Sofian Audry
Sofian Audry is an artist, scholar, Professor of Interactive Media within the School of Media at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), Co-Director of the mXlab studio-lab for Beyond-Human Media Creation, and Co-Director of the Hexagram Network for Research-Creation in Art, Culture and Technology.
Their work explores the behavior of hybrid agents at the frontier of art, artificial intelligence, and artificial life, through artworks and writings. Audry’s book Art in the Age of Machine Learning examines machine learning art and its practice in art and music (MIT Press, 2021). Their artistic practice branches through multiple forms including robotics, installations, bio-art, and electronic literature.
Audry studied computer science and mathematics (BSc, 2001), machine learning (MSc, 2003), and communication (interactive media) (MA, 2010) before completing a PhD in Humanities from Concordia University (2016). In 2017, they were a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and between 2017 and 2019, held Assistant Professor positions at the University of Maine and at Clarkson University. Sofian is an honorary member of artist-run center Perte de Signal (Montréal, Canada) which they led as president of the board in 2009-2017, and is actively involved in many open source softwares for new media.
Sofian Audry’s 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.
Maud Joiret
Maud Joiret was born in 1986 in Brussels. She is a poet and performer (on stage, on video, sometimes in front of a camera), and a literary columnist.
Cobalt, her first book of poetry (published by Tétras-lyre) received the First Work Prize of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation in 2020 and was adapted to video. Her second book, JERK, published in 2022 by l'Arbre de Diane, was brought to the stage in a production that combines text, music and dance. Marées vaches, her third book of poetry, is published by Le Castor astral in 2023. Her poetry is a willing hybridization of registers and genres, seeking the limits of sensations and narratives, to give rhythm to a quest for meaning.
Maude Veilleux
Maxime-Alexandre Gosselin
Artist-programmer Maxime-Alexandre Gosselin is completing his studies in computer science and digital arts at Concordia University, exposing him to the latest avenues in the development and exploration of artificial intelligence. His research into augmented agriculture, interactive machine learning and image generation has put him at the forefront of new technologies, their possibilities and the issues surrounding them. What's more, Maxime-Alexandre Gosselin has worked with a number of artists on their projects, so he's well versed in the technical requirements of atypical projects. He also holds a degree in photography from Concordia University and has been technical director of the TOPO artist-run centre since 2019.
Léa Boudreau
Léa Boudreau (b. 1993) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal who works with electronics, sounds and places. Her work questions interspecies relationships by considering nonhuman existences (nonhuman animal life, artificial life, the non-living, etc.) as ground for reflections on hierarchies dividing our world. She works following a DIY approach (do it yourself) favouring knowledge sharing and a critique of consumerism.
Among other places, her work has been presented in the Symposium International d'Art Contemporain of Baie St-Paul, FIMAV (Victoriaville), OTTOsonics Festival (Ottensheim, Austria), Akousma Festival (Montréal) and Sonorities Festival (Belfast). She holds a bachelor's degree in Digital music from Université de Montréal and a MFA (Studio Arts, Intermedia) from Concordia University.