The flawlessness of code captivates; the human touch moves. In a landscape where digital production and software have achieved extraordinary levels of precision and expressive capabilities, analog gestures find new ways to enrich the sonic narrative. Under the alias SEULEMENT, canadian musician, visual artist, and composer Mathieu Arsenault proposes a tactile coexistence with equipment: a space where hand-printed cutouts, artisanal capture, and the human voice contribute that measure of texture and organic inaccuracy to the code's architecture. Vindicating manual detail is not a battle against the digital but a conceptual statement on human intervention and an exploration of bodily vulnerability in the age of technological perfection and artificial intelligence.

Next Friday, August 7th, SEULEMENT will perform at Artlab as part of AVANT MUTEK.AR, the series that anticipates the eighth edition of the festival—to be held in October—strengthening and fostering the dialogue between Montreal's digital scene and Argentina. Known as the frontman of the electronic rock band Technical Kidman, and with a practice that now extends to film, dance, and experimental albums, Arsenault returns to the city with a unique and hypnotic show: his acclaimed live A/V performance Bricolage Architecture.

The Laboratory of the Tangible

In front of Artlab's screen, Arsenault dismantles the illusion of automated perfection. His work does not seek to dispense with modern tools but to subject them to the filter of the body on stage: there, Mathieu explores the transformative potential of the human voice in digital contexts, using his own voice as raw material, shaping and deconstructing vocal recordings until transforming them into meticulous sonic architectures. The vocal gesture acts as the primary generator through loops that dialogue with flute fragments, processed in real time as a living interface that gives shape to the acoustic signal right in front of the audience.

But the exploration of the physical does not end with the performance on stage. Instead of hiding the production seams or taking refuge in pre-fabricated digital finishes, Arsenault chooses to expose the marks of the entire process. To understand the visual impact echoing off the screen, one must take several steps back and look at the place where the raw material is crafted.

Craftsmanship in Motion

SEULEMENT's proposal is the result of a constant audio-visual evolution, transitioning from the impact of electronic rock in his early days toward an organic minimalism that reveals new dimensions and textures. There is something of a solitary alchemy in the genesis of Bricolage Architecture. Before the sound resonates through the room, the piece begins with patient manual labor: Mathieu Arsenault cuts, assembles, and photographs paper and cardboard cutouts. Frame by frame, these models are captured to construct animated sequences whose speed creates a flickering sensation.

This flicker illusion is achieved by photographing the shapes and their cutouts separately on a light table, creating layers and a play of shadows on the flat surface. It is precisely in this artisanal process where error gains value, as the artist himself explains: “Creating black and white frames separately invites more alignment irregularities, which, as I explained earlier, is quite welcomed in this work.”

Once on stage, facing the giant screen, that image archive takes on a second life. In his live A/V show, Arsenault manipulates, processes, and synchronizes that audiovisual material in real time while performing live music. In this way, Bricolage Architecture unfolds a deep sensory experience where the warmth of manual work and the intensity of the electronic signal end up speaking the very same language: that of resistance against absolute technical perfection.

Workbook

Facing the widespread idea that machines produce a perfection devoid of errors, SEULEMENT's proposal offers a revaluation of the human gesture. In Bricolage Architecture, beyond questioning the idea of perfection, the artist positions irregularity as a living force that actively resists standardization, turning the error into a feature of intimate sensitivity: “In my work, I attempt to invest these irregularities as a vector of humanity. In each of the cardboard tears lies the tragedy of a body trying to achieve an idea of perfection but failing.”

Fortunate Accidents

The conceptual origin of his stop-motion approach—the frame-by-frame animation technique using real objects—was born out of a funny paradox: when starting the project, the artist used to joke with friends, saying he was trying to make a cardboard version of complex, hyper-precise digital works. However, after failing to emulate the precision of machine-made imagery, he began to view his own limitations as the central subject of the work.

In this way, the impossibility of imitating the machine turned the entire performance into a "fortunate accident."

Organic Synchronicity

This audiovisual integration turns the performance into a living, unrepeatable framework. Far from the cold reproduction of a pre-designed file, SEULEMENT's show breathes and recalibrates itself in front of the viewer, reminding us that the true value of electronic art lies not in the system's flawlessness but in the latent tension between the creator and the technological environment.

Although the flashing, intermittent nature of the work might feel challenging at first contact, the proposal operates as an open invitation to let go and inhabit the experience through the body, understanding that the technical display seeks not to overwhelm but to move. Ultimately, his work demonstrates that opposing the rigidity of the algorithm does not require disconnecting from the present but reclaiming it: finding the art of humanizing what is flawed is, at the end of the day, our ultimate and most authentic form of resistance. A vital reminder that, as Mathieu aptly synthesizes, “Beyond the intensity of the proposition, the connexion I am trying to make is first and foremost always deeply emotional.”

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