Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. Considered a virtuoso and one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, Peterson released more than 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours. He played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, simply "O.P." by his friends, and informally in the jazz community, "the King of inside swing".
The Concordia Stingers are the athletic teams that represent Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. They compete with other schools in Canadian Interuniversity Sport, and more specifically in Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec. The Stingers were established in 1974 when Sir George Williams University and Loyola College merged to form Concordia University and replaced the preceding Sir George Williams Georgians and Loyola Warriors.
Joanna Berzowska is an Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Her work and research deal primarily with "soft computation": electronic textiles, responsive clothing as wearable technology, reactive materials and squishy interfaces.
Rosalind Wright Picard is an American scholar and inventor who is Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-founder of the startups Affectiva and Empatica.
Affective design describes the design of products, services, and user interfaces that aim to evoke intended emotional responses from consumers, ultimately improving customer satisfaction. It is often regarded within the domain of technology interaction and computing, in which emotional information is communicated to the computer from the user in a natural and comfortable way. The computer processes the emotional information and adapts or responds to try to improve the interaction in some way. The notion of affective design emerged from the field of human–computer interaction (HCI), specifically from the developing area of affective computing. Affective design serves an important role in user experience (UX) as it contributes to the improvement of the user's personal condition in relation to the computing system. Decision-making, brand loyalty, and consumer connections have all been associated with the integration of affective design. The goals of affective design focus on providing users with an optimal, proactive experience. Amongst overlap with several fields, applications of affective design include ambient intelligence, human–robot interaction, and video games.
Otakuthon is Canada's largest anime convention promoting Japanese animation (anime), Japanese graphic novels (manga), related gaming and Japanese pop-culture. It is held annually for 3 days in downtown Montreal during a weekend in August. It is a non-profit, fan-run anime convention that was initiated by Concordia University's anime club, named Otaku Anime of Concordia University. The name "Otakuthon" is a portmanteau of the Japanese word "otaku" and "marathon". Otakuthon strives to be a bilingual event, having programming, the masquerade and the program book in both official languages. The first edition of Otakuthon was held in 2006 in mid-June, but later moved to early-mid August / late July from 2007 onward. The most recent edition, Otakuthon 2023, was held on August 11–13, 2023 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. As of 2023, Otakuthon surpassed Toronto's Anime North to become Canada's largest Anime convention.
60x60 is a collection of 60 electroacoustic or acousmatic works from 60 different composers/artists, each work 60 seconds or less in duration. 60x60 project showcases sixty new works, each sixty seconds or less, by sixty composers in a continuous sixty-minute concert, for a one-hour cross-section of contemporary music. The 60x60 project was conceived and developed by the new music consortium, Vox Novus and its founder, Robert Voisey.
Flower is a video game developed by Thatgamecompany and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was designed by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark and was released in February 2009 on the PlayStation 3, via the PlayStation Network. PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions of the game were ported by Bluepoint Games and released in November 2013. An iOS version was released in September 2017, and a Windows version was released in February 2019, both published by Annapurna Interactive. The game was intended as a "spiritual successor" to Flow, a previous title by Chen and Thatgamecompany. In Flower, the player controls the wind, blowing a flower petal through the air using the movement of the game controller. Flying close to flowers results in the player's petal being followed by other flower petals. Approaching flowers may also have side-effects on the game world, such as bringing vibrant color to previously dead fields or activating stationary wind turbines. The game features no text or dialogue, forming a narrative arc primarily through visual representation and emotional cues.
Béatrice Mireille Martin, better known by her stage name Cœur de pirate, is a Canadian singer-songwriter and pianist. A francophone from Montreal, she sings mostly in French and has been credited in Montreal Mirror with "bringing la chanson française to a whole new generation of Quebec youth."
Lambda School of Music and Fine Arts is a bilingual school of music and fine arts and a venue for performances located in Pierrefonds-Roxboro in the West Island of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The languages of instruction are in English and French. Lambda was inaugurated on 10 October 2008 by the mayoress of Pierrefonds-Roxboro, Madame Monique Worth and appointed representatives from the Chinese Embassy, Ottawa. The name Lambda was specifically chosen for a variety of reasons. In physics, the sign Lambda stands for wavelength. Through the wavelength of sounds, humans communicate through music. Through the wavelength of light, we communicate emotions through various colors in painting. Lambda is also the acronym for Learning of the Arts through the Mind and Body in the Discovery of Aesthetics. Lambda School supports other organizations of the arts and education in Quebec. The school has been a sponsor of scholarships for the Montreal Classical Music Festival organized annually by the Quebec Music Teachers' Association as well as the Lakeshore Chamber Music Society, and the Quebec Music Competition while also offering an array of scholarships and bursaries to deserving students of the arts. To encourage the development of high level performance in young musicians and to promote the spirit of transcending one's artistic boundaries Lambda School also supports the Quebec Music Competition, an annual music competition organized by the Concours International de Musique et des Beaux Arts de Quebec, offering various scholarships, prizes, certificates and perpetual trophies, and performance opportunities for winners. Lambda school also offers free programs to the community and senior citizens. It is also the official examination centre for RCM Examinations of practice and theoretical subjects in the West Island of Montreal since January 2011. In 2015, Lambda has also set up an auxiliary school in Shanghai, China. Starting from 2023, Lambda School of Music and Fine Arts has changed its name to Lambda International School of Music (Online) and offers exclusively online music lessons.
BLA BLA is an interactive animated film for computer created by Vincent Morisset with Montreal studio AATOAA, and produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The online work has been described as exploring "the principles of human communication," and follows Morisset's collaborations with Arcade Fire on Neon Bible, considered the first interactive music video.
Steam Powered Giraffe is an American musical project formed in San Diego in 2008, self-described as "a musical act that combines robot pantomime, puppetry, ballet, comedy, projections, and music". Created and led by twins David Michael Bennett and Isabella Bunny Bennett, the act combines music and improvisational comedy on-stage, although their studio works focus almost solely on music.
Bill Vorn is a Canadian artist, musician and professor known for his robotic artworks. Vorn was also a member of the band Rational Youth from 1981 to 1983.
Skawennati is a Mohawk multimedia artist, best known for her online works as well as Machinima that explore contemporary Indigenous cultures, and what Indigenous life might look like in futures inspired by science fiction. She served as the 2019 Indigenous Knowledge Holder at McGill University. In 2011, she was awarded an Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship which recognized her as one of "the best and most relevant native artists."
Adam Basanta is a Montreal-based artist and experimental composer whose practice investigates manifestations of technology as a meeting point of concurrent and overlapping systems. He uses various media and creates participatory and multi-sensory performances.
Artificial empathy or computational empathy is the development of AI systems—such as companion robots or virtual agents—that can detect emotions and respond to them in an empathic way.
Sylvain Neuvel is a Canadian science fiction writer, known as the author of The Themis Files. He was born in Quebec City and raised in the suburb of L'Ancienne-Lorette. Neuvel was educated at the Université de Montréal and the University of Chicago, and runs his own professional translation agency.
Robots is the fourth EP by American hip-hop duo EarthGang, released October 20, 2017 by Spillage Village and distributed by Empire Distribution. Released as a sequel to their third EP Rags, it is the second instalment in a trilogy of EPs, leading up to their debut album, Mirrorland. The EP features production from Swish, Groove, Anonxmous, Insightful, and Johnny Venus. It features a guest appearance from SiR.
Nicole Lizée is a Canadian composer of contemporary music. She was born in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan and received a MMus from McGill University. She lives in Montreal, Quebec. At one time, she was a member of The Besnard Lakes, an indie rock band from Montreal.
Alex M. Lee (artist) is an American and South Korean artist who lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona. He is assistant professor of animation at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design & Art and faculty affiliate at ASU's Mesa City Media and Immersive eXperience Center (MIX). His work uses 3D animation, game engines and virtual reality to explore temporality, language, perception and human interpretation in our technological society. His work has been presented at the Goethe Institut, SIGGRAPH, Toronto Digifest, anti-utopias amongst other international venues.
