Participants

Beatriz Herrera

Beatriz is a Outaouais-based, Chilean-born mixed media artist. Her work is now mainly focused on drawing, ceramics and gardening as a critical practice. Beatriz Herrera holds Bachelors of Fine Arts in Ceramics, (Alberta University of the Arts, 1997) Intermedia & Cyberarts (Concordia, 2010) and a Master of Fine Arts (Sculpture 2013) from Concordia University. She has had various solo and collective exhibitions, including at Toronto Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Center (2009), Burlington City Art Center (2014), Montreal Eastern Bloc gallery (2015), Maison de la culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (2020). Her work has been funded by SSHRC, the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, and Montréal arts interculturels (MAI).

summit of saana

Thierry Bardini

Thierry is an agronomist (ENSA Montpellier, 1986) and sociologist (Ph.D. Paris X Nanterre, 1991), professor in the department of communication at the Université de Montréal, where he has been teaching since 1993. His research interests concern the contemporary cyberculture, from the production and uses of information and communication technologies to molecular biology. He is the author of Bootstrapping : Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution and the Genesis of Personal Computing (Stanford University Press, 2000), Junkware (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), Journey to the End of the Species (in collaboration with Dominique Lestel, Éditions Dis Voir, Paris, 2011) and Viral Forms of Life (forthcoming).

François-Joseph Lapointe

François-Joseph is full Professor in the Department of biological sciences at Université de Montréal. In his scientific research, he is mainly interested in phylogenetic analysis and the application of population genetics for biodiversity conservation purposes. In 2012, he obtained a PhD in the study and practice of in arts (UQAM) and created a new field of research, choreogenetics, by transposing the stochastic processes of genetics for choreographic purposes. He is the author of 120 scientific publications and over 270 conferences and 75 invitational research seminars. He has participated in some fifteen international artistic exhibitions. In 1990, the Governor General of Canada awarded him the Academic Gold Medal for his doctoral work.

Arnaud Mery

Arnaud Mery is a Montreal-based photographer, researcher, and doctoral candidate. A graduate of the Sorbonne (Paris-1), where he earned his Master’s Degree in the Practice and Aesthetics of Cinema, Arnaud initially worked in film production, as well as a cameraman and an editor. The Covid-19 pandemic marked a pivotal return to academia, leading him to pursue a PhD in Communication Studies at Université de Montréal. His current research is an art-as-research approach focusing on how generative AIs, and specifically text-image models, constrain our productive faculties and reconfigure our understanding of agency in the context of visual artworks.

Bastien Gauthier-Soumis

Bastien Gauthier-Soumis is a Montreal-based digital tinkerer and critical maker. He likes to intentionally collaborate with other curious critters, among those bryophytes and humans. He also likes bicycles.

Eva Giard

Eva Giard is a master’s student and research assistant in communication studies at Université de Montréal. Her work focuses on the pedagogical mission of botanical gardens. She tries to question a paradigm of learning as reliant on information transmission, and instead explores learning as a situated, progressive and embodied process.

Matthew Halpenny (https://matthewhalpenny.com/)

Alexandre Sasset-Blouin (https://sasset.ca/)

Jenni Kylmänen