George Rahi | Artist Talk + Opening Reception

Public Display: November 13 – December 20, 2025

Opening Reception + Artist Talk
Monday, November 17

Artist Talk: 5:30 – 6:30pm
Reception: 6:30 – 8:00pm

Background
Welcome our latest Art & Technology Artist in Residence, George Rahi, at New Media Gallery. This six month artist residency has provided George unprecedented access to New Media Gallery’s extensive equipment and expert staff, allowing him the opportunity to transform the gallery’s entire exhibition space into a unique art installation.

George Rahi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territories. He works with experimental instruments and technologies as a method of exploring acoustic and digital anomalies, modes of listening, spatial and architectural thinking. His work includes installations, instrument making, composition, solo and ensemble performance, and works for radio, theatre, and public spaces.

This display presents two of Rahi’s installations. Created during his Art & Technology Residency, Watershed Moments invites visitors into a sound installation shaped by the sounds and cycles of the so-called Fraser River. Drawing on Maryanne Amacher’s idea of ‘perceptual geography’ where listening extends beyond the individual ear into an environment of relations and resonances, the work explores how water shapes the contours of perception, place, and time.

The second work, Decoy, reflects on the power and lure of imitation in sound reproduction technologies. Using a self-constructed birdsong machine, the work delves into the history of technological listening through a constellation of mechanical, acoustic, and digital devices whose differing logics of representation converge in a single environment to create a surreal form of imitation. Accompanying this perceptual decoy is a video work that presents the uncanniness of this birdsong in another register: the artificial ecologies of built environments such as the Bloedel Conservatory.