TANYA ST-PIERRE & PHILIPPE-AUBERT GAUTHIER
PHILIPPE-AUBERT GAUTHIER / SOUND AND INTERDISCIPLINARY ART
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
P.-A. Gauthier's art practice is bound to his multiple profiles: Sound and digital artist, junior mechanical engineer, M.Sc, and Ph.D. in acoustics (spatial sound reproduction). Gauthier's artist statement is based on the interactions of arts, cultures, sciences, and technology in an integrated research agenda where each of these fields and related knowledge are used as primary materials for the development of art and musical pieces that directly address, through an experiential approach, the social constructions of technology and technologically-related culture within a critical framework. Part of his artistic method with high-tech systems or technology with transitional cultural state is simple, Gauthier typically target immature techniques in the scientific audio-related literature. Specifically, Gauthier looks for techniques that not have a crystallized cultural identity, but that could influence culture, history, senses, media. He then recreate, modify or remake them from the inside as sound installations, musical tools/instruments or performances to place the audience or visitors in a discovery mode while facing an intriguing apparatus or result. Most of his work is influenced by readings in music, cultural studies, communication, and media history.