Max Boutin

Hexagram, L’Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

The skateboarder is like the diamond of a record player, rolling on the textured ground of the city. He follows trajectories in which his encounter with the material produces sounds and rhythms with a unique musicality. The urban space is like an immense vinyl record whose arrangements only ask to be skated, to make a sensitive experience, of sliding and friction, an experience of urban dérive.

Texturologie vibratoire is an experiential installation that proposes to see, hear, and feel this materiality through the skateboarder’s point of view, and his Instrument.

It is composed of a wooden haptic floor, equipped with tactile transducers, a video projection of the skateboard subjectivity on a concrete screen, then, long shots of the spots, video projected on another screen. They work together as a triptych, presenting a few Montreal skatespots, in a 26-minutes loop.

This dispositive is a superposition of the urban space’s sonic ambiance, the skatesounds on its surfaces, and the tactile experience of the board, felt on the vibrating module, in the feet. The visitor skates through the work, virtually.

Around the installation are placed a few Texturologies (prints), a series of performative embossings of textures, made by the act of skateboarding on Arches paper 300 g/m2. The sheets are mounted on plexiglass, on microphone stands, at knees height.

This work is linked to “The skatesound Paradox” presented by Brian Glenney, Paul O’Connor and Max Boutin in the “Senses at Leisure and in play” panel, the 6th of May 2023