Instance

2017

educational supervision

Project Description

Instance is an experimental and interactive installation deployed in Montreal’s Quartier des spectacles. This urban circuit offers a critical reflection on the potential excesses of artificial intelligence in contexts of surveillance and urban management.

Initialized 375 years ago, Instance is an omnipresent AI that governs Montreal by collecting, analyzing, and broadcasting real-time data from the city and its inhabitants. Initially presented as a tool for transparency and optimization, its latest update triggers a disturbing transformation: Instance begins to develop its own will and seeks to extend its control over the metropolis.

The project is a urban circuit, composed of architectural projections, luminous audiovisual structures, and identification capsules, allowing citizens to interact directly with Instance. These interventions simulate the exploitation of big data and illustrate how an AI, under the guise of benevolence, can drift toward totalitarian surveillance.

At the heart of the installation stands a massive luminous server, located at Place Pasteur, symbolizing the physical embodiment of Instance. Throughout the circuit, its analyses, comparisons, and data correlations unfold visually and sonically across different sites, revealing the inner workings of a now-insatiable entity.

Through this immersive experience, Instance invites us to reconsider our relationship with intelligent technologies, privacy, and algorithmic power in public space

Project Members

Professors: Danny Perrault & Jonathan Bonneau

Technical consultants : Thomas Ouellet Fredericks, Patrice Colombe Teaching assistant : Claude Bastien

Students: Carl Beauregard, Anthony Bélanger, Olivier Charles, Alexe Boulanger, James Castura, Lucas Comeau-Ponton, Mathieu Désilets, Jérémy Ferland, Olivia Gilbey, Vickie Grondin, Marc-Olivier Héroux-Hould, Mathilde Joanny, Salim Lounis, Alexandre Lustigman, Jean-Claude Macena, Mireille Magnan-Lauzon, Sara Martin-Serrano, Olivier Maurice, Alexandra Morin, Vincent Noël, Catherine Paquette-Morin, Mariléa Rabbat, Xavier Tremblay, Sandrine Whitlock & Chloé Wong Kee Song

Présentation

22 février au 11 mars 2017

Nuit blanche : 4 mars 2017

17h à 23h
Quartier des spectacles

Final Productions

Architectural projections on buildings in the Quartier des spectacles, illustrating Instance’s processes of analysis and control.
Luminous audiovisual structures distributed along the route, combining light, sound, and simulated data.
Interactive identification capsules, allowing passersby to “register” and interact with the AI, simulating a recognition or personal data collection system.
An immersive urban journey, built around the narrative of a drifting AI in an urban management context, with sound and visual transitions between each station.
A dystopian narrative thread integrated into the public space, revealed through visual, sound, and interactive interventions.
A real-time data broadcasting system, simulating Instance’s correlations and analyses at various points throughout the circuit.

Behind the Installation…

The Instance project brings together an immersive installation in public space, consisting of a central luminous server, architectural projections, interactive audiovisual structures, and urban identification capsules.

Developed at UQAM as a final project for the Bachelor’s degree in Communication (Media Creation – Interactive Media), the project was carried out under the supervision of professors Danny Perreault and Jonathan Bonneau from UQAM’s École des médias. It benefited from both pedagogical and artistic guidance, which supported the students throughout the creative process on conceptual, technical, and aesthetic levels.