DESSAIM 

All audiences, 8 years +

DESSAIM is a performance-installation featuring various types of bio-inspired robotic swarms. The audience is invited to wander among these swarms, observing both the large and the small, in the light and in the shadows, hearing and perceiving them from different perspectives, and interacting with them.

DESSAIM is the result of an interdisciplinary engineering and performing arts research project which explores the expressiveness of three types of robotic swarms. The audience watches as reclaimed/recycled materials transform their appearance and environment, and become, either collectively or individually, an expressive and poetic substance in constant motion.

Language: Without words
Running time: 60 minutes
Techniques: Robotics and shadows

Video

Photos

Photos: Marc Boivin, Jack Udashkin, Matthis Di Giacomo and archives

Company

Collectif DESSAIM is composed of expert engineers in robotics, computer science and biomechanics; artists in dance, movement, puppetry, and shadow theatre; and specialists in movement analysis and learning. A research grant from the FRQ-Prisme/art supports their study of the expressive possibilities generated by varying the movements of aerial and terrestrial robotic swarms.

Collectif DESSAIM members: David St-Onge (prof. ETS), Hélène Duval (ass. prof. UQAM), Giovanni Beltrame (prof. Polytechnique), Rachid Aissaoui (prof. ETS), Danielle Lecourtois, Marcelle Hudon, Audrey Rochette, Geneviève Dussault, and Magali Babin. Graduate students (ETS): Ali Imran, Rafael Gomes Braga, Alexandra Mercader, Muhammad-Owais Tahir, Matthis Di Giacomo, Abdalwhab Bakheet Mohamed Abdalwhab, Jorge Esteban Salas Gordoniz and Jean Mazerolle. Graduate students (Polytechnique): Yann Bouteillier, Guillaume Ricard and Vivek Shankar Varadharajan.

Credits

Stage direction: Collectif DESSAIM
Choreographer: Danielle Lecourtois and Audrey Rochette
Puppetteers: Marcelle Hudon
Movement researcher and analyst: Geneviève Dussault
Music and sound: Magali Babin
Set design and puppets: Hélène Duval, Danielle Lecourtois and Marcelle Hudon
Lighting: Manon Pocq-Saint-Joan
Performance: Collectif DESSAIM and robotic swarms

Collectif DESSAIM wishes to thank the Fonds de recherche du Québec, Prisme-art for its support, as well as Hexagram (Cœur des sciences), the dance department at UQAM, Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS). And thanks to Eliane Marie-Laure Cantin, Manon Pocq-Saint-Joan, Adam Provencher, Jason Pomrenski, Max Boutin, Iris Richert, Isaac Paul-Rivest, Chann Delisle, Catherine Bernier, Beast, Gabriel Duquette, Tiffanie Boffa, Matéo Barrera, Alex Larègle, Victor Brayant, Maxime Pelletier-Huot, Pierre Loubier, Jocelyn Proulx, Jean Christian Gagnon, the fabulous Casteliers team, and all the people that made this project possible.

The show you had in mind is sold out? Try your luck at the door! Arrive early. If reserved tickets are cancelled at the last minute, we will gladly to put them up for sale. Credit card and Interac transfers only. No cash payments.