18 Nov 2009

Discontrol Party: November 20, 2009

A party where future devices of control are put to the test:  surveillance cameras, face detection, identification (RFID), traceability. A series of concerts in an interactive setting reacting to its public. A live collective and artistic experience!

Project developped in the framework of research on 'Large Group Interaction' at the University of Valenciennes and École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (EnsadLab).

Music program: Pan Sonic (Finland), Sexy Sushi (France), Pigeon Funk (USA), Computer Truck (France), Hassan K (Persia), Sascii (France – Dj set)

Discontrol Party is a device that combines two worlds: the world of highly developed surveillance technologies and the party world. The dance floor and the venue are constructed with regard to the projectors lights as well as to a computerized control system (computer vision, RFID, etc.). During one night the venue is transformed into a nightclub, set up as a control room: beyond light and other vijaying effects, the partying public is confronted with the multiple visualizations of the data system observing and attempting to analyze them.

As in a game addressed to a group of people, challenge is announced here: by the means of a festive event, how can you foil the system, how can you cause unintelligible confusion and why not put a bug in the system? These reflections are made possible by the fact that, here, the invited public is acting upon a device whose 'monitorings' are being revealed to them: the cartographies and listings of the public's movements and behaviors, the attempts to interpret these, the images of surveillance cameras and these same images transformed for and by aic analyzing processes and even the representation of the activities of the generating data system.

By provoking the confrontation of these two worlds and the possible affection of one world by the other, this prospective installation could indeed revive some primitive traits of one of our most ancient rituals.

The musicians invited to perform inside the Discontrol Party installation operate in the field of current electronic music ; they are all experimenters, provocateurs. What they have in common is an excellent formal liberty, a stubborn independence and, with no doubt, a taste for sabotage. It is no question that these 'stuntmen' will benefit in an extraordinary way from the Discontrol device and that they will incite the audience to do the same!

During the evening, the public will be confronted with a variety of joyfully radical approaches: the emblematic noise of the Finnish duo Pan Sonic; the weird urban, deregulated and saturated techno-funk, irresistibly inviting on the dance floor of the silly project Pigeon Funk; the regressive and ruff electro-punk energy of the French duo Sexy Sushi, the futurist underground techno by the young Parisian Computer Truck; the mysterious performance of the Persian Hassan K.; and last but not least the mix of Sascii, Parisian D-jette and producer who will take over the final battle ground.

We will see who of the artists or of the public will manage to trouble the Discontrol system. And who of the spectators and artists taking part in the installation will have resisted until the end of the party!

Musical programming: Sylvie Astié

Video device (artistic collaboration and engineering): Keyvane Alinaghi
RFID capturing: Gérard Sinpraseuth and Théophile Zézé (ESVR Technologies)
Data processing and technical advice: Sylvie Tissot
Visual computing: Oussama Mubarak

With the support of the French National Research Agency (ANR),
the Calhiste laboratory, University of Valenciennes
and the Maison européenne des sciences de l'homme et de la société (MESHS) of Lille
within the research project 'PRACTICABLE - The Work of Art as Dispositif: Setting the Stage for Audience Participation'

In partnership with:
the CiTu (Universities Paris 1 and Paris 8)
And the iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, Brussels