‘fundy’ at MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax (2021)

We (Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas) are stoked that our installation ‘fundy’ is going to be shown at the MSVU Art Gallery: May 29 – July 25, 2021!

For more information: https://www.msvuart.ca/exhibition/daniel-h-dugas-and-valerie-leblanc-fundy/

(un)continuity (2020)

We are pleased that our installation Around Osprey has been included in the Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Festival 2020.

About the exhibition

(un)continuity is an invitation to explore fluidity, to break binaries, and challenge categories: works in this exhibition explore representation and presentation; play along spectra of light, sound, and probe the visible-invisible; and embrace unity and discord. This type of boundary work is at the heart of electronic literature, a practice of exploring the limits of born-digital storytelling that includes multimodal writing, digital art, playful narrative, interactive fiction, literary games, hypertext, and screen fiction.

This exhibition is part of the Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Festival 2020, hosted by the University of Central Florida and occurring online starting July 16th. Curated by Shannon Lindsay, Ha’ani Hogan, and Anastasia Salter, the exhibition was originally intended for physical space: however, following the closure of most shared physical space with the advent of global pandemic, the exhibition was re-imagined as a virtual, interactive display. The exhibition includes interactive, procedural, generative, and otherwise experimental works by artists from around the world.

Originally, this work was planned as two separate installations for the UCF Art Gallery and Orlando CityArts. These spaces are still adapting, as COVID-19 numbers continue to rise in the state of Florida. Some works are captured only through documentation as a result: others have been fully reimagined, and represent new work created in response to the current moment. As we imagine how gallery spaces persist even as public buildings remain closed to crowds, the curators hope this exhibition will provide inspiration and connection.

Curated by Shannon Lindsay, Ha’ani Hogan, and Anastasia Salter

Around Osprey is a two-screen projection based on our artist residency with the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast in Osprey, FL, 2018. We created the two video programs: Element A and Element B.

For this virtual exhibition, the two video programs have the same duration of 29 min 38 sec, simulating the interactive element of the original design. The suggested viewing setup is: two laptops placed side-by-side; Element A on the left, Element B on the right. The two programs should be started simultaneously.

Element A is a series of 12 poetic videos and relates to explorations. The moving pictures and sound treatments for these were gathered from our notes, poetry and stories, research outings, and meetings with local residents. The overall flow of the work relates to encounters with the natural world, environmental concerns over development and human encroachment into natural settings, and what derives from those human interventions.

Element B – Our explorations of coastal areas were overshadowed by the omnipresence and effects of the Red Tide, aka K. brevis. As it altered the environment, it also shaped our perceptions. As the cell count of these organisms grew, fish and other oxygen-starved sea animals washed up on beaches. We humans also choked for air. To bring forward observations about the far-reaching effects of the Red Tide, we created Element B (no sound), a real-time reading of a data sets for K. Brevis weekly cell counts. (For this virtual exhibition the real-time has been replaced with a video capture.) Element B can be seen as a disrupted state of the environment. The data was entered by day and location on 16 South Florida beaches over a twelve-month timespan. When the counts are low, there is little-to-no change in the moving pictures. When the counts are higher, the images take on corresponding degrees of red tint and temporal shifts that show up as blurriness. The cell count data and location are not directly related to the images they are placed upon, instead, the flow of effects on images relates to how nature works, in cycles, always little by little, and sometimes, surprisingly fast, with overwhelming effects. The text information, on the bottom left of Element B is as follows: K. brevis cell count | Date | Location.

To aid the visualization of the K. brevis data, we are including the information below:

Possible effect of K. brevis

Not present – Levels of 1 cell or less: No effects anticipated
Very Low – Levels > 1 – 10 cells/ml: Possible respiratory irritation; shellfish harvesting closures
Low – Levels > 10 – 100 cells/ml: Respiratory irritation; shellfish harvesting closures; possible fish kills
Medium – Levels > 100 – 1,000 cells/ml: Respiratory irritation; shellfish harvesting closures; possible fish
kills; detection of chlorophyll by satellites at upper range of cell abundance
High – Levels > 1,000 cells/ml: As above plus water discoloration

MSVU Art Gallery – reconnoiter (2019)

We were (Valerie LeBlanc and I) over in Halifax to meet with Laura Ritchie and to look at the exhibition space at MSVU Art Gallery. Our installation Fundy will be seen there from August 29 – November 1, 2020. #excited

Everglades – installation (2019)

We are (Valerie LeBlanc et Daniel H. Dugas) very happy to say that Everglades the Installation will be shown from February 28 to April 10, 2020, at the Centre d’arts visuels de l’Alberta in Edmonton. It will then be exhibited at the Galerie Colline in Edmunston, NB – July 2 – September 6, 2020! This installation will present, for the first time, a global view of our project.

Nous sommes (Valerie LeBlanc et Daniel H. Dugas) très contents d’annoncer qu’Everglades l’installation sera présentée du 28 février au 10 avril 2020 au Centre d’arts visuels de l’Alberta à Edmonton. Après l’exposition à la Galerie Cava l’exposition sera présentée à la Galerie Colline d’Edmundston, NB – 2 juillet au 6 septembre 2020 ! Cette installation donnera pour la première fois un aperçu global de notre projet.

What We Take With Us – TNG (2012)

We just came back from Calgary where our video installation What We Take With Us is being presented at The New Gallery. The opening was on January 5th and the exhibition will continue until February 4th 2012.  We stayed at the John Snow House which is administrated by TNG.  It is an extraordinary place loaded with history.

Thanks to everyone at TNG: Tim, Jessica, Noel, Kathryn, Su, Volunteers – and all who came out to the opening!  Our talks will be posted online next week.

Our installation is also part of This Is My City Festival, an interdisciplinary festival of art from the margins.

Excerpt from the essay written by Tomas Jonsson:

Recurrent waves of colonialism and globalization have smoothed and prescribed our encounters with places. For the traveler, points of difference, or of distinction, are sought after, perhaps increasingly so, or patronizingly handed over. Monuments, historical sites and natural landmarks are increasingly oriented to ‘the amused eye’, which the traveler can then compare and develop a discourse “for the comparative connoisseurship of places.”

In What We Take With Us, Dugas and LeBlanc explore a complicated, contingent terrain, whose borders extend into and circumvent geographies, both physical and social, ‘here’ and ‘away’. Encompassing individual catalysts, personal experiences, mental and body memories, the resulting landscape can’t be easily anticipated or defined.

The videos mimic the internal ordering and filtering of places. Each series of vignettes display a personal vision, reflecting the difference in interpretation even by two people so closely aligned. They follow in Dugas and LeBlanc’s collaborative approach in their production and presentation, but in this case the associations are left to chance due to an unsynched running time. The result is a constantly shifting dialogue between the videos, with unknown permutations and combinations. 

Sculpture Space 1991 (2011)

Sculpture Space, the internationally renowned artist-in-residence program for sculptors, is celebrating its 35th anniversary and the online magazine JUICYHEADS is doing a feature story about it. As an alumnus I can tell you that this was and is still an amazing place. I had the chance, along with Valerie LeBlanc, to be part of it during the winter of 1990-1991. recently, we sat down, to open up old note books and Hi8 tapes to revisit Utica. These 4 short videos represent part of our Utica experience.

http://www.sculpturespace.org/

http://juicyheads.com/

NB As a results of bogus copyright infringments warning I decided to delete all my videos from Youtube – Dec 2012

What We Take With Us – Ce qu’on emporte avec nous (2011)

• Galerie E DANS L’A Gallery, Moncton, NB, 2011

What We Take With Us

In this two channel video installation, each artist created a program of short videos exploring different aspects of memory and presence.  The programs are projected side by side.

An exploration of internal and external experiences characteristic to travel and displacement, the project grew from a research residency at the Sydney College for the Arts in Sydney, Australia – September / October 2009.  During our stay, we researched urban, as well as more sparsely populated coastal and inland geographies of New South Wales.  Starting from our personal exploration and interviews with others, we looked for indications of what it is like to live in a place; to call it home, and at displacement / shifts evoked by the experience of physically repositioning oneself in the world.

The research began from the perspective of examining the concept of home and what it means to individuals.  Over time, a discussion of memory and presence, of being in the world developed toward the realization that what we take with us might not be as important as what, or whom we sometimes leave behind. As the nature of living leads us forward, we are constantly required to face current events and circumstances; to grow and evolve within the present.  Ideas are shaped through interaction; through awareness of the importance of what we take with us in memory, and how interaction within social climates changes the point of view.  According to progress, of meeting life challenges; friends, family and familiar surroundings sometimes move into memory, and that becomes the only way to experience them again.  In essence, this is also part of the discussion of nomadism and contemporary life.

While developing strategies for conveying messages relating to the human experience, we have worked to open up half dream / half waking realities.

For more information see website

Ce qu’on emporte avec nous est une installation vidéo à deux canaux. Chaque artiste a créé un programme de vidéos examinant différents aspects de la présence et de la mémoire.

Ce projet sur le déplacement, la mouvance et le voyage, a pris forme et s’est développé lors d’une résidence de recherche au Sydney College for the Arts en Australie — septembre / octobre 2009. Pendant notre séjour, nous avons effectué une série d’entrevues à Sydney ainsi que sur le territoire de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud.  Nous souhaitions explorer les questions relatives au sentiment d’appartenance à une région, à une collectivité ainsi que sur l’expérience nomade.

Les idées contenues dans ce projet sont nées de l’interaction entre individus, elles se sont développées au travers du filtre de la mémoire et du souvenir ainsi que sous l’effet transformateur du contexte social. Tout en développant des stratégies de transmission relatives à la nature interne et externe de l’expérience humaine, nous avons tenté d’ériger un lien entre ce qui existe et ce qui est senti, entre le rêve et la matérialité.

Notre recherche nous a amenés à réaliser que quelquefois, ce que nous emportons avec nouspourrait ne pas être aussi important que ce qui est laissé derrière.

Pour plus d’information : site web

Camille, Andrew, Katrina et cie (2009)

WEBSITE : http://daniel.basicbruegel.com/upload/camille/fr.html

• 2009 Camille, Andrew, Katrina et cie, Video installation, Volet arts médiatique, GSN-Ficfa

Camille, Andrew, Katrina et cie est une histoire de personnification d’ouragans. Les Katrina, Ivan, Andrew et Camille du passé débarquent à Pensacola afin de préparer le terrain pour le prochain ouragan. Ted, le héros de l’histoire, se retrouve mêlé à toutes ces machinations et tente de sauver sa ville d’un désastre certain.

J’ai voulu, depuis le tout du début du projet, raconter quelque chose qui pourrait être vu et lu de plusieurs façons. C’est une vidéo et c’est aussi une installation-vidéo. Le résultat est un travail qui est à cheval entre la pièce radiophonique et la vidéo expérimentale.
L’installation est composée d’une projection au mur, d’une table avec les accessoires qui ont été utilisés durant la production ainsi que d’une copie Française et une autre Anglaise du scénario. La présence de flux sonores indépendants (narration et effets sonores) de sous-titre anglais et d’un autre sous-titrage composé de notations qui réfèrent à la copie papier du scénario, fait en sorte qu’il est possible de présenter ce travail de plusieurs façons.
Les 33 séquences sont disponibles sur  VIMEO

Camille, Andrew, Katrina and Co. is a story based on the personification of hurricanes. The ‘old storms’ Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Camille come to shore in Pensacola to prepare the ground for the next hurricane. Ted, the hero of the story, finds himself involved in all these machinations and attempts to save his city from certain disaster.
From the very beginning of the project, I wanted to tell a story that could be seen and read in several different ways. This is a video and it is also a video installation. The resulting work straddles radio drama and experimental video.
The installation consists of a wall projection, a table with props that were used during production, as well as a French and English copy of the script. The presence of independent audio streams (narration and sound effects), English subtitles, and another subtitle stream made of notations that refer to the screenplay, makes it possible to present this work in several ways.
All of the 33 sequences are available at VIMEO

Videos also available on YouTube

Camille, Andrew, Katrina et Compagnie (2008)

• Galerie d’art Louise et Reuben-Cohen de l’Université de Moncton, NB, 9 juillet – 31 août 2008

Camille, Andrew, Katrina et Compagnie
Projection vidéo – 120 minutes

CAMILLE, ANDREW, KATRINA ET COMPAGNIE est une projection vidéo d’une narration d’un scénario long métrage fiction en français. L’histoire est celle de Ted, un type jovial et plein d’entrain. Il est représentant d’assurances et demeure en Floride. Sa compagnie s’apprête à tenir une convention nationale. L’atmosphère est fébrile. Ted sait qu’un hommage lui sera rendu afin de souligner son volume de ventes. Il anticipe cette soirée avec beaucoup d’impatience. Le jour de l’arrivée des délégués en ville, Ted a la sensation que quelque chose de grave est sur le point de survenir Le moindre bruit l’inquiète. Il surréagit au moindre obstacle. Il est anxieux. Lors du souper d’ouverture offert aux délégués, il note que sur les portes noms des convives à sa table, Cindy, Dennis, Alex, Gil et Claudette sont tous des noms d’ouragans. Ted est convaincu qu’une grande catastrophe est sur le point de surgir mais est incapable de partager sa prémonition avec qui que ce soit.
Le projet contient 6 épisodes dont deux furent montrés à la Galerie Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen de L’Université de Moncton à Moncton au Nouveau Brunswick du 9 juillet au 31 août 2008.

FIB BID (2007)

• Paved Arts, Saskatoon, SK, February 23 – March 10 2007

BID is the symbol for Sotheby’s, the noted auction house on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). A FIB is a trivial lie.

This interactive video projection is based on a short clip from the movie THE JUROR, a 1996 film directed by Brian Gibson. Demi Moore stars as Annie Laird, a single mother, picked for jury duty on a Mafia trial. She is forced to persuade her fellow jurors to vote “not guilty” by the “Teacher” who threatens to kill her son. When the trial is over, it seems that he cannot let her go. (1) Annie is a sculptor who makes boxes reminiscent of the FLUXKITS.(2) The content holds meaning to the artist and can be interacted with by the audience. The Teacher played by ALEC BALDWIN befriends ANNIE through buying a few of her works on exhibit in a New York gallery. Here is the transcript of their first encounter:

THE TEACHER
Do you know Japan?

ANNIE
uh huh

THE TEACHER
Contemporary Art is a sort of currency there now, because its value is so inconstant, it’s so attractively pliant.

ANNIE
…I’m lost… I’m not connecting the dots here

THE TEACHER
None of that really matters, all that matters is we need to start getting your pieces traded… record some six figure sales… get you the right review in Art Forum, the proper niche at the Basel Art Fair, that sort of thing, but that’s my job don’t you worry about that.

ANNIE
Listen, Mister Cordell

THE TEACHER
Call me Mark

ANNIE
OK Mark. Listen…

THE TEACHER
May I call you Annie?

ANNIE
…Yeah, you know you can call me whatever the hell you want – but I am not interested in having my art used as some kind of currency!

THE TEACHER
Annie… what do you think I get out of this… do you think I make money out of this… I don’t, I don’t need to… what I do for a living pays me very, very well. I do this so that artists like you can go into you studio and work on your boxes and not worry whether of not your children are being fed… so that these idiots that control the art….

Intent
“I do not want my art used as a currency “ is the key phrase. When I first saw the movie I was laughing out loud, I could not believe that an artist would say that. How funny can we be? What kind of sordid joke is this? I have to say that when I looked at the movie again I was still laughing. But what does it mean? Is it like a mechanic that says, “No, no, no I cannot accept any payment for changing the cylinder head gasket on your car,” or a real estate agent that says, “Please do not insult me by wanting to give me money in exchange for selling your house,” etc. Obviously this is nonsense, but when it comes to art, or at least in the media version of the artist, it is acceptable, it is plausible: artists are unpractical and eccentric. This clip incited me to look at the art market, which is a business like any other. Art, like chemicals and pork bellies, is subject to the pressure of the market. If Annie Laird refuses to sell then maybe it will make her art less available, more desirable, and therefore, increase the value of her work. But then again, she could vanish into oblivion. She could also choose to flood the market with her boxes à la mode de Wal-Mart, but that is another story. I choose the Sotheby’s Art House because it is the oldest international auction house and because it is listed on the NYSE, unlike Christie’s, which is a private company. I was interested in using some of the information that is relayed in real time – minus 20 minutes – on the Internet; like the highest price of a share, the lowest price of a share, the volume of sale, the difference between the highs and the lows, etc. I have been following the stock market for some time, using the data to create soundscapes as in the Free Market Karaoke project (2005), or to alter projections like in the do_wild_loops; do_wild_jumps; [big ceo’s talking to small bugs] installation (2003). I am interested in the visualization of data, in the graphical presentation of information but also in the re-contextualization of information. In the do_wild_loops project, I saw the DOW CHEMICAL CO stock rise sharply when the Iraq war started in 2003. Because of this dramatic change I had to review and reset the range in which the incoming information would evolve.

Daniel Dugas
Calgary, AB
February 2007

fibid is portmanteau word fusing FIB and BID together. It is a currency created especially for the exhibition. For this Saskatoon exhibition, the ‘bank’ has issued series of 180 – ’10 fibids’, 200 – ’20 fibids’ and 191 – ‘5 fibids’.

All fibids are numbered. I intend to distribute these bills during the opening on Friday, February 23rd.Ten bills have been marked with a special number and will win a prize of either a CD of FMK or a DVD of La Dauphine.