exPhrasis, as its title suggests, is an exploration of movement and space rendered through words, image and sound. The exhibition features three original and web-based artworks from digital media artists, embedded and integrated in an environment designed in collaboration with the curatorial team.
exPhrasis will bring together artworks exploring different modes and methods available to convey and represent movement and space and aims to question and expand our conceptions of motion in digital space. Founded on the tradition of text-based adventure games or interactive fictions, exPhrasis requires active engagement from viewers who “interact” with different elements of the exhibition. To move through the exhibition, gain information from non-player characters (NPC), and to engage with the artworks, the viewer must enter textual commands as the space reveals itself through text.
Questions guiding the curatorial approach:
How does one translate movement through text or other mediums in such a way that it can be felt? To what effect? What are other ways in which movement through space is felt? How do other senses contribute to the sensation of movement? What are the implications for this now porous membrane between the digital exhibition space and the viewer’s own physical environment? How exactly does the viewer’s physical person bridge the gap between digital and physical spaces?

Alexandra L Martin (she/her) is a researcher and doctoral student specializing in digital literary arts, living and working in the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke. Since 2019 she has worked at the Laboratoire NT2 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she also collaborates as a curator, notably on the exhibition S’éclipser | Phases of Resilience (2020) for the HTMlles Festival as well as Trans[creation] (2021), and exPhrasis (2022) launching at ELO2022. Her research centres on digital and organic networks of communities and the question of communal memory. Alexandra employs an ecocritical approach to her research and curatorial work, emphasizing the experiential process of reading or consuming digital art and the transformative power of this process over physical and digital spaces.

Université du Québec à Montréal

martin.alexandra@uqam.ca

exphrasis.com