Registration

This workshop is free and open to the public with registration. Please fill out this MS registration form to attend. 

Schedule

*all details to be confirmed

13:00–13:30: Coffee and informal conversation
13:30–13:40: Welcome – Marcelo Wanderley
13:40–14:10: Nicolas Bouillot (Lab148): "Computer-Listening to Enhance Collective Interactivity"
14:10–14:40: Eliott Drees (Accès Scène Montréal): "Accès Scène Montréal: A Hub Where Art Meets Research"
14:40–14:55: Coffee break
14:55–16:30: Demos Lab148 (title TBC) et Virtuose Élite
16:30–17:00: Discussion

Abstracts

Nicolas Bouillot (Lab148): Computer-Listening to Enhance Collective Interactivity 

During the process of conceptualizing, prototyping, and deploying an immersive and interactive experience, technological infrastructure challenges recur systematically: How to integrate, calibrate, and assemble technological systems as video and audio diffusion, group activity capture, and content orchestration/generation.

When creating an installation intended for venues lacking the necessary technological infrastructure, creators consistently face the same hurdles: How to capture visitor activity efficiently? How to experiment with and adapt the narrative without being constrained by technical limitations?

The workshop will begin by addressing the key challenges and solutions for developing a shared vocabulary of collective interactivity, grounded in tracking participants’ sonic and locomotor behavior. We will then demonstrate these concepts through an interactive showcase of our computer-assisted listening tool.

Elliot Drees and Valentin Pintat (Accès Scène Montréal): Accès Scène Montréal: A Hub Where Art Meets Research

During this workshop, we will introduce you to the various aspects of Accès Scène Montréal, a new nonprofit organization currently in development.

This unique model brings together spaces, specialized equipment, and professional support to strengthen the creative and dissemination capabilities of Montreal’s cultural actors.

The project offers affordable space rentals, on-site sound and lighting equipment, and a Fablab specializing in scenography. Technical and artistic expertise will also be provided to support smaller collectives.

Accès Scène Montréal could collaborate closely with CIRMMT, both in terms of research and artistic creation. Its focus on event creation would allow innovative research projects to interact directly with Montreal audiences and creators.

Next, we will present and have you test the Virtuose Elite, an audio development platform designed to facilitate the creation of audio projects, ranging from high-fidelity hearing protection for musicians to protective hearing aids.

Biographies

Nicolas Bouillot, Lab148

Nicolas Bouillot earned a Ph.D. from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) in Paris in 2006, after which he became a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University (2007–2011). He joined the Society for Arts and Technology as a researcher/developer in 2012 and served as co-director of research there from 2017 to 2023. Now a co-founder of the Lab148 cooperative, his work has led to the presentation of dozens of collective digital experiences.

Valentin Pintat, Accès Scène Montréal

Valentin completed a degree in embedded electrical and electronic systems engineering in France. He then served as laboratory manager at the Research Chair in Intra-aural Technologies (CRITIAS), affiliated with ÉTS.

Passionate about event planning, he has a particular interest in venue acoustics and the sound experience. Over the years, he has supported several Montreal-based organizers by developing DIY stage design projects, helping to improve the technical and artistic quality of their events.

This immersion allowed him to identify the major challenges facing the industry, which led him to found Accès Scène Montréal to support and structure the local event ecosystem. At the same time, he has been developing and programming, alongside Elliot, electronic circuits dedicated to the design of adjustable hearing protection for musicians and concertgoers.

Drawing on this expertise, he aspires to lead the nonprofit organization to provide concrete support to organizations that truly need it.

Elliot Drees, Accès Scène Montréal

Elliot Drees is currently finishing a PhD on user-adjustable active hearing protection devices integrating loudness models. His research focuses on the relevance of loudness compensation algorithms in the context of hearing protection devices to improve user acceptance.

Thanks to a master’s degree in signal and image processing and a master’s degree in general engineering, Elliot has been able to contribute to research through embedded system architecture, software design as well as audio algorithm design.
Elliot is comfortable with low level programming and has mostly contributed in the context of embedded software in the Virtuose Elite. In his free time he has contributed to different open source projects such as the Empty Epsilon game.