Into the light air atoms of dreams by Instant Places
SITE #1:
Sir Winston Churchill Square
Instant Places (Laura Kavanaugh and Ian Birse)
Into the light air atoms of dreams
“In presenting performances and generative installations our goal is to engage people in the immediacy of a living process, with the consciousness of everyone present contributing to the creative work. ”
Into the light air atoms of dreams is a soundscape for the City Hall Plaza, a daydream of endless possibilities evoked by the big sky over Edmonton. Visitors to the plaza will hear particle clouds that drift and come to rest in a warm bed of sound.
*Instant Places,Atoms of Dreams 1, 2026. Analog/Digital.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As we shape evolving sound and image transformations we aim for visceral connections to the rhythms of human life: the heartbeat, the cadences of walking and breathing. A review of our generative video commission for the Art Gallery of Peterborough described the installation as “fine variations on the abstraction and reconstruction of the representational”, a phrase that evokes the polar flux of our aesthetic investigations: blending the physical and virtual, aligning indeterminacy and intention, reading between the lines of document and fiction.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Laura Kavanaugh and Ian Birse lived in Edmonton and area for 25 years before launching their Instant Places series of audiovisual installations and performances that took them throughout Japan, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, the United Kingdom and Europe, New York and Chicago in the USA, and from Makkovik Labrador to Victoria BC in Canada. They moved back to Edmonton in 2024, after installing Bell Curve, a midi-controlled carillon and audio scape for Edmonton City Hall.
Recent highlights include an audio commission and livestreamed performance in Vienna for Kunstradio ORF; hybrid performances with dancers from Company Blu in Florence, Milan, Torino and Sardinia; Le Regard, a composition graphic score for Ensemble SuperMusique Montreal; and Mood Rings, a generative visual composition for the Glasgow Global Orchestra.
In their practice Laura and Ian combine visual arts, experimental sound, creative coding, and telematic networks to activate audiovisual environments that celebrate the surprising juxtapositions created through extemporaneous action and generated indeterminacy.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/instantplaces
Website: https://instantplaces.ca/index.html