After several years of molding words as well as ideas by studying philosophy, literature, and Death Metal, Hugues Sweeney became interested in stories as much as the opportunities that technology offers to tell them.
First in new media at Radio Canada, then head of Bande à Part and Espace Musique, he joined the National Film Board of Canada in 2009 as executive producer dedicated to interactive works. Continuing experimentation both in the grammar of interaction, in sound creation, or in generative art, projects from the interactive studio of the NFB have received more than 80 awards and honors all around the globe including Webby, SXSW, Japan Media Arts, and the Gémeaux.
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Après plusieurs années à tordre les lettres aussi bien que les idées en étudiant philosophie, littérature, et Death Metal, Hugues Sweeney s’est rapidement intéressé autant aux histoires qu’aux possibilités qu’offre la technologie de les raconter. D’abord aux nouveaux médias de Radio Canada, puis à la tête de Bande à Part et Espace Musique, il a rejoint l’Office National du Film du Canada en 2009 en tant que producteur exécutif dédié aux oeuvres interactives. Poursuivant l’expérimentation aussi bien dans la grammaire de l’interaction que dans la création sonore ou dans l’art génératif, les projets issus du studio interactif de l’ONF ont reçu plus de 80 prix et distinctions canadiens et internationaux dont les Webby, SXSW, Japan Media Arts et les Gémeaux.
The Internet is Reality
We interpret the world around us, we seek and capture reality, we steal bits of life that occur outside our devices. We press “rec” on an audio or video device, we touch the shutter button of a camera, we reproduce a scene on a sheet of paper with carbon pencil and an eraser. The world sits on the other side. But what if our devices are part of the content? What if the medium is reality? Here are five projects that made a unique impression on me because they use the internet as content, pieces of the network as chunks reality (blogs, weather services, geo-localization, Twitter, Google Street View). These projects open a breach in life and show us something elusive, ungraspable – the internet is not just the biggest media pipeline in history, it also tells us something about who we are.
