Memorsion is Québécois digital artist Manuel Chantre’s latest project, created in partnership with Montreal’s Society of Technological Arts. The work is at once a three dimensional audiovisual installation and a performance that takes hold of its exhibition space and transforms it into a genuine maze where visitors are expected to get lost. Twenty two semi-transparent vertical canvases are hung at random throughout the gallery, onto which fragments of video depicting urban landscapes are projected: concrete structures, buildings, graffiti painted walls and tunnels, and anonymous human silhouettes.The work also has an interactive shutter. The video content differs as visitors explore the space. The installation is thus unsettled and unsettling, constantly subject to the outside stimuli of people walking by. The layout forms a reconstructed fictitious universe that envelops visitors and makes them lose their bearings. In a way, Memorsion seems to mimic those mirror mazes you find in typical amusement parks, only here the deformed mirrors that twist your silhouette are replaced by post-urban ruins that send us a twisted, dehumanized reflection of our daily environment.On his website, Chantre explains the project:_The work is a meditation on urban architecture and the cultural memory of forgotten, abandoned and obsolete structures. Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in this dramatic environment, and to experience the personal associations evoked by imagery fluctuating between abstraction and strong cultural references. Videos are used as lighting to sculpt the exhibition space. A mix of digital art, film and immersive sculpture, _Memorsion_ uses the luminosity of video to explore a new form of audiovisual and sensory expression._Memorsion will be shown at Geneva’s Mapping Festival from the 19th to the 29th of May.
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Enter Memorsion's Post-Urban Digital Maze
Manuel Chantre’s installation is an uncanny walk among a desolate digital labyrinth.