Michael Trommer is a Toronto-based sound and video artist; his practice has been focused primarily on psychogeographical and acoustemological explorations of anthropocentric space via the use of VR, spatial and tactile sound, field recordings, immersive installation and expanded cinema. He has exhibited and performed his work at galleries and festivals throughout the world. Michael is a graduate professor in sound design and sound art at George Brown College, course director for Sonic Cinema at York University, Think Tank professor at OCAD University and is currently a PhD candidate and SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier doctoral scholar in Cinema and Media Arts at York University.

Ancient Thoughts and Electric Buildings is an experimental, audio-led, virtual reality (VR) documentary that examines the portion of Toronto’s downtown core that extends along the city’s Gardner Expressway. This site traverses Canada’s financial nexus and has been the recent locus of extensive condo and commercial development; simultaneously, it exists as a region that is (and has historically been) occupied by a significant number of homeless people. Seeking to build and expand upon Brandon LaBelle’s notion of ‘acoustic territories’, this project seeks to foreground sound as a key sensory modality distinguishing the conditions of the locale’s urban dispossessed from that of the privileged. To this end, spatial and haptic audio dissemination is deployed to emphasize the relentless cacophony within which the homeless remain perpetually exposed, a stark contrast to the acoustically sealed, climate-controlled, humming structures of the financial towers that their habitat is immersed in. Visually, the documentary investigates the homeless population’s reinterpretation of their imposed topography – beneath the cathedrals of commerce, highways become roofs and scrap material is reconfigured as walls and furniture in a surreal contemporary echo of feudal dynamics. Further emphasizing the socio-economic disconnect, fragments of local condominium marketing copy have been composited into the 360 space in order to highlight the disconcerting paradoxes inherent in the clash of these spatially overlapping, yet antithetical territories.

Nikole and Carlos McGregor are new media artists who use installation technologies, machine learning, and visual computing to explore themes of intersectional feminism. Nikole uses research-creation methods to explore how new technologies affect our experiences, building new perception and interaction patterns. Carlos explores visualizations that can expand on perceptual load.

welcome_alien introduces Dweller, an online chatbot designed to be micro-aggressive towards the viewer. Its focus is on picking at the viewer’s foreignness to the virtual space. Satirical in nature, the work uses humour to emphasize the more considerable societal impact of reducing marginalized people into stereotypes.

Biography

Nikole and Carlos McGregor are new media artists who use installation technologies, machine learning, and visual computing to explore themes of intersectional feminism. Nikole uses research-creation methods to explore how new technologies affect our experiences, building new perception and interaction patterns. Carlos explores visualizations that can expand on perceptual load.

Artist Statement

welcome_alien introduces Dweller, an online chatbot designed to be micro-aggressive towards the viewer. Its focus is on picking at the viewer’s foreignness to the virtual space. Satirical in nature, the work uses humour to emphasize the more considerable societal impact of reducing marginalized people into stereotypes.