ASTRONOMICAL WATER
The artist
A key figure on the Quebec and international art scenes, Martin Messier orchestrates a dialogue between sound, light and movement, combining technologies with natural elements (water, smoke, waves, electricity...) to explore our perception of physical phenomena. His performances and installations oscillate between order and chaos, creating a contemplative tension that invites the audience into a synesthetic experience, sometimes close to the spiritual.
After exploring the musicality of everyday objects - from projectors (Projectors, 2014) to sewing machines (Sewing Machine Orchestra, 2010) - Messier extended his research to abstract sound and visual textures, as in Field (2015), Echo Chamber (2020) and 1 drop 1000 years (2023), works conveying the fragility of ecosystems.
Each work is composed of tableaux in which the human body is central. Innervision (2019) brings together 60 dancers positioned in front of luminous, amplified tables. Messier remains the protagonist of his performances, as in Con Sordina (2021), continually questioning bodily limits, blurring whether sound and visual devices are prosthesis to the body, or the reverse.
His inventiveness shows in the diversity of his devices, from astonishing machines like Machine_Variation (2014) to minimalist structures like Cycles (2023) and more immaterial works such as Elusive Matter (2021). Designed in his Montreal studio, these devices are presented as performances and installations.
His work is presented by institutions such as Festival TransAmériques, Trafó Budapest, Arts Korea Lab Festival Seoul and the Festival of contemporary arts in Prague. His award-winning works (Prix Ars Electronica, Japan Media Arts Awards, World OMOSIROI Award) have been programmed at Mutek, Transmediale, Sonar and Nemo. He collaborates with digital artists, dancers and creative technologists.
Gallery
About the work
ASTRONOMICAL WATER
Omnipresent on our planet, water also exists in different states in the universe, notably in the form of drops in microgravity. Astronomical Water invites us to rediscover the sublime nature of water, questioning our relationship with this element, the magic it conceals and its life-giving power.
Echoing his performance 1 drop 1000 years, Martin Messier imagines an installation made up of a hundred drippers arranged on three large panels. The public is invited to move inside and outside the structure, sometimes watching the panorama, sometimes immersed in the heart of the device. Playing on the rhythms of the drops and the stroboscopic lights, the artist manipulates persistence of vision to reverse or freeze the movement of the water. The paintings follow one another: first emphasizing the gravitational effect, then giving the illusion of levitating water. Sound is reduced to its essentials: the sound of valves opening and closing. An organic rhythm that accompanies the falling drops and finally reveals their materiality.
Astronomical Water offers an immersion without a digital screen, where time seems to stretch, a contemplative and singular work that allows us to invest the world once the experience is over.
Artistic Direction
Martin Messier
Composition
Gabriel Geneau, Martin Messier
Hardware Design
David Gardener, Alexandre Sasset-Blouin, Gabriel Geneau, Lilian Guiran
Software Design
Gabriel Geneau, Guillaume Sylvain, Martin Messier
Electronics
Maxime Damecour
Technical Support
Lilian Guiran, Gabriela Hébert
Production
14 lieux
