Daniel Canty

Daniel Canty is a Montréal-based writer and film director who works in literature, film, theatre and design, and new media. Canty collaborated with the pioneering multimedia studio DNA Media in Vancouver, and directed the inaugural issues of Horizon Zero, the Banff New Media Institute’s website on the digital arts in Canada.

Canty’s first book, Êtres Artificiels (Liber, 1997), explores the cultural history of automatons in American literature. He is also the author of the genre-bending novel Wigrum (La Peuplade, 2011; translated by Oana Avasilichioaei, Talonbooks, 2013) and has devised several award-winning collaborative books: Cité selon (2006), La Table des Matières (2007), and Le Livre de Chevet (2009), reflecting on urban life, gastronomy, and sleep. From 2002 to 2005, he co-directed the poetry magazine C’est Selon.

His film work includes the oneiric Cinema for the Blind (2010) and Longuay (2012), which blends the gaze of an ancient French abbey with that of a tablet computer. He also conceives poetic interfaces for the web and live installations, including Bruire (2013), a voice-activated poetry-reciting machine, and the libretto for Operator (2012), an alphanumeric automaton by Mikko Hynninen.

Canty has held residencies at Green College (UBC), Passa Porta (Brussels), and Simon Fraser University. He currently teaches dramatic writing at the National Theatre School of Canada and event design at Université du Québec à Montréal.