Mathieu St-Arnaud
Gabriel Coutu Dumont
Guillaume Coutu Dumont

Facettes
03.10–04.23.2005
Room 2

Comprised of a video-maker, a composer and a computer programmer, the RACAM collective offers a multimedia installation that builds on its research into the question of sound-image-light synchronization. Seeking to tightly integrate the visual and sonic universes, Facettes develops from the model of a dense and branching architecture. The four video pieces at the heart of this installation address the subject of the complexity of facial expressions, the principal human platform for communicating physical and psychological states.

In the 19th century, many scientists used photography — then at its beginnings – to study human physiology. The medium took its place as an ideal tool in developing their research around the problem of identification. Following a similar, but inverted, movement, the RACAM collective uses digital technology – currently the most sophisticated way of recording the real – with the goal of creating ambiguous personalities to advance towards a destructuring/reconfiguration of the identifying image.

Starting from audio and video captures in which four protagonists in turn react to stimuli with various facial expressions, RACAM used a computer program enabling them to modify indefinitely – and autonomously – the sequence and duration of the images, thereby transforming emotional representation ad infinitum. The idea of the portrait becomes practically impossible here insofar as each character, diluted by aleatory and unpredictable associations, becomes hesitant and imprecise. At the same time as it marks out and constructs itself, each portrait transgresses and undoes itself into a multitude of related identities. The synchronization of sound and light with this sophisticated image work promises a total physical and sensorial experience.

NdeB.