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"Dans une sorte de rêve éveillé - L'invitation" is a computer-generated animation about the domestication of nature in our homes, based on Tanya St-Pierre's handmade collages. The starting point for the project was the desire to transpose St-Pierre's handmade collage practice into computer-generated images, but not only by integrating collages into 3D scenes, but rather by approaching collage work as a method for creating 3D environments. The first influence for this work was the collage series "Espaces intérieurs" (2019 -2020): a reflection on the theatricality of nature in the interior spaces of our daily lives. The origin of this series of over 150 collages lies in the discovery of a stack of interior design magazines published in the 70s and 80s. To these magazine pages are added a few fragments of gardening magazines from the '80s, The Space Issue (National Geographic Society, 2017), the book En El Espacio (Time Life Editions, 1984) and the illustrated dictionary Natural Wonders of the World (Reader's Digest Selection, 1977). A strong feature in these interior design magazines was this constant narrative tension between the elements of nature and domestic, controlled, organized interior spaces. This series of collages takes an archaeological and architectural look at a theatrical era of interior decoration. An era that seems to desire the domestication of these natural elements through their representation in our homes. Like an attempt to convince ourselves that we dominate and possess these natural elements. An attempt that exposes an almost unresolved fictional tension between, on the one hand, the modern comforts constructed and edified by the thundering economy and, on the other, the muted threat of nature, the changing climate and their implied cataclysmic forces. ? ?

Tanya St-Pierre is a Graduate in visual arts from UQTR (Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Qc, Canada). Philippe-Aubert Gauthier is a digital and sound artist, musician, engineer, Ph.D. in acoustics, and a professor at the School of Visual and Media Arts at UQÀM. Both artists presently work and live in Montréal Québec, Canada. Each artists have a solo practice but they also combine their specializations for large-scale visual and sound installations. Gauthier and St-Pierre have been working as a duo since 2003. Their respective interests are addressed in exchanges that lead to hybrid artistic proposals, results of self-critical contests and inventions in tandem. Works have been supported by the CALQ and CAC and shown in divers contexts in Canada, the United States, Maroc, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan.