Seulement^CA/QC

Seulement is the solo project of Mathieu Arsenault, an electronic musician and audiovisual artist from Montreal. His work explores the imperfections of the human body in an era of technological perfection, with a particular interest in the integration and transformation of the human voice and gesture in digital arts.

First known as the lead singer of the electronic rock band Technical Kidman, Arsenault has since expanded his solo practice to include audiovisual performances, albums and experimental films. His work has been presented at numerous festivals including MUTEK Montréal (CA), MUTEK AR (AR), MUTEK MX (MX), ELEKTRA (CA), Videocittà (IT), Modular M+ (HN), CODEC (PE), Festival DESVIO (BR), Lunchmeat (CZ), SXSW (US), Wavelength (CA), Sound/Image (UK), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Festival International des Films sur l'Art (CA), Iceland Airwaves (IS) and Suoni Per Il Popolo (CA).

Seulement — Bricolage Architecture

Bricolage Architecture is an audiovisual performance combining stop-motion animation and live modular synthesis. It features minimal, hyper-flickering geometric abstractions reminiscent of computer-generated imagery, with one key difference: they are all handmade, using cardboard cutouts photographed on a light tablet. Aside from editing and cropping, no digital processing is applied to the photos. They are shown as they were taken, without concealing the imperfections in their lines, the tears in the cardboard, or the imprecisions in their movements.

The music also opts for a physical approach rather than purely electronic sounds. It is constructed from snippets of recordings of my own voice, transformed live using the modular synthesizer. Put simply, I use my hands to create shapes that mimic digital imagery, and my voice to produce sounds that resemble electronic synthesis.

By imitating technological processes with the body, the performance seeks to bring human gesture back into digital arts practices that tend increasingly towards depersonalization. Pushing the body to imitate what the machine can execute perfectly generates imperfections in both sound and image. Yet the tears in the paper and the trembling of the voice are exactly what the performance aims to highlight. This process lends a human feel to sounds and images we more often associate with a digital aesthetic.

In this way, Bricolage Architecture creates a tension between the irregularities of the human gesture and the systematic execution of the machine. It questions the place of the "imperfect" human body in a world of so-called "technological perfection".