Leçon de piano
Émile Morin et Jocelyn Robert
The piece Leçon de piano was devised for the Disklavier piano based on words and a colour chart.
In a dark room, colours and letters were projected onto the piano keyboard. Each letter and colour projected caused a corresponding key to sound. The colours and letters appeared in a seemingly random manner until a complete sentence was created. The piano would then stop playing, and the colours and letters would disappear slowly as the notes faded. When all the elements were almost completely erased, a new sentence was created. The work was an audio-visual landscape where colours and letters seemed to appear randomly until complete sentences were revealed, then were slowly erased as the piano sounds faded. Visitors were invited to a concert of colours, words, and sounds that made up the ambiance of the piece.
Jocelyn Robert is a multidisciplinary artist from Quebec. He works in music, audio art, computer art, performance, installation, video and writing. His visual and video work has been shown internationally and his sound works have been published on more than 30 cds. His texts can be found in books at Le Quartanier (Montréal), Ohm Éditions (Québec), Errant Bodies Press (Los Angeles), Semiotext(e) (New York), and in a number of art catalogues. Many texts have been written on his art, and two solo catalogues have been published, one by Galerie de l’UQAM and one by Centre Vox. He is involved in art activism at different levels. Amongst other undertakings, he founded that audio and electronic arts centre Avatar and took part in the foundation of the Meduse cooperative. He taught at Mills College (Oakland, California), at Université du Québec à Montréal and at École d’arts visuels et médiatiques de l’Université Laval, where he is director since 2012.
Émile Morin is an independent artist based in Québec. His numerous installations and scenic artworks have been presented in Europe, in Australia, in the United States of America and in Canada.
His professional trajectory is comprised of an uninterrupted artistic practice and the management of several artistic institutions recognized for their originality: Recto Verso and its festival Mois Multi, as well as Avatar, an association for sound creation. Developing critical thinking within pioneer creative groups has fostered thorough knowledge of multidisciplinary creation and digital art (in practice and in theory). He has developed innovative and creative strategies, as well as unprecedented technical devices. Furthermore, he has collaborated to several national and international events, as well as governmental structures, as consultant and thinker, in order to analyze, understand and define the parameters of new axes of creation, whether it be in digital or multidisciplinary art.
