Artists Showcases from Canada and Quebec

In the previous Montreal edition, Mexico City was one of the distinguished cities brought in to celebrate the 375th anniversary of the host city's foundation via the Inter_Connect program. As a result of this exchange, this year we have organized a group of experimental and avant-garde producers from Canada and Quebéc for the Edition 14 of MUTEK.MX. We are thrilled to strengthen the bonds between Montréal and Mexico. These artists standout from their live shows and performances during the festival, running November 22-26 in Mexico, as well as participating in the discursive Digi Lab program of panels, workshops and interviews.

Thanks to the support of Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des Arts et des lettres du Québec and the Ministère des Relations Internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec as part of the Diversités project, an unprecedented total of 14 artists will present 9 performances during the festival.

Julien Roy & Alexandre Burton (artificiel) pres. Three Pieces With Titles

Who: Alexandre Burton and Julien Roy, co-founders of Montréal-based digital creation studio, artificiel
Style: Immersive audiovisual installations and performances, electroacoustic compositions, custom-built software and hardware

A MUTEK commission developed with the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Three Pieces With Titles relies on a new, souped-up, extreme real-time, audiovisual instrument that merges cameras, synthesizers, acoustic instruments, computers, and video projectors. The “three pieces” refer to three distinct movements: the image controls the sound (photographs trigger a camera plus a computer system linked to audio); the sound controls the image (an instrument triggers a camera plus computer system linked to photographs); and the sound is the image is the sound (colour turns into sound, acoustic vibration changes the colour and vice-versa).

Lucas Paris pres. AntiVolume IN/EXT

Who: Montréal-based musician and digital artist Lucas Paris, member of electroacoustic quartet Quadr and A/V outfit Betafeed
Style: Immersive synaesthetic environments, space-specific algorithmic light sculptures, ambient fantastical IDM, corroded rhythmic noise

This light and sound-sculpting A/V work performed on custom equipment, explores the constant motions and dynamics between timbre and colour, interior and exterior —reinterpreting ambient noise, techno tropes and rave-ish rhythms.

Magnanime

Who: Montréal musician and producer Sara Magnan
Style: Experimental tech house, IDM meets musique concrète, psychedelic dancefloor grooves

Magnanime creates a techno-house hybrid rife with experimental nuances, embracing mistakes of technology and recycling odd noises into her perpetually evolving, beat driven repertoire. Live, her forward thinking production process and enthusiasm for listener’s reactions shines, aware of her environment she manifests a dance music experience that is always an exchange with the audience.

Maotik & Max Cooper pres. Hyperform

Who: British producer and DJ Max Cooper and Montréal-based digital artist Mathieu Le Sourd
Style: 360º immersive audiovisual experience, amplified spatial forms linked to rhythmic excursions

Hyperform is an immersive A/V experience, exploring the role of spatial dimensionality to construct our reality, and its potential to create strange new realities as higher dimensional forms and spaces unravel around us. Hyperform sits at the edge between mathematics, science, visual and audio arts. The journey begins with the simplest spatial forms in both audio and visual format, and progresses towards a realm of beautiful immersive abstraction using real mathematical models of hyperdimensional forms, which are believed to exist beyond our normal perceptual capacity.

Woulg & Push 1 stop pres. Interpolate

Who: Montréal-based composer and new media artist Greg Debicki aka Woulg and motion design, 3D and audio reactive visuals creator Cadie Desbiens aka Push 1 stop.
Style: Emotive glitch music combined with grunge dissonance and the complexity of IDM and jazz. Visual and elegant narrative constructions, both precise and complex.

Interpolate uses live coding and generative processes to explore the relationship between audio and visual. This audio reactive performance is divided in four acts, image and sound meet, take turns in controlling each other and end up working in symbiosis. The stark, minimal, generative 3D geometry and particle systems take the audience through the music, conveying the physicality of the sound while mapping out the emotional landscape of the melodies. To interpolate means to determine an intermediate value or term in a serie by calculating it from surrounding known values; on stage Push 1 stop and Woulg send data wirelessly to each other in order to be able to patch new interactions between audio and visuals in real time, and interpolate the missing data between sound and image.

Musique Nouvelle (aka Simon Chioini & Félix Gourd)

Who: Montréal-based composer and producer Simon Chioini, also known as SC, Chioini and DJ Voilà and Montréal-based 3D visual artist, VJ and scenographer known as Félix Félix Gourd Gourd
Style: Percussion-driven electroacoustic techno, experimental acousmatic compositions; 3D expérimentations, dreamlike worlds and abstract geometry

Bolstered by a community of harmoniously experimental artists in Montréal, Simon Chioini creates a hybrid of new music compositions and genre fusing underground club sounds – acoustic instrumental flourishes and synth waves layered in syncopated rhythms and unexpected distortions. After completing a degree at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Félix Gourd changed his practice towards visual production. His versatility has lead him to work with many local musicians, as well as international pop stars Britney Spears and Selena Gomez, alongside his established collaboration with Simon Chioini.

Diagraf, Ewerx & Wiklow pres. Liquid Architecture

Who: Montreal based trio composed of Patrick Trudeau aka Diagraf mostly known as a digital visual artist, but also a VJ, DJ, composer, and filmmaker ; programmer, artist and designer Ehsan Rezaie aka Ewerx specialized in creating visual and interactive experiences using technology and code and composer and technologist and digital artist Michael Dean aka Wiklow.
Style: Organic and textured structures of sound and images. Ephemeral constructions dissolving into one another.

Liquid Architecture approaches generative composition and performance methods in an immersive environment. Combining LIDAR data and creative modeling, real-world buildings and imaginary landscapes are displaced and reconstructed point-by-point in 3D.

Baya

Who: Montréal visual designer and DJ Jean-Sébastien Baillat (Studio Baillat.)
Style: Hi-tech, vivid geometric moving images and hyper-stylized surreal visions

Jean-Sebastien Baillat has been creating high-tech visuals, branding campaigns, printed materials, web based work, dome performances, light and laser design, installations and staging for more than 15 years. Always at the forefront of technological practices he has maintained a reputation for potent, glossy, elegant creations.

Tim Hecker

Who: Montréal-based electronic musician, sound artist and academic
Style: Emotionally resonant abstract electronic soundscapes, ambient glitch and drone, warm harmonic noise, acoustic gone digitally wild

After 20 years and eight solo albums, Tim Hecker’s mastery of deep “ambient noise” still escalates in intensity with every release and increasingly sensorial performance. From his captivating bleak soundscapes on Harmony in Ultraviolet to melodic explorations of acoustic instruments run through with digital dexterity on Virgins, Hecker resists languishing in any genre. His compositions veer from synthesized glitching static to sustained piano chords, from dissonance to orchestral harmony.

Here is the full program.

Don't miss any of the best Canadian and Québécoise talent and get your tickets here.

This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the " Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec as part of the Diversités project.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.