MAGNIFICENCE AILEE
Each fall, monarch butterflies travel more than 4,800 km from Canada to their wintering sites in the mountainous forests of Mexico. An emblem of the borderless union of the three countries of North America, the monarch has been endangered since December 8, 2023.
Longpré studied them for many years and documented their migration from Point Pelée National Park, in Ontario, to Michoacán, Mexico. To highlight the images and sensations collected in the field, during a residency at the Maison de la Culture Claude-Léveillée, she created an installation and participatory work composed of 4,800 ephemeral starch paper wings painted with ink food and placed under the shade of robotic branches. Accompanied by soundscapes and a video installation, the work presents with prints on recycled fabric, a tribute to the milkweed, the monarch’s essential host plant. The installation addresses questions about fragility, endurance, and perseverance and the impact of the technological world. This observation encourages us to reflect on the depth and complexity of the life cycle and migratory movements, highlighting the way in which we are all interconnected in our constant quest for survival and renewal.
ENVOLEE LYRIQUE
Combining robotic art, video, light, and interactivity, Envolée Lyrique is an installation inspired by the migration of greater snow geese. The work evokes their flight, the beating of their wings, their group movements, and the sky in which they travel.
Longpré studied snow geese, which travel more than 4,000 km in spring and fall between their nesting place and the territory where they spend the winter. She documented their migration and flight formations by visiting several of their resting areas, from Cap-Tourmente near Quebec to the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri to Beaudet Reservoir Park in Victoriaville. Nourished by this research and the study of this exceptional phenomenon, she imagined a large- scale installation work to highlight the images and sensations collected in the field.
Envolée Lyrique is composed of robotic sculptures representing geese in flight. Fabricated by the artist, the structures of the mechanical birds are made of stainless steel and aluminum, while their wings, articulated by motors, present photographs taken during her observations. As the video projection shows days passing in the sky, the automaton sculptures, attached to concrete surfaces and forming a sailboat, slowly flap their wings in response to their environment. Suggesting the notion of passage specific to the lifestyle of these fascinating birds, Envolée Lyrique invites visitors to become privileged observers of these extraordinary migrators. The reactive dramaturgy of the work brings out an unusual poetry that speaks of the living and the nature that surrounds us, forcefully expressing the bond that unites us there.
NEO-OPHEDIEN
A robotic sculpture that wears an articulated video membrane inspired by the anatomy of snakes. Ancient stories speak of primordial ophidians whose serpentine bodies created the winding rivers carved through Earth’s crust. Longpré’s creature initiates its own narrative of metamorphosis and evolution with this system. made up of modular sections, autonomous and sensitive, her creation moves with its own logic and behaviour, camouflaged against changing video environments and textures. Neo-ophidien pushes Longpré’s experiments with the transformability of the video membrane even further than former projects, and explores the possible transmutations of the projected images and the general structure. Daily visits to the gallery are required to study the morphology of this constantly changing performance as it unfolds.
SEATS OF THE SENSES
Seats are used to travel, relax, eat, work, wait, govern… they are rife with meaning. This project is a self-organized system composed of six chairs. Each is equipped with a specially designed wireless digital interface, a series of sensors, a laser video projector and two speakers. The seats are programmed to interact with each other. Visitors are invited to move them around, in order to experience different sound compositions based on their relative positions in the exhibition space. When someone sits on a chair, a video projects from underneath the seat. Each chair is programmed to offer a total of twelve different soundtracks and six video sequences. Chairs may be today’s most common piece of furniture, but these six were chosen for their unique personalities communicated through their diosyncratic designs and styles. They are also all second-hand and worn, with their own history of wear and tear clearly evident, arousing different emotions and personal memories in the visitors.
CEREUS
Cereus defies the constraints of the gravitational pull between heaven and earth, life and death, light and darkness. It presents a sensory exploration in the subversive spirit of the Lettrism movement. Digital interface, virtual character, robotic structure, and abstract sounds envelop the visitors, making them co-conspirators in the unfolding action. Philomène Longpré recreates a nocturnal world where stem-like machinery, cables and tubes operate a responsive video membrane, the heart of Cereus.
XIA
A responsive system in which visitor’s presence triggers different emotional stages of a projected virtual character. In a darkened gallery space, on a luscious, luminous carnation ground, a velvety black charcoal bloom – like the dusky, polleny heart of a poppy – is both the setting and the trace of a captive’s struggle. The caught creature’s body is sheathed in pale pink; periodically a dark vermilion wing unfurls from the body or curls around it. In a state of rest, she appears to float weightlessly in her dusty den, but she springs into activity as the viewer approaches.
ILLUSIO
An interactive video system where, based on the location and motion of the visitors within the space of the exhibit, a character responds and reacts to the predicament of being trapped by the shadow of its own environment. Designed in Chicago, this installation originates from the environment of the Midwest capital city and its perpendicular grid characteristic of modern urbanism. Between Lake Michigan and Chicago River, the passer-by appropriates the space of the street, the avenue and the park.
VITA
An Interactive video system where the virtual character is represented both by a blue light and a blue human form, which functions as an energy field rather than an actual identifiable individual. When Vita recognizes visitor presence, its own mechanical environment changes, and its bodily consciousness begins to realize its limitations. The shift manifests as altering imagery and an outpouring of multi-influenced sounds in the designated space. The installation collapses the separation of body and mind as the structure transforms from a mere video screen to a membrane of polyethylene tubing. This metamorphosis occurs as multiple temperature sensors in the tubing respond to touch and infrared sensors locate the participants.
FORMICA
A strong metallic frame that houses a delicate video membrane consisting of a series of horizontal elastic slats.The visitors transform and trigger bonds with the character as infrared sensors pick up their movements and ultrasonic sensors detect their locations. These interactions are visually expressed on the membrane like firing neurons weaving a tapestry of associations. Depending on the duration of the encounters, the membrane’s skin—the screen—could reflect physical tension and expand. It could also contract with forceful affection or revulsion. Formica seems to notice, feel, and learn as it adjusts to the shifting strata of social interactions. The screen reacts directly to the video presented within, similar to the way that visitors’ bodies respond to their suddenly changing environment.
OCTOPUS
This interactive video system consists of a virtual character projected onto a robotic structure holding a see-through membrane of narrow vertical slats. Through direct interaction visitors experience up to three modes of communication triggered by reed switches and infrared sensors placed strategically within Octopus’ environment. As the structure and character awaken, moving from a state of calm to extreme agitation, then back to stillness, the installation elicits reflections on how associations and interactions are influenced by space we occupy.
PASSAGE
Video Installation where kinetic structures are part of the performance itself. As new elements are introduced there is a visual transformation of both the individual and the space. This video installation communicates a personal reflection on the cycle of departure and arrival, and the experience of continual change: the impermanence and renewal of each moment. The performance appeals to multiple visions of everyday life, and emphasizes abandoning ones familiar milieu while also bringing it with oneself.
UNDERLAYERS
A virtual character that occupies the space between walls. The character observes the viewer and performs, challenging us to confront the desire to return the gaze and observe the character’s evolution. By this interaction, in which viewers are being watched, UnderLayers elicits reflections on the significance of issues revolving around surveillance and urban vigilance. This installation, composed of a small LCD screens inserted within a wall, gives voice to the memory of the physical environment and captures the deep incertitude and urgent feelings.
IRIS
An interactive video system that presents the urban dynamism of Hong Kong via a sonic experience. Visitors are invited to take a pause to capture the image of a sound by looking throught the hole of a black box. This project was realized throught a series of observations, as well as data accumulation at specific sites in Hong Kong. This project was realized through the collaboration the Artists: Spencer Ng, Dez Leung, Meli Yeung, Nicholas Tse, Pansy Tang, Kn Brick, Poon Kan Chi, Li Chu Yin Clifford.
EAST/WEST TELEMATIC EXCHANGE
A live networked system which took place in Hong Kong and Chicago simultaneously during the international Looptopia Festival. This venture was made possible through a collaboration between the Hong Kong Art School and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. All passers-by in Hong Kong were invited to peep through the hole of a customized box and gaze far beyond their reach. The eye of the observer was visually captured and instantly transmitted via internet. In Chicago, there was a similar peeping box inviting viewers to look beyond the familiar. Each “eye” from east and west were then featured on a large projection and the collage of the two ‘eyes’ displayed came from two different faces, one from each city on opposite sides of the world, divided by a 13 hour time difference.
NON-EXSITANT SILENT
A system that features a virtual character projected onto a large box covered with white elastane. Microphones are placed around to capture the variations in noise levels, which influence the character’s behavior. During the noisiest period, a mechanism of steel rods inside the box force the fabric outwards creating a three-dimensional simulation of the character trying to push itself out of the confined space. Both the movement of the structure and the video sequences visually communicate the concept of a call to silence.
CYCLE
A system that involves a large-scale gyroscope whose spinning action triggers different video sequences representing seven lives of a virtual character projected on a floor. The body’s narration reveals itself as each visitor is physically engaged. Their presence activates the movement of the gyroscope, while their distance affects the revolutions per minute. The faster the gyroscope spins, the faster the life of the character passes through its various stages, until it finally disappears. Cycle captures the essence of the relationship between time and space and how different factors tend to influence our perception of it.
PLATO’S CAVERN
A character projected onto a large-scale drawing where its movements are directly related to the evolving layers of lines being drawn. An 3D effect builds as the drawing undergoes gradual change in thickness and density related to the newly constructed superimposed layers of video. This installation explores the notion of time and space, where one confronts the fear of its own disappearance.
Others
A series of robotic sculptures, photographs and paintings where memory fragments are expressed through existing or invented objects