissel Tolaas
Collaborators
Light Design: Alexandre Saunier
Project Management (Munich): Miria Wurm & Michael Hennig
Project Management (Montreal): Marije Baalman & Garnet Willis
Public Relations (Munich): Christiane Pfau
Production Assistant (Montreal): Andrea Pena
Production Team (New York): Clemens Klein, Hannah LaSota, Anna Oidakowski
https://sofianaudry.com/en/sensefactory
Monty Canstin
Blood Campaign
1970s and 1980s
Blood Campaign is a series of performances in which Monty Canstin took his own blood and splashed it onto walls, canvases, or into the audience. He translated his interest in blood as a medical student to recognizing the value of blood in the art world. The campaign, through which Kantor spread the idea of Neoism, a subculture for experimental arts, had been carried out in many cities throughout the world, including Montreal, Tel Aviv, Belgium, and Toronto.
