Melissa Mongiat is not your typical storyteller. She doesn't want us to sit still and listen, close our eyes and imagine another time and place. She builds stories out of instruments, notes and beats culled from the sights and sounds of urban spaces – and then she turns the storytelling over to us.
The designer's collaborative project Bloc Jam, a site-specific installation made for MUTEK this year, comes to life at 9 p.m. on May 3 at UQAM's science pavilion. The multi-sensory experience lights up the entire side of a building, a musical score of sorts that corresponds with beats dialed in via cell phone, by anyone, and processed through a sequencer.
The large-scale public project, like all of Mongiat's projects, never plays out the same way twice. Over the course of hours and days, the music changes as the people who participate change. No one's contribution rises above another; rather, each is layered upon a foundation built to evolve.
Public space can be defined as anywhere open and accessible to all people – a free, non-discriminating commons. Working in outdoor spaces presents its own challenges and complications, but its openness, its randomness, works with Melissa Mongiat's way of thinking.
Mongiat studied graphic design at UQAM and later focused on exhibitions work at an architecture firm, but "I was always working with space and wanted to push that in a more formal way," she says. Her love of the deeper elements of design lead her to the Narrative Environments Masters program at Central Saint-Martins College of Art and Design in London, England. Her collaborative projects there gave tangible shape to stories that the city and its inhabitants naturally tell.
Consequently, Mongiat's projects all have an extremely participatory approach – they simply won't work without public interaction.
Her 2005 Gamelan Playtime project, co-created with Arlete Castelo, was the first public project she did using interactive technologies. Set in London's South Bank Centre, then mostly under construction, the project drew on recordings of an Indonesian gamelan group who played at Royal Festival Hall in the 1950s as well as modern-day gamelan workshops in London. Sounds from each instrument in the gamelan were wired to black rubber buffers affixed to a wall in the shape of traditional Javanese patterns. Just as gamelan music is created in a free, organic way with a fixed set of instruments making up a finely tuned, multi-layered whole, Gamelan Playtime encouraged passersby to look, listen, and play in time with others in the impromptu orchestra.
"It worked well with the street, because people were triggering partitions in a natural way and it all layered to create interesting sounds," says Mongiat. "It was the first time we were witnessing how people were getting in touch with each other through such a project. We started understanding its power and excitement – how people try to figure out how it works and just get it.
The 2006 project Play.orchestra, also created with Arlete Castelo at South Bank Centre, this time collaborating with the Philharmonic Orchestra, involved 60 seats, each with built-in speakers and labeled with an instrument. Sitting down triggered the music.
That project also saw a burgeoning interest in using cell phone technology as a part of the musical experience, with participants able to send and receive sounds via Bluetooth. Last year's Montréal-based The Good Conspiracy (La Conspiration du Bien) project, co-created through Mongiat's Amuse group, spread positive vibes via some of the city's main arteries, with participants leaving messages by email, phone or text messages that were written on the street, projected on the sides of buildings or broadcast over a mobile loudspeaker. Cell phones, collective creation and a continued fascination with combining visual and auditory elements are at the heart of Bloc Jam, made specifically for this year's MUTEK festival.
Bloc Jam is essentially a giant sequencer, with cell-phone controlled beats synced up to a pattern of coloured lights projected on UQAM's science pavillion in downtown Montréal. It's also an acknowledgment of how cell phones have pervaded our everyday lives, public and private – but mostly the project wants to take us out of the realm of mere telecommunications and into a more powerful creative experience. Anyone can call a number to listen to the music and add their own beats by punching digits into a cell phone – they'll automatically be added to the show.
Just as with previous projects, the music and technology behind Bloc Jam couldn't have been created without a team of composers, programmers and technicians. Mongiat's main collaborator for Bloc Jam is technically inclined Montréal artist Mouna Andraos, whose Power Cart project brings electric power to the people. Set up like a market vendor's cart, Andraos' invention, solar and hand-crank powered, lets passersby charge their cell phones, laptops or any small appliance that needs a boost. On the streets of Montréal last year, strangers would entrust their phones to Andraos while they ran errands, forging a small but significant kind of public trust.
Bloc Jam has no stage, its performers a deft blend of the original creators and new public participants. Music will be streamed live online and through phones, accessible from anywhere, though the full immersive experience only happens on-site.
Bloc Jam, At UQAM's President Kennedy Pavilion, June 3, 9 p.m.