Biographies
Sensenet
Matthew Halpenny
Matthew Halpenny is an interdisciplinary media artist from Montréal who works between the milieus of biology, society, and technology. Their work seeks to disrupt conventional boundaries around life, evolution, the body, consciousness, and human expression. Such ideas have been explored through the use of the human body as a performative instrument, artificial organisms, technological-biological sculpture, and networked cognition performances. Their work is inspired by systems theory, embodied cognition, sense theory, emergent behaviour, multi-species being, and media ecologies.
They were previously a research member at Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, & Technology, where they worked within the Speculative Life and Critical Materiality research clusters. They are now working as a research member of Hexagram through the Université de Montréal. Their research portfolio involves a residency at MilieuxBauhaus (2019) as part of the Bauhaus100 research study, Vision in Motion: Moholy-Nagy; ISEA 2020 (2020), where they discuss their paper on technological-biological system relations and their collective Somme's work Mycocene; and Fossilation, a collaborative research-creation project at Le Centre Pompidou between University of Toronto, Milieux Institute, and Ensadlab (Paris).
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Matthew Salaciak
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Matthew Salaciak (Montreal) is an electronic musician and an interdisciplinary artist who completed a BCompSci / BFA in Computation Arts and Computer Science at Concordia University. He now is now pursuing an MSc in Experimental Medicine at McGill University. Stemming from a curiosity to understand how things work, his interests are aimed at electronics, and computational models and their physical interfaces, especially analog versus digital. He performs under M Salaciak and co-runs Temple Records.
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Naila Kuhlmann
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Naila Kuhlmann recently obtained her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia, in which she studied the neurobiology of Parkinson's disease. She has been involved in multiple community outreach projects throughout her studies, including co-founding the Green Labs Initiative @ the Neuro, and joining fellow students in launching a science communication podcast, "AMiNDR: A Month in NeurodegenerativeDisease Research". Given a particular interest in dance and circus, Naila has dabbled in art-science collaborations over the years, including with Vancouver-based Curiosity Collider and the Convergence Initiative in Montreal. This prompted her to start the Piece of Mind Collective with several like-minded individuals back in 2018. Upon receiving funding from “Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives”, Naila took on a postdoctoral fellowship in McGill's School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, under co-supervision from Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes and Dr. Aliki Thomas. She is now leading Piece of Mind as an arts-based knowledge translation project, bringing together researchers, artists and individuals living with Parkinson's disease or dementia to create performances based on lived experience and scientific research.
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Zahraa Chorghay
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Zahraa Chorghay obtained her HBSc at the University of Toronto specializing in Neuroscience with minors in Biology and Psychology and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience in the laboratory of Dr. Edward Ruthazer at the Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University. Using a combination of cellular and molecular tools, as well as microscopy techniques, she investigates how the experience changes brain cells, and in turn, influences the formation, refinement, and function of the brain circuit of developing tadpoles. Zahraa is passionate about making science accessible, through science outreach, science communication, and more generally, the power of narratives. She occasionally attempts self-expression with art, calling upon her understanding of science, her experience with chronic illness, and her existence at the intersections of multiple self-identities.
Twitter @fieryzarzar
LinkedIn zahraa-chorghay-3428292b/
ORCiD 0000-0001-6398-229X
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Owen Coolidge
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Owen Coolidge is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes design, photography, and new media art. Common throughout all his work is the critique of human exceptionalism. Originally from Los Angeles, he has exhibited at art festivals, galleries, and conferences in Montreal (dis)Connect (2018), CUJAH: Art History Conferences (2018), VAV Gallery (2018), Articule (2018), has received the Milieux Undergraduate Fellowship (2017), and his work has been presented at the Behavioral Matter Conference at the Centre Pompidou (2019). He attends Concordia University and is a research assistant to Chris Salter.
Starlight Gone
Elizabeth Parent
I’m Elizabeth, a Montreal-based artist who loves 3D. I can do hard-surface modelling and organic sculpts, scene lighting, rigging, texturing, and rendering. I learned these skills during my specialization in Computation Arts at Concordia University, where I graduated with distinction in 2019. Since then, I worked in graphic design and in my free time, expanded on my skills to learn a second 3D modelling software; Autodesk Maya. I am currently looking to start a career with these skills because I enjoy the technical aspect along with the artistic.
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Besides 3D art, I also love to bring tangible art to life using digital data or input, creating pieces that intersect art and technology. My primary aim is to create personalized experiences and to incorporate a meaningful statement into my art, as I did with Starlight Gone (2019).
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I have always been an avid outdoors person. I have consistently volunteered in various outdoor organizations since being a teenager, which has helped to provide me with organization and leadership skills. On weekends I can be found rock climbing, kite surfing, or whitewater kayaking depending on the season.
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My portfolio: https://www.elizabethparent.me/
Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/NeuroSoul
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Liam O'Leary
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Liam is a Neuroscience Ph.D. graduate from McGill University who studied the neuroanatomy of depression. His Ph.D. findings have been recently featured in many news articles due to their insight into potential treatment avenues for depression. Liam has taken his science out of the lab, by being an IB biology tutor in Sweden, an embryological witness in England, and a senior editor for Canada’s largest science graduate student journal, Health Science Inquiry (HSI). Liam is particularly interested in scientific illustration, and since completing Convergence 2018-2019, is slowly emerging as a bio artist. Liam is interested in how bioart can communicate the personal impact of scientific research for scientists and society.
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The Meningioma
Testament
Lori Sponagle
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Lori explores the terrain that comes from an engineer’s lifelong fascination with the textile craft. The comforting repetitive actions of stitching echo the comfort of mathematical precision. Each build on a ritualistic repetition. Each aims to create a perfectly finished object, complete in its own truth.
Reflected through the prism of her own life experiences, she merges elements from a rural Nova Scotian past steeped in textile crafts, a professional career in the design arts, and a mathematician's understanding of abstraction. From these perspectives, she queries the ill-defined boundaries of textile craft in the art world.
Her fibre works investigate the interplay of intensely repetitive traditional textile processes with patterning. While patterns can convey both culture and meaning, the interplay between pattern and randomness can also generate an informational structure. Her work attempts to explore the limitless possibilities of meaning communicated through these abstractions.
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Theresa Degenhard
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Theresa is a Ph.D. student from Germany specialized in brain cancer genetics. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience at McGill University where her research is focussing on the computational analysis of genetic diversity in brain tumours and their tumour microenvironment.
Outside her Ph.D. research project, Theresa is invested in research sustainability management (GLI@TheNeuro, GLI@McGillU), science communication and life-science entrepreneurship. She especially loves good vegan food, plants, outdoor sports and SciArt.
ContraSense
Andre Noack
I am Andre Noack, and I come originally from Teltow, a small town in the south of Berlin, Germany. I am a curious designer with a passion for typography, photography, and digital design. After working and studying in Berlin, I am now obtaining my degree in Design at Concordia University in Montréal. I am fascinated by simplicity and minimalism since it is possible to generate an extensive effect with significantly reduced means. Moreover, I am highly interested in visual and verbal language.
The Cookie
Theft
Rochelle Panganiban
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Rochelle Panganiban is a Montreal-based artist born in Tanauan City, Batangas, Philippines. There, she grew up with a love for discovery. She saw the world through different windows as her family visited relatives from distant cities. In school, she was very active in extracurricular activities, leading creative projects and drawing people into collaboration.
In 2009, her family moved to Montreal, Quebec, before she could finish her degree in Psychology. Here she dived whole-heartedly into the Fine Arts and took up graphic design, video and photography. She used to call herself a “Jack of all trades, master of none.” But later, while watching a documentary in her video history class at Concordia, she realized where her strength lies —in storytelling.
She began to incorporate what she knew and everything she had picked up on the way, to build narratives around her projects. She looks logically at the pieces of her message and the resources she can get her hands on, to design how the story would unfold. In finishing her Bachelors in Computation Arts, she is adding code and electronics to her bag of tools. She is constantly learning about life, poised to tell her next story.
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Marielle McCrum
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Marielle McCrum is a graduate of McGill’s School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. As a speech-language pathologist working in acute care settings, Marielle helps patients who have experienced changes in their communication following a stroke, brain cancer, head and neck cancer, and other disorders.
What Lies
Ahead
Simon Demeule
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Simon Demeule is a Montreal-based computer scientist and digital artist whose process is guided by an exploration of media through mathematics, algorithmic processes, and artificial intelligence. His art is directly informed by Cybernetics, Systems Theory, and Minimalism. Most of his works are experimental in nature and seek to uncover new avenues for computational aesthetics.
He is currently pursuing a master's degree in artificial intelligence and works as a digital media and web arts lecturer at the University of Montreal.
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Pauline Palma
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Pauline Palma is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Experimental Psychology at McGill University. Passionate about language, she completed a Masters’s degree in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Using behavioural, eye-tracking and EEG techniques, her research focuses on bilingualism and language processing, with a specific interest for novel language learning in bilinguals. In her free time, Pauline likes to play with cheap ukuleles and fill notebooks with poetry. She is currently a reviewer for Consilience, a journal publishing science-based poetry (https://www.consilience-journal.com/)..
Sans Titre
Paméla Simard
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Paméla Simard is a French-Canadian artist whose interdisciplinary approach investigates the relationship between the mind and the body. Operating across the presence and absence of the figure, her work bears a significance that is both physical and emotional. Simard has been exhibited internationally, including the Ph21 Gallery in Hungary and the CICA Museum in South Korea (2019). She participated in two international exchange programs in France (2013) and Australia (2014-15) where she studied and expanded her artistic practice. She holds a BFA in Art History and Studio Arts from Concordia University in Montréal, as well as an MFA in Sculpture/Dimensional Studies at Alfred University, NY. Her collaborations include, but are not limited to, the BRaIN Institute at McGill University and the Davis Lab at the University of California San Francisco.
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Peter Chipman
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My goal is to understand how the nervous system achieves resilience to ageing, neurodegeneration, and injury. I primarily use electrophysiology and imaging approaches to study the form and function of synaptic connections in the hippocampus and neuromuscular junction of adult mice. My aim is to harness the properties of synaptic plasticity to heal neural circuits and mitigate the impact of cognitive decline and disease.
Prochaine
Station
Peter Shaw
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Peter is a performance creator and community educator based in Tio'Tia:ke, or Montreal. Their research interests are around formal hybridities, investigating the Canon as raw material, and especially the gap between art and life. In 2016 they directed Missie Abroad: Art *Literally​* Saved My Life at the Arena Festival in Erlangen, Germany. In 2013 they presented at the Dimanche Rouge International Performance Art Festival, in Helsinki, Finland.
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Dhruv Mehrotra
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Dhruv is investigating how animals orient themselves in space and make decisions to navigate toward their goals. In other words, how do animals decide where to go? This is done using a combination of behaviour, neuroanatomy and recordings of neural activity. He also has an active interest in sharing his curiosity and excitement about basic science with the public.
Visual Agnosia:
A Simulation
Dana Ryashy
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Dana Ryashy is best known in creating works involving interactive and procedurally generated visual experiences. Living in Tiohti:áke (Montreal), she searches for ways of combining her academic background in biology, informatics and design, earned from the McGill, Montreal and Concordia Universities, into thoughtful physical and/or virtual installations. Starting out as a freelance graphic designer, Dana enjoys working with people, computational tools, and networked environments to explore the flow and transformation of information in between. She strives to discover the impact of technological media on the senses of the human body, how meaning is extracted from those senses, as well as how the human body could drive and define those media.
Contact: danriachi@hotmail.com
Losing Memories
Raul Huaman
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A graduate of l’École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2005, Raul Huaman has performed as a dancer for Cas Public (Intimate Diary) and Sinha Dance (A Matter of Life & Breath). In 2007, he moved to Europe to pursue his career as an independent performer and choreographer. Inspired by Candace Loubert's creative research, he applies his notions and life experiences to merge elements of Butoh dance with contemporary styles. After creating and presenting several pieces in Europe and Canada, his work has been presented at several festivals, Intramurs, Circuito Bucles, and Tangente (2021) Also, he decided to continue his studies at Concordia University specializing in creation.
Flow of
Emotions
Manami Izawa
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Manami Izawa is an undergraduate student in her last year at Concordia University, pursuing her passion for design. She was born and raised in Japan. During her undergraduate study of linguistics, a one-year student exchange program in Nice, France, gave her a new insight into the world of design.
Her goal is to help create an inclusive design with her background in B.A. of Linguistics, certificate of Pedagogy and Graphic Design. She is also a runner in her free time as running in nature provides her design inspirations. Her art medium involves physical objects to create a tactile experience. By interacting with her artwork, people can become aware of the importance of human relationships, which is often ignored in Scientific research.
