Stuff Seen - Art&D dans l'ile

Howdy!



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Why doesn't the Société des arts technologiques stick to what they do well? I've heard from friends that they are a really good discotheque. I haven't gone dancing in about two years, and I've never been dancing there, but this "exhibition" that I saw at the Maison de la Culture NDG has got to be the biggest waste of $46,250 that I've seen since Sheila Copps tried to buy some Canadian Flags.

I would have given the show a higher grade if it hadn't cost so gosh darn much. If it had cost $20,000 it would have gotten a C-, $10,000 a C, $5,000 a C+, and if it had been free a B-.

The details: Kora Van den Bulke & Thomas Soetens tried to make some sort of video game, that made me cringe. Montreal is touting itself as the place for video game development, I betcha dollars to donuts, that the newest hire at Ubisoft could have made something ten times more interesting in her sleep. Using a mouse to make an avatar walk through some stylized landscape, if you think that's interesting and thought provoking could I kindly suggest going to check out Red versus Blue.

Martine Koutnouyan and Joseph Lefevre thought that a bunch of images projected onto a wall and then fading so as to make transitions would be cool. Nope. I couldn't quite figure out the interactivity or maybe I just blanked it out from my memory.

Char Davies proved to me that sticking big photographs in light boxes doesn't exactly make them wonderful. I had always thought that big photographs in light boxes would be wicked cool no matter what the subject matter, thanks Char you saved me from making a fool of myself in public.

Emmanuel Madan needs to listen to Sublime Frequencies, he then needs to read Blue Highways or Travels with Charlie and most of all he absolutely needs to avoid clichés like the plague, un-originality in art is not good, and bad technique just makes it worse.

Thankfully there was one piece of art that saved this exhibit from a 40 part fate, Jim Campbell rocks like nobodies business. Mad props and shout outs, and if you want to see more of his stuff the Musée des Beaux Arts has got one of his Ambiguous Icons.