January 10 to February 11, 2011
Vernissage: Thursday, January 13 from 5 to 7 p.m.Main Gallery: ATMOSPHERE
LabXmodal, process shot

Atmosphere
LabXmodal: Chris Salter + Marije Baalman, Elio Bidinost, Shannon Collis, Fernando Leppe, Harry Smoak, Robert Tomes, Matthieu Tremblay, Tobias Ziegler
Main Gallery/Black Box
OPEN LAB WEDNESDAYS schedule
to book a session in JND: please visit the gallery in person or call, 514-848-2424 ext 7962
Planes of light appearing at the verge of seeing and a completely darkened space in which vision, hearing and touch are probed at the thresholds of perception are two of the experiences awaiting viewers in Chris Salter's "Atmosphere," an exhibition bringing together several sensorially-based, room-sized audio-visual-tactile installations. An artist, researcher and professor in the Fine Arts at Concordia whose large scale immersive environment Air XY in collaboration with designer Erik Adigard was commissioned for the curated show in the 2008 Venice architecture Biennale, Salter is interested in the ways in which new technologies amplify and transform the thresholds of human sensation and perception.
Atmosphere is a total sensory environment combining coloured light, sound, infrared heat and haze. Over a 20 minute cycle, sudden bursts of light, sound and heat transform the main FOFA gallery into a synesthetic space fluctuating between dense overload and contemplative reflection. Exploring what architecture critic Mark Wigley calls "an architecture of atmosphere," a sensuous climate of ephemeral yet, tangibly felt effects envelop visitors, probing the ways in which the just perceivable opens up our experience of noise and order, sense and sensation.
Simultaneously, the FOFA Gallery’s Black Box will feature an experimental version of Salter's most recent Just Noticeable Difference (JND) installation which has been touring Europe. JND is a sensory environment for one person at a time lying in total darkness. The installation is based on Gustav Fechner’s concept of the Just Noticeable Difference: the ability to perceptually detect the smallest changes in sensory stimuli. Combining near darkness with extraordinary low levels of vibration, light and sound, visitors enter the pitch dark black box and lie down on a raised, body length surface. Once inside, visitors experience a "composition of touch, light and sound"; an extraordinarily wide range of visual, auditory and tactile sensations that challenge how we perceive the smallest degrees of change in sensory stimuli over different levels of intensities.
Atmosphere explores four conceptual/technological areas of research: cross modal sensory phenomena, perceptual thresholds, questions about the dissolution of self-hood inside sensory reduction environments and ecological concepts of perception. It is funded by SSHRC, CALQ, Concordia and Hexagram.

Bio:
Chris Salter is an artist, Associate Professor for Design + Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and a researcher with the Hexagram Institute for Research-Creation in Media Arts. He studied philosophy, economics, theatre and computer music at Emory and Stanford Universities. After collaborating with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Ballett Frankfurt, he co-founded and directed the art and research organization Sponge (1997-2003). His solo and collaborative work has been seen all over the world at such venues as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Ars Electronica, Meta.Morf in Norway, PACT Zollverein, Todays Art, Villette Numerique, EMPAC, Transmediale, EXIT Festival, Place des Arts, Elektra, Shanghai Dance Festival, V2_, among many others. He is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010).

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How do light and sound combine to create situations where we hear what we see and see what we hear? How does our perception make our supposedly fixed world elastic and dynamic? Concurrently with LabXModal’s new five-week sensorial exhibition “Atmosphere,” opening on January 11, 2011, Concordia’a FOFA Gallery will be hosting a series of experimental talks, discussions and workshops open to the larger Montreal communities and framed by questions concerning the ways in which new technologies radically alter our human perception. Featuring internationally prominent experts in philosophy, media art and anthropology, among others, the Atmosphere Open Lab Wednesdays offers the broader public the unique opportunity to peer into a wide range of cutting edge research-creation ideas spanning the domains of sensory ethnography and the “spectral sensorium” to new responsive materials. These talks and discussions will take place each Wednesday at 19:00 starting January 19, 2011 and running until February 9, 2011.


Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 19:00 - David Howes, Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University; A Public Seminar on the Empire of the Senses

Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 19:00 - Concordia SIP MA and PhD students/researchers Shannon Collis and Harry Smoak will present ongoing work on new responsive and sensate materials.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011, 19:00 - Internationally recognized artist, composer and co-founder of the Optofonica Lab in Amsterdam, TeZ (aka Mauruzio Martenucci) will discuss his work in the area of immersive audio-visual art and his upcoming projects focused on the“spectral sensorium.”

Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 19:00 – “The Thresholds of Perception,” a conversation with Brian Massumi, Associate Professor of Communications Studies, University of Montreal and Chris Salter, artist, Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts and research director LabXModal

In addition, XModal will conduct a closed weekend workshop involving local high school and CEGEP students around concepts of sensor-driven environments.

Finally, in addition to the main installation in the gallery, XModal will turn the FOFA black box space into an experimental laboratory of the senses with a research investigation into the thresholds of visual, auditory and tactile perception featuring an ever morphing version of Chris Salter’s most recent touring sensorial installation JND (Just Noticeable Difference) (the full versions of which will be presented in Canada at MoisMulti in Québec City in February and Elektra festival in Montreal in May). The creators of the installation will use the multi week exhibition and the FOFA context to tune the work with feedback from an ever-changing public.