_Bio Léa Boudreau is a sound artist working with electronics and installation. Her work has travelled around the world, including at Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, Mixtur Festival (Barcelona), Akousma Festival (Montreal), Sonorities Festival (Belfast) and MUTEK Festival (Montreal). She has received the SSHRC Master's Scholarship (2022), the Dora & Avi Morrow Scholarship and the Concordia Fine Arts Scholarship (2021) and the 2nd and 3rd JTTP prizes from the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (2020/19). She is currently an MFA student at Concordia University.
_Approach In her work, Léa Boudreau questions inter-species relations (more specifically, between human and non-human beings) by considering animal and artificial life as grounds for reflection on the hierarchies that divide our world. She highlights the emotional, social and environmental issues that emerge from the encounter between capitalism, power dynamics, speciesism and various forms of supremacy. Léa creates sound, visual and interactive works that place human beings in relation with the hybrid and ambiguous creatures she designs (e.g. robots displaying animal characteristics, that are reactive but non-organic, etc.). How can these unusual encounters help us reflect on our prejudices? How can we contribute to the development of a better balance between species, and take into account the diversity of existence?
_Project The work proposed by Léa Boudreau for the Symposium of Baie-St-Paul is an outdoor installation made up of several small electronic creatures. These creatures are part of the "BEAM" (Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, Mechanics) robotic concept, which aims to build robots with a minimum of electronic components. In the interests of simplicity, autonomy and reuse of materials, these machines are built using only discrete electronic components (i.e., no micro-controllers or computers), run on solar energy and are made from as many recycled elements as possible.
Photo credit : Dania Rioux