THE BIAN MONTREAL: PHYSICAL/ITY
article by:
Dominique Moulon
for: art press
july / august 2014

about: BIAN MONTREAL

featuring: LAb[au]'s kinetic sound installation
SignalToNoise

extraxt of the article:
'This Montreal Spring was rich in digital arts events. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) welcomed the International Digital Arts Biennial (BIAN), while the Elektra and Mutek Festivals merged under the name EM15 for their fifteenth anniversary. Concurrently, the 7th International Digital Arts Market was held at the Phi Centre.'

...'The installation "Signal to Noise" (2012) of the LAb[au] group of artists is, like the Landscape series, among the pieces that the Federation Wallonia-Brussels presented at this BIAN 2014. Circular in shape, it consists of a multitude of flip flap displays controlled by the same algorithm. Spectators are invited to enter the installation, which then immerses them in the irregular noise of the characters as they are renewed. In an airport, or more precisely in a station, because it is from there that the displays that compose it derive, the machine can "calculate" all destinations worldwide. But here it is words that appear, randomly, in red. Words spelled out in the din that once assembled make little sense, like the oracles of the Pythia. It is not excluded that a sentence be for a viewer, but what the machine painfully expresses is closer to a form of visual and sound poetry. It is likely that the algorithm

around which it was designed is actually slowed by the obsolescence of yesterday's components, which nevertheless give it its sculpturality today
...