The PAN M 360 team is criss-crossing the entire MUTEK 2024 program, observing as many artists as possible during this 25th edition of its Montreal version. Keep up with our experts until Sunday evening, as no other MUTEK event promises such extensive media coverage!
Panorama: I’m feeling lucky could only be appreciated if all the intercultural keys were brought to the fore.
At first glance, this immersive film seemed simplistic and entertaining. Flying over a landscape of plains, forests and steppes on the ground, day and night, under a blue sky decorated with a few white cumulus clouds, you felt as if you were gliding like a bird. The immersive sound was coupled with clear, infinite layers, the chirping of birds in the middle of spring, and various sound effects. Characters appeared and disappeared at random.
And yet, nothing was obvious. The more the film unfolded, the more doubt was cast on the meaning of the work, the place, the identity of the individuals and the temporality. The initial simplistic approach gave way to complexity and multiple displays of content.
Indeed, the two artists, Timothy Thomasson & Tatum Wilson, have created a real-time computer-generated installation that questions relationships to image, geography, virtual space, historical media technology and massive data collection systems. Inspired by 19th-century panoramic painting and populated by thousands of figures taken from Google Street View, this film had the expected effect. It raises questions about our constantly evolving modern world, where confusion and the arsenal of images lead us into a collective daze.
