





On August 1st from 5pm to 9pm we invite you to discover the immersive experiences of this year's CO/CREATE artist residency. 01/08/2024 - 25/08/2024 Wednesday - Saturday from 1pm - 5pm by appointment. Click here to read more about the work and schedule a viewing.
Save the date! Next Friday artist in residence Tati au Miel will be hosting a DJ workshop here at the studio! Experimental mixing methods to be explored!
Last month CO/CREATE touched down at the Society of Arts and Technology for a four-part series of workshops on immersive audio-visual creation. Artist had the opportunity to experiment with their collaborative projects and learn about creating spatial audio and 360° content for the dome.
We are currently accepting applications for new sound studio members. Send us a DM on instagram or email contact@worldcreation.studio for more information.
World Creation Studio had the opportunity to participate in Composite #38 to talk about the CO/CREATE residency!
This past March, two former CO/CREATE residents (Ahmed Drebika & Melannie Jonas-Ng) flew to Brussel’s INVISIBLE Festival to showcase the immersive VR artwork they created during the last edition of the residency. Click here if you want to learn more about last year’s CO/CREATE projects!
Join us next Wednesday from 6-9pm for our DJ workshop Local Spin hosted this month by Odile Myrtil!
Exploring listening through different forms of movement, sound, and dreaming, Ludwig Berger will lead a study group on Tuesday evenings for practicing Deep Listening after the composer Pauline Oliveros. The workshop is now at full capacity, so stay tuned for other workshops and events to come!
15.04.23 – 13.05.23
These artists explore the notion of worldbuilding through six immersive worlds that resulted from a group residency at World Creation Studio (WCS). Using virtual reality and spatialized audio, artists worked together to create distinct immersive experiences that challenge our perceptions of digital creation and reflect on what worldbuilding means in the present moment—here and now. But that here and now takes its social and political dimension, its relevance, from the present ecological moment, marked by hard evidence of climate change that coexists with a frantic desire to explore virtual and extra-planetary worlds (while large corporations co-opt terms like metaverse, billionaires invest in space exploration and consumers are invited to migrate their lives to computer-generated worlds or infinitely scroll through the void of social media). Engaging and reflecting on worldbuilding in this context seems a necessary endeavour, one that is not devoid of irony.
Yet, in the case of WCS, this process of imagining and creating synthetic worlds reflects the studio’s core interest in organizing a community art space that centres sharing resources (equipment, space, software) as well as ideas and knowledge. In short, worldbuilding to WCS is about a collective exploration into community building in the milieu of art, science, and technology in Montreal. As such, they created a unique residency model: the call invited applications from artists interested in potential collaboration through the creation of augmented, virtual and sound-based experiences; the residency consisted of intensive periods of production and learning, for example through workshops facilitated by WCS team members—a network of artists, designers and technologists with experience rooted in digital collaboration. With four months of access to WCS’ facilities, artists-in-residence participated in both formal and informal feedback sessions, getting to know each other, bouncing ideas back and forth, and familiarising themselves with each project; this process naturally led to skill-sharing and to the opportunity to work together as co-authors. This collaborative residency format had a direct impact on the conceptual and formal aspects of the six VR worlds that make up this show. Throughout the development of CO/CREATE, artists collectively imagined ways to untangle worldbuilding from the veils of colonialism and consumerism—facing the reality that in constructing a world, one must consider the histories and narratives that came before it.
Through personal interpretations and narratives of worldbuilding, the CO/CREATE exhibition invites visitors to dive into six speculative spaces. Audiences will find a diversity of life, environments, and stories that reflect the diversity of the artists themselves—their backgrounds, interests and unique perspectives on the world they live in and the worlds they envision. These VR projects invite us to reflect on interconnectedness, kinship, relationships beyond anthropocentric perspectives and the antagonism that emerges as we interact with others and navigate differences of class, race, sexual orientations, and faith. Some of the characters, soundscapes, and imaginaries presented within the exhibition connect to identities and ideas that do not yet have a space in this world, and therefore remind us of the political and technological constructs that define our experiences of the here, now, and beyond.
Exhibition text written by Erandy Vergara
Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes and Jorge Luis García González’s LUCA (2023) is a VR installation blurring the lines between internal and external worlds. Exploring the theory that one organism is the ancestor of all life on Earth, the interconnectedness of all cellular life is sonified through an atmosphere of field recordings, recontextualized and processed beyond recognition of their origin. Viewers traverse around and within this creature’s body that resembles ancestors of existing morphology of bacteria, protists, and yeasts.
Ahmed Drebika and Jorge Luis García González’s No More Evil (2023) explore the theme of transformation through Islamic eschatology. Visual artist Ahmed Drebika depicted the archangel Israfil descending upon rolling fields of green and surrounded by baby goats, thus alluding to the central sacrifice in the Islamic faith. Sound designer Jorge Luis García González composed Israfil’s Trumpet with prayers, synths, and artillery, creating an enthralling oscillation between tranquillity and despair. No More Evil invites visitors to contemplate the end of evil and the promise of a new beginning.
Jules Galbraith and Vivian Li’s The Wind Spoke Nothing I Could Know (2023) explores the relationship between familiarity and estrangement, recognition and alienation, invitation and displacement, and sensing and misunderstanding. Are we welcome? Are we wanted? These immersive scenes are at once naturalistic and uncanny; it shifts the frame from building worlds to meeting them. Jules Galbraith worked on the visuals, while Vivian Li created the cinematic and immersive sound. The piece invites the audience to stay within each scene and contemplate the experience of encountering emptiness and nothingness, extending their imagination beyond the medium and into their own tomorrow. A powerful premise to push the idea of worldbuilding forward.
Melannie Jonas-Ng’s and Isaiah Iseghohi’s Jumbies Echo (2023) is a guided VR journey through the landscapes of Guyana as told by personal memories and experiences related to native folklore. Inspired by Ng’s reconnection and research into their Guyanese heritage, Jumbies Echo seeks to address the lack of representation of Guyana in contemporary media by highlighting the rich cultural history of the country through a post-colonial lens. The experience is narrated through stories told by Ng’s family, exploring nostalgia surrounding the mythological characters and scenery of Guyana. Tales passed between generations evoke senses of beauty, fear and wonder; Jumbies Echo aims to reclaim a space for art and storytelling, one represented by the people of Guyana.
Taoyu Chen, Jorge Luis García González and Bayleigh Maissoneuve’s Object A (2023) is an exploration of repetition and difference, a surreal, ever-changing environment without rules or restrictions. A playful reflection upon the cyclical nature of society and history, the experience encourages audiences to navigate a dynamic world that proposes ‘total freedom’, as they fly through fragmented sculptures, music and sounds that form a composition dispersed throughout it. By creating a captivating interplay between individuality and shared experience, Object A finds poetry within the chaotic, fluid world it conveys.
Isaiah Iseghohi’s Hills Universe (2023) invites viewers on a journey through a virtual reality experience that combines the artist’s explorations in AI image-making and musical compositions. The virtual exhibition features a collection of images presented in a notably large format, brought to life by an accompanying series of musical arrangements that blend from one image to the next. As viewers progress through the exhibition, compositions shift from ambient and orchestral to deep, rhythmic instrumentals; Hills Universe offers a thoughtful, human counterpoint to conversations surrounding the rise of AI generated art– seeking its potential as a tool for artistic expression.