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Luc Courchesne
Latitudes of apparition
In the seventeenth century through introspection into his own being and
verisimilitude, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was to usher in the very notion of
the modern identity in an intimate relationship with nature he found the
strength to resist pure reason so that his more attuned being could come
to light. What is the link that one might draw between this conquest of
identity placing the subject at the centre of his own relative reality and
the illustration that Horace Benedict de Saussure, his contemporary, was
to make of the Buet glacier in 1767, a circular panoramic view placing the
observer at the hub of the landscape? Almost three centuries after the Confessions
where exactly do we stand in our quest for truth and identity?
Nature itself, at the very source of Rousseau's inspiration, threatens today
totally to lose balance. The in-tune being which he fathered has become
mechanised by cybernetic forces which have become more and more invasive
and his subjective truth just about put on probation within our polymorphous
societies where individual and collective rights are in constant conflict.
New potential paths of communication which indeed are just so many unseen
latitudes of apparition [1] have uncovered our multiple « identities » and
the notion of subjectivity. The body itself has become a laboratory for
birth life and death. The world has changed. Where can one go today to seek
out the founding truth of identity?
[1] The latitudes of apparition have been defined by Berthet as the influence
of circumstance upon the qualification of social beings Frédéric Berthet,
«Éléments de conversation. Théorie de la mondanité», in Communications, no. 30, p.
147.
Recent publications:
1 « L’art jouable », in Philippe Dubé (ed.), Laboratoire de muséologie et d’ingénierie de la culture, Québec: Université Laval, ( to be published soon )
2 « L’horizon intégral », in Louise Poissant, Pierre Tremblay (ed.), Prolifération des écrans, Montréal/Toronto: Université du Québec à Montréal et Ryerson University, ( to be published soon )
3 Avec Guillaume Langlois, Luc Martinez, Where Are You?: An immersive experience in the Panoscope 360°, Santa Barbara CA: ACM Multimedia, October 22-28, 2006, ACM 1-59593-044-2/05/0011.
4 « De l’autre côté du Miroir », in Jean-Louis Boissier, Daniel Pinkas (ed.), Jouable : Art, jeu et interactivité, Haute école d'arts appliqués HES, Genève, École nationale des arts décoratifs, Paris, Ciren, Université Paris 8, Centre pour l’image contemporaine, Genève, 2004, pp. 41-45.
5 « À la rencontre de l’autre », in ETC Montréal, Mars, avril, mai 2005, pp. 11-18.
6 « The Visitor : Living by Numbers », in Jeffrey Shaw, Petre Weibel (ed.), Future Cinema, Karlsruhe : ZKM/Cants Verlag, 2003.
7 « The Construction of Experience: Turning Spectators into Visitors », in Andrea Zapp, Martin Reizer (ed.), New Screen Media, London: British Film Institute, 2001, pp. 256-267.
8 « Tectonique des civilisations », in Le Devoir, Montréal: jeudi 27 décembre 2001, p. A7
9 « Art Making as Forging Evidence », in Roy Ascott (ed.), Counciousness Reframed, University of Wales, 2000, 8 p.