🗓️June 20, 2024 🕒 7 pm CET
Online + NADINE—LABORATORY FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS
📍3 Nieuwbrug Brussels 1000 Belgium
◆Laser Talks: Black Holes◆
Chair: Alexandra Dementieva
Moderator: Edith Doove
Dr. Valery Vermeulen is a Belgian electronic musician, mathematician, music producer, visiting professor at KASK & Conservatorium – School of Arts Ghent (BE), guest lecturer at Master ArtScience Interfaculty KABK Den Hague (NL) and researcher at Antwerp University (BE). He holds a Phd in Mathematics and MA Music Composition. In his practice Vermeulen focuses on the intersection between music, math and physics. Topics in his work cover a broad range of disciplines including algorithmic music composition, (generative) sound synthesis, AI, biofeedback, psychofysiology, astrophysics, theoretical physics, econometrics, data sonification and data visualisation.
In 2021 Vermeulen released the black hole album Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001 on the label Ash International, a subsidiary of the renowned Touch label. The album was picked up internationally and was awarded in 2022 with an Honorary Mention for the STARTS Prize-Ars Electronica issued on behalf of the European Commission.
Dr. Stéphane Detournay is a FNRS research associate and professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles and the International Solvay Institutes. He was the holder of a Marie Curie Fellowship, is an honorary BAEF alumni, and received the 2016 Adolphe Wetrems and 2020 De Donder Prizes from the Belgian Royal Academy of Science. He held postdoctoral positions at the University of Milan, UC Santa Barbara and Harvard University. His research interests lie in the area of high-energy and gravitational physics, with particular focus on quantum aspects of black holes. He is also interested in outreach, and in establishing connexions between arts and sciences, being in mixing sciences, music and smoky cocktails, throwing cellists into a black hole to check how it sounds, or discussing the nature of reality with illusionists.
Alexandra Dementieva
Alexandra Dementieva is a multimedia artist, based in Brussels. The idea of interaction between the viewer and an artwork, mediated by technologically progressive visualization methods, lies at the core of her work. In her installations she uses various art forms on an equal basis: dance, music, cinema and performance. Akin to an explorer she raises questions related to social psychology and theories of perception suggesting solutions to them by contemporary artistic means, that is by taking a subjective stance behind a camera. Her installations focus on the role of the viewer and her/his interaction with an artwork and bring forth ways of provoking the viewer’s involvement thus allowing hidden mechanisms of human behaviour to be revealed.
Edith Doove (PhD) is a curator, writer and researcher, specifically interested in notions of emergence and contingency, cross and transdisciplinary collaborations. She holds a PhD as member of Transtechnology Research at Plymouth University where she is a postdoctoral advisor. Since 2018 she lives and works in France, currently in Rouen where she teaches at ESADHaR (École supérieure d’art et design Le Havre Rouen). She was the curator visual arts for the arts festival Watou in 2023 and currently prepares an exhibition and publication on the Research Group and their influence on art education for the Stadsmuseum and PXL School of Arts in Hasselt (autumn 2024).