WINNING PROJECT 2025 OF THE CALL FOR PROJECTS RESEARCH IN THEATER AND ASSOCIATED ARTS OF THE DGCA - GENERAL DIRECTORATE OF ARTISTIC CREATION.
Listening to objects: developing techno-hacked sound assemblies in the service of new relational imaginaries is a research-creation project led by Cie La Boîte à sel (Céline Garnavault and Thomas Sillard). It focuses on designing sound and robotic artifacts whose gestures – offbeat, accidental, sometimes recalcitrant – escape mastery. These unexpected alterities become the engine of unprecedented relationships between artists, audiences, and objects.
Through workshops in France and Quebec, the team will build about ten sound robotic objects and experiment with their behaviors. The objective is twofold: to give life to techno-hacked objects with ambiguous reactions and to catalog relational processes that allow for imagining other forms of complicity, intimacy, or cooperation between humans and machines.
The main restitution will take several forms
- publication of an article co-written by Julie-Michèle Morin and Dinaïg Stall
- production of part 2 of the documentary film "Listening to Objects" by Luka Merlet
- design of the game "Listening to Objects" — a playful repertoire of processes and strategies activatable by other artists — which will be made available to the academic and artistic community in the form of a game box, and also available as downloadable digital files.
- organization of meetings in Montreal: a study day in March 2027, and a conference in March 2028.
This initiative is led by researchers Dinaïg Stall (UQAM) and Julie-Michèle Morin (ULaval) from the research group FORMES at UQAM. The project is supported by L’Hectare, Espace Jéliote, LABLAB in Lyon, and the FORMES group. This research will also benefit from the collaboration of researcher Emma Merabet.