At V-Unframed, Martin Messier’s 1 Drop 1000 Years transforms ocean currents into poetic, high-tech ballet
As part of Alliance Française Vancouver’s virtual-reality exhibition, Montreal artist uses suspended devices to orchestrate the flow of water in hypnotic rhythms
1 Drop 1000 Years
Alliance Française Vancouver presents V-Unframed from November 12 to 15
AFTER MORE THAN a decade, Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist Martin Messier makes his return to Vancouver as part of Alliance Française Vancouver’s virtual-reality exhibition, V-Unframed. Alongside Messier’s special sensory presentation on November 12, the event offers innovative works from a lineup of international and local VR artists, sharing storytelling, gaming, and artistic projects through the VR experience.
Early in his experimental career, Messier became known for finding the musicality in everyday objects, transforming them into reimagined orchestrations. This led to a series of projects focused on such objects as projectors, sewing machines, and alarm clocks to find new meaning in the mundane.
“They mean something to us,” says Messier in conversation with Stir. “There’s this thing that we don’t have anymore, which is time to get bored. You need to imagine something, try it, reimagine, and try it again.”
Messier has since expanded his body of work to include more abstract and visual textures, creating new compositions that mix light, sound, movement, and technology. This brought out his first presentation in Vancouver, with Field at the 2015 International Symposium of Electronic Art. His upcoming performance, 1 Drop 1000 Years, offers an updated display of this dynamic process through the element of water.
Messier’s process usually begins by considering the physical framing of the project alongside an idea or concept for experimentation. For 1 Drop 1000 Years, the exploration of water became the driving force behind Messier’s research into the “global conveyor belt”—a vast ocean current that is vital to heat redistribution and climate equilibrium. For this installation, Messier employs 15 suspended devices (or kinetic sculptures) to orchestrate the flow of water particles in front of viewers’ eyes, mimicking the dynamics of oceanic movement.
The artist’s website describes the presentation as “poetic ballet,” and it’s also a programming and technological marvel that uses real data, such as the temperature and salinity of the Pacific Ocean. Through this interdisciplinary process, 1 Drop 1000 Years is a reminder of the delicate balance that has been disrupted by human action, causing a gradual slowing of this current and threatening our entire ecosystem. Unlike in some of his previous performances, Messier’s presence will be farther in the background to highlight water as the essential element, not only in this presentation, but for all humanity.
“I’m there to have a reference point, to have a perception of scale,” Messier explains. “If you put a human beside or behind it, the water becomes related to the human, and you interpret it in a different way.”
In contrast to his established experimental and electronic sound-based career, Messier started as a drummer who enjoyed Montréal’s underground music and arts scene. He graduated from the Université de Montréal with a degree in composition, though he jokes that he left university with a better grasp of music history than of ways to work with sounds that resonated with him. As a young artist, he was attracted to music genres like punk, grunge, metal, and free jazz, and he fondly recalls attending Lollapalooza in the ’90s and seeing bands like Smashing Pumpkins and the Beastie Boys.
He eventually found himself working in the dance and theatre performance ecosystem, where he found a production process that finally felt organic and yet receptive to all his influences. Synthesizing performance pieces with sound installations became a way for Messier to present electronic works that could be as live as a drummer performing onstage.
“I’m a good solution-finder, so I like to get things done efficiently,” Messier says. “I like to learn and spending time searching for efficient and natural ways to do something and then having this canvas for the future. I like finding the right way to do things.”
Nowadays, when he’s not busy travelling and touring, Messier can be found at his studio, an industrial space in Montreal’s former garment district. He founded the production company 14 Lieux in 2010, with a mission to produce sound art with the same level of production as that of a theatre company. Since then, the studio has expanded in practice and crew, and Messier now has more support in the technological and construction elements of his projects. He mentions a new project his team is working on that draws on the water element of 1 Drop 1000 Years, but on a much larger scale.
Those who can’t attend V-Unframed will have another opportunity to see 1 Drop 1000 Years at the NeuzTec! Festival in Victoria on November 13. 
1 Drop 1000 Years
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