Adam Basanta (born 1985) is a

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

-based

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, th ...

and experimental

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

whose practice investigates manifestations of technology as a meeting point of concurrent and overlapping systems. He uses various media (installation, kinetic sculpture, sound, computational image-making) and creates participatory and multi-sensory performances.

Biography

Adam Basanta was born in

Tel-Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...

in 1985. He was raised in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

and lives and works in Montreal since 2010. He holds a BFA in music composition from

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

(Vancouver) and an interdisciplinary Research-Creation Master in fine arts from

Concordia University Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...

(Montreal). Since 2015, his works have been exhibited in galleries and institutions internationally. He is represented by ELLEPHANT Gallery, Montreal, and his work can be found in the institutional collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec ( en, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), abbreviated as MNBAQ, is an art museum in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The museum is situated in Battlefield Park and is a complex consisting of four bui ...

, the

Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA; french: Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, MBAM) is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square ...

, and the Ville de Montréal, amongst others. Remaining active as an experimental composer and performer, his concert music, live performances, and sound recordings are presented worldwide. His music has been released on Kohlenstoff Records (

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

), Farmacia901 (

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

), Important Records/Cassauna (USA), and Kasuga Records (

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

). Adam Basanta is the recipient of numerous awards, including the

Sobey Art Award The Sobey Art Award is Canada's largest prize for young Canadian artists. It is named after Canadian businessperson and art collector Frank H. Sobey, who established The Sobey Art Foundation. It is an annual prize given to an artist 40 and under wh ...

in 2020, one of the most prestigious awards in Canadian art. In 2018, he received the Pierre-Ayot Prize for the best contemporary artist under 35 years of age working in Montreal.

Work

Basanta is known for his

sound sculptures Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary Artistic medium, medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in Cross-genre, hybrid forms. According t ...

and

sound installation Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...

works. His artistic process is intuitive and relies on finding a poetic union between the technical and the conceptual. He focuses on the organisation of changeable choreographies using found technologies, including microphones, speakers, kinetic systems and customised software.

''Art Survival Station'' (2020)

''Artist Survival Station'' is a 60-day performance and a series of

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

videos created in response to the financial, social, and emotional context of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020. It is a living sculpture that pays tribute to the process of DIY microgreens from building, seeding, harvesting, and even personal bicycle deliveries to members of Montreal’s artistic community. This project, as a long-term

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

, is an exercise of “re-commitment to sustainability in an era of late capitalism, knowledge gathering, and sharing in the atmosphere of online saturation, and to care and exchange with people in a moment where physical contact is not possible”. The system uses a

capitalistic Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private pr ...

logic in terms of efficiency, growth, and sustainable production while letting go of profit and power.

''Landscape Past Future'' (2019)

''Landscape Past Future'' offers a new perspective to

landscape painting Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compos ...

s. Each artwork is created from the pixels of existing digitized landscape paintings or photographs sourced from the online permanent collections of major Museums. The collected pixels are then arranged as a mosaic by means of custom software and machine learning to recreate the aura of an artistic period. This process reveals “specific details of historically significant works as well overarching statistical features” in the new image. In an era of overflowing digital images, ''Landscape Past Future'' highlights the pressing digital preservation of a disappearing natural world. Basanta’s impressions are summaries of artworks made into art.

''All We’d Ever Need is One Another (Trio)'' (2018)

''All We’d Ever Need is One Another (Trio)'' is a mixed-media installation composed of three flatbed scanners laid on their side and facing each other. The trio generates digital images independently of human input by scanning each other’s surface. The ambient light and shadows produced by the environment or the audience impacts the scanning result. A software then randomizes contrasts, luminosity, saturation, and colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow). Every newly generated image is studied by a series of deep-learning algorithms and compared to 1.5 million artworks issued from the database of

Artsy Artsy, formally known as Art.sy Inc is a New York City based online art brokerage. Its main business is developing and hosting website for numerous galleries as well as selling art for them. It utilizes a search engine and database to draw conn ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, and the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

of New York. When it matches an existing artwork beyond a 80% match, it is uploaded to a

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

page and a dedicated website. This experimental photographic installation touches on issues of copyright because the protection is granted according to justifications that cannot be applied to machines or AI.

''Curtain (White)'' (2016)

''Curtain (White)'' is a sound installation made of 240 pairs of white earbud

headphones Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an au ...

arranged as a 3 meters high curtain or waterfall. Patterns of white noise move across the curtain evoking “organic memories of waves, wind, rain, and insects.” In this sound installation Basanta reorganises the ubiquitous earbuds, without altering their materiality, and creates a context where ready-made technologies allow the audience to retreat from the external world into a single sound instance of temporality.

Career

Major solo exhibitions

2019 * ''The Unknown Future Rolls Towards Us''. HBK Braunschweig,

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the Nor ...

, Germany. * ''All We’d Ever Need Is One Another (Trio)''. Arsenal Contemporary Art

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Canada. * ''Landscape Past Future''. ELLEPHANT Gallery, Montreal,

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, Canada. * ''Ballet Pathétique''. Galerie Sans Nom.

Moncton Moncton (; ) is the most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of New Brunswick. Situated in the Petitcodiac River Valley, Moncton lies at the geographic centre of the The Maritimes, Maritime Provinces. The ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

, Canada. * ''A Large Inscription, A Great Noise''. Optica Centre d’Art Contemporain. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 2018 * ''All we’d ever need is one another''. ELLEPHANT Gallery, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * ''Variations on a Theme''. Galerie Bon Accueil,

Rennes Rennes (; br, Roazhon ; Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the Ille and the Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department ...

, France. 2017 * ''Variations on a Theme''. FOFA Gallery. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * ''Five Lines, Crossing''. Galerija SC.

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

. 2016 * ''A Room Listening to Itself''.

Gallery 1C03 Gallery 1C03 is the University of Winnipeg campus art gallery in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It opened in September 1986. The gallery has hosted more than 100 exhibitions and had over 125,000 visitors. Gallery 1C03 engages diverse communities thr ...

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

, Canada. * ''Inversion as literary device''. Galeria Skolska28.

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

. * ''Principle of Distance''. Museum of Transitory Art.

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

. 2015 * ''The sound of empty space''. Carroll/Fletcher Gallery.

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, UK. * ''Louder than a beating heart''. Titanik Galerie.

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

, Finland. * ''A room listening to itself''. Centre for Contemporary Arts - Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. * ''The sound of empty space''. Galerie B-312, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Significant group exhibitions

2021–2022 * ''Possible Futures''. Maison des arts de Laval, Salle

Alfred-Pellan Alfred-Pellan (formerly Duvernay and Laval East) is a federal electoral district in Quebec, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada since 1968. Its population in 2006 was 104,765. Geography The district includes the ...

Laval Laval means ''The Valley'' in old French and is the name of: People * House of Laval, a French noble family originating from the town of Laval, Mayenne * Laval (surname) Places Belgium * Laval, a village in the municipality of Sainte-Ode, Luxem ...

, Quebec, Canada. * ''A Truly Magical Moment''. "Data Dating" curated by Valentina Peri. IMAL,

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

. 2021 * ''Écran Total''. Centre de Design de l' UQAM, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * ''Artist Survival Station''. Parallel Lines, Phi Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 2019 * ''Joueuses / Joueurs''. Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * ''Nemo Biennial''.

Cité Internationale des Arts The Cité internationale des arts is an artist-in-residence building complex which accommodates artists of all specialities and nationalities in Paris. It comprises two sites, one located in the Marais and the other in Montmartre. Approximately ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, France. 2018 * ''Robot Love''. Van Abbemuseum,

Eindhoven Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,Fotomuseum Winterthur Fotomuseum Winterthur is a museum of photography in Winterthur, Switzerland. History The museum was founded in 1993 and is dedicated to photography as art form and document, and as a representation of reality. Fotomuseum Winterthur is an art g ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

Collections

* Collection of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (MBAM), Quebec, Canada. * Collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec, Canada. * Collection of the

(MNBAQ), Quebec, Canada. * Collection Majudia, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * Collection of the Ville de Montréal, Quebec, Canada. *

Munich Re Munich Re Group or Munich Reinsurance Company (german: Münchener Rück; Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft) is a German multinational insurance company based in Munich, Germany. It is one of the world's leading reinsurers. ERGO, a Muni ...

: Art Collection. * Collection of the Museum of Transitory Art (MoTA), Ljublijana, Slovenia.

Awards

* Winner ex-aquo, Sobey Art Awards 2020 (Quebec region), Ottawa, Canada. * Winner, Prix Pierre Ayot 2018. Ville de Montréal - Association des Galeries d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * Longlisted (Quebec region), Sobey Art Awards 2018, Ottawa, Canada. * Winner, Aesthetica Art Prize 2017, Aesthetica Magazine,

York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...

, UK. * Excellence Prize, 19th

Japan Media Arts Festival The Japan Media Arts Festival is an annual festival held since 1997 by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs. The festival begins with an open competition and culminates with the awarding of several prizes and an exhibition. Based on judging by ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, 2016. * Winner, Edith-Russ-Haus Awards for Emerging Media Artists 2014,

Oldenburg Oldenburg may also refer to: Places *Mount Oldenburg, Ellsworth Land, Antarctica *Oldenburg (city), an independent city in Lower Saxony, Germany **Oldenburg (district), a district historically in Oldenburg Free State and now in Lower Saxony *Olde ...

, Germany. * Finalist, Stephen and Claudine Bronfman Fellowship, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. * Honourable Mention. Prix

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...

2013, Hybrid Art category.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Basanta, Adam Living people 1985 births Canadian sound artists Canadian composers Canadian male composers Place of birth missing (living people) Israeli emigrants to Canada