Residency Focus: COAXIAL: Recontextualized in Immersive Spaces
Jess Conn-Potegal is a Montreal-based sound artist, musician, and DJ. His work centers on intuitive collaboration as a means of sonic exploration, drawing from his background in house music and percussive performance. His curatorial work uses atmospheric auditory practice to create custom sonic environments for collaborators and audiences internationally.
Conn-Potegal’s initial Research Residency was conducted in collaboration with JRSP Executive Director Karun Koernig. That investigation culminated in the report Sculpture in Elastic Space, which explored live musical performance in situ at the JRSP and treated Rubinoff’s sculpture park itself as an active collaborator in the making of sound.
On returning to the JRSP in July 2024, Conn-Potegal shifted from musical composition toward organic soundscape. Working with fellow sound artist Daniela O’Fee, he developed the collaborative sound work Coaxial: Collaborative Sound Exploration and Field Recordings, investigating the sonic environment of the sculpture park in relation to Hornby Island more broadly.
Project focus
• Place-based collaborative fieldwork, embodied listening, and sound gathering/making practice.
• Process-focused improvisation and environmental attunement.
• Walking, touching, and listening through landscape and sculpture, tuning to steel, wind, water, and time.
The process brought together sculpture immersion, forest soundwalks, pond listening, and dawn field recording. Using spatial array techniques, ambisonics, hydrophones, contact microphones, and percussive objects, Conn-Potegal captured both micro- and macro-scale acoustic systems across sculpture, workshop, water, and landscape.
In 2025, he developed and presented COAXIAL: Recontextualized in Immersive Spaces – Collaboratively Sounding Sculpture and Landscape on Hornby Island, exploring how immersive playback could transform the Hornby recordings into a new “sound-place” while emphasizing the material resonance of both sculpture and environment.
Jess Conn-Potegal is a Montreal-based sound artist, musician, and DJ whose work centers on intuitive collaboration as a means of sonic exploration. Drawing from house music, percussion, field recording, and immersive spatial audio, he creates projects that connect sculpture, landscape, listening, and embodied sound practice.
