Sabrina Ratté

3D animation by Sabrina Ratté

Experimental research and dissemination documentary about current contemporary art that compiles the opinions, experiences and anecdotes of artists, gallery owners, curators, museum directors and experts.

Machine for Living is a project elaborated in the context of a 9 month residency at Château Ephémère (Carrière-sous-Poissy, France). The video series investigates the architecture of the new towns (Villes nouvelles) and brutalist habitation buildings in the surroundings of Paris. Cities such as Noisy-le-Grand, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Créteil, Grigny, Cergy-Pontoise, Nanterre and Ivry-sur-Seine were at the center of this research. Created using photographs, 3D animation and video synthesizer, Machine for living combines documentation and abstraction and straddles the line between utopia and dystopia.

A female Neuroscience Researcher develops a rare form of melophobia after receiving an unsolicited portable media player loaded with music for testing in her laboratory and experiencing a musical Stendhal Syndrome. Witnessing her colleagues' strangely changing behavior over repeated exposure to the same piece of music, she flees to find shelter from the pervasive sounds of music in her environment and an increasingly frightening world.

Machine for Living is a project elaborated in the context of a 9 month residency at Château Ephémère (Carrière-sous-Poissy, France). The video series investigates the architecture of the new towns (Villes nouvelles) and brutalist habitation buildings in the surroundings of Paris. Cities such as Noisy-le-Grand, Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Créteil, Grigny, Cergy-Pontoise, Nanterre and Ivry-sur-Seine were at the center of this research. Created using photographs, 3D animation and video synthesizer, Machine for living combines documentation and abstraction and straddles the line between utopia and dystopia.

"Littoral Zones peaks around the corner of an entryway – looking out over the threshold and seeing a world of crystalline light anticipating our departure. But the room spins with our uncertainty to exit, and with each turn the light in the doorway becomes all the more enticing. The marvelousness of the light compels us to keep turning, but when the video settles on departure we find ourselves confronted with a multitude of paths, each more complex and inviting than the last." - Nicholas O'Brien

3D animation by Sabrina Ratté

Undream depicts an imagined future where utopia and dystopia collapse, inspired by the photomontages of Superstudio – a major force in the Radical architecture and design movement of the late 1960s. Undream leads the viewer through an isolated landscape, overhung by a monumental structure. The architecture morphs between impossible surfaces and underlying order, interfering with the landscape as it undulates in and out of existence. Swept up in this movement, we are suspended in an impossible abandoned territory between the built environment and the natural world.

Are we flying through the perspective of mutated drones/bees, sounding like motors, and being attracted to the flowers growing on that strange, fleshy, breathing motorcycle? Is it a breathing motorcycle, or is it the ghostly sound of its long-gone driver’s breath that still echoes in the wind?

“Without the “other”, we do not survive. Our symbiotic, interactive, interdependent past is connected through animated waters.” - Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet

A special commission for the POP Montreal 2012 Auroratone Project.

"In Landfall, viewers are surrounded by a purple-hued jaunt across the hills and valleys of synthesized countryside. Moments of geometric clarity flicker into view, showing the façade of a building or the corner of an imagined site. However, as these features and forms come into view, their rearrangements and reconfigurations reinforce an ambivalent feeling toward their construction and usefulness. As the upper half of the video becomes occupied by a ceiling of stripped stalactites, the glimmers of architecture become more pronounced, playing off the features of the space that has formed around us. " - Nicholas O'Brien

The project examines our relationship with AI and its ability to reflect human psychological projections. Its title evokes a mental landscape shaped by the interaction between humans and machines while paying homage to the cyberculture of the 1980s-1990s, a period when technology was envisioned as a means to transcend space, time, and materiality. By integrating the unpredictable transformations generated by AI while preserving the artist’s aesthetic, the work reveals visions that are both sublime and unsettling, reflecting an Anthropocene-marked future. Cyberdelia seeks to re-enchant reality by weaving connections between technology and nature, individual destiny and collective experience.

Inflorescences unfolds in an hypothetical future, where plants, mushrooms, and unfamiliar critters have undergone mutations to exist in symbiosis with electronic waste. These life forms emerge from what we perceive as inert and forgotten remnants, and continue to evolve and foster new relationships with the ecosystem. Inflorescences portrays a world devoid of humans, yet its evolution is shaped by the remains they left behind. As part of the project, four sculptures are crafted from electronic waste, incorporating screens and lights that evoke the entities depicted in the videos, offering a glimpse into the future of these discarded objects.

The double reality, that of shadows and that of objects, which manifests itself in time, light and space.

Immeuble-Villas is an ongoing series of abstract interior spaces where electronic textures and architectural elements are subtly animated. The series references Le Corbusier’s standardization of apartment buildings. Each video loop is meant to be displayed as tableaux on individual screens.

Inflorescences takes place in a hypothetical future, where plants, mushrooms and unknown critters will have mutated to live in symbiosis with abandoned objects. Questioning the definition of the living, this project explores forms of life that emerge from what we consider inert, forgotten scraps that continue to evolve and generate new relationships with the ecosystem. Inflorescences portrays a world without humans, but whose evolution is shaped by their remains. As part of the project, 3 sculptures are created from electronic waste, where a screen and lights come to suggest the entities present in the videos, a vision of the future of these objects left behind.

Inflorescences takes place in a hypothetical future, where plants, mushrooms and unknown critters will have mutated to live in symbiosis with abandoned objects. Questioning the definition of the living, this project explores forms of life that emerge from what we consider inert, forgotten scraps that continue to evolve and generate new relationships with the ecosystem. Inflorescences portrays a world without humans, but whose evolution is shaped by their remains. As part of the project, 3 sculptures are created from electronic waste, where a screen and lights come to suggest the entities present in the videos, a vision of the future of these objects left behind.

Activated Memory is a journey through a serene landscape where the trees and fields are at once surreal and familiar.Through the use of video feedback, 3d animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of "reality" subsist.

Immeuble-Villas is an ongoing series of abstract interior spaces where electronic textures and architectural elements are subtly animated. The series references Le Corbusier’s standardization of apartment buildings. Each video loop is meant to be displayed as tableaux on individual screens.