Navid Navab
Academic Partner
Concordia University
Navid Navab (CA/IR) is a media alchemist, interdisciplinary composer, and tabletop cosmologist. Interested in the poetics of schizophonia, gesture, and embodiment, his work investigates the transmutation of matter and the enrichment of its performative qualities. Navid uses gestures, rhythms and events from everyday life as a basis for real time compositions, resulting in augmented acoustical poetry and painterly light that enchant improvisational and pedestrian movements.
Navab has led large scale interdisciplinary research projects at IRCAM Paris, CRIMMT McGill Montreal, Computer Aided Medical Procedures Group TUM Munich, Milieux and Hexagram networks at Concordia Montreal, and CIID Copenhagen. Navid currently co-directs the Topological Media Lab, where he leverages phenomenological studies to inform the creation of computationally-enchanted environments. TML projects serve as investigations in the construction of fresh modes of cultural knowledge and the critical studies of media arts and techno-science, bringing together practices of speculative inquiry, scientific investigation and artistic research-creation practices.
His works, which which take on the form of responsive architecture, site specific interventions, interactive scenographies, kinetic sculptures, and multimodal performances, have been presented at diverse venues such as: Ars Electronica, Contemporary Arts Museum of Zagreb, Nemo Biennale Paris, Japan Society NY, Kapelica Gallery Slovenia, Canadian Center for Architecture, HKW Berlin, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Digital Arts Biennial Montreal, Musiikin Aika Finland, SONICA Scotland, Eufonic Spain, and milanOltre Festival Italy.
Research-creation statement:
I maintain the view that computation is foremost a material process, non-linear, largely indeterminate, vibrant with life, and irreducible to deterministic models. Coming from this stance, my artistic process aims to preserve the richness of uncanny material-computational processes while leveraging them compositionally. The act of composing computational media could entail the orchestration of event dynamics to quasi-deterministically enact degrees of instability and to enchant the stuff-of-the-medium. This process starts with of an ethico-aesthetical search for the excitable mysteries of matter (material-energy-affective processes), and leads to a careful orchestration of sensuous moments of knowing with others, humans or none.
