Chloe Marchal

“Concordia is good at giving you opportunities for non-traditional learning that’s not just being in the classroom.”

Chloe Marchal is an experimentalist. After finding inspiration in her Anthropology courses, she began pursuing a second program in Intermedia to explore artmaking and AI technology. As a 2023-2024 Undergraduate Fellow at Concordia’s Milieux Institute, Chloe dives headfirst into interdisciplinary research that combines art with social sciences.

Why did you decide to study a second program?

I’m in my last year of Honours in Anthropology but my first year of Intermedia. You have a lot of space to explore in Anthropology, so I was doing a lot of work on digital culture and visual media. I had a class on media ethnography, and something clicked for me. I realized I wanted to be in that field myself, so I applied to major in Intermedia as well.

What is Intermedia like compared to Anthropology?

I had always wanted to do an art program, but I didn’t have a topic that I wanted to explore. But then I found inspiration through my classes. I did a research project about AI and how it relates to creative industries. I was exploring how it feels to be a student studying art who is told that AI is going to take over. In the spirit of Intermedia, I’m being very experimental because I have no idea where the project is going to go. I want there to be a visual component, and I’m running a workshop about AI this week with students from a bunch of different programs.

What’s the workshop you’re running?

It’s part of my undergraduate thesis. It’s an interdisciplinary workshop for students to get together and talk about AI. There are people coming from different backgrounds, from engineering to fine arts. We’ll discuss what AI is, how we feel about it and the image that people have of AI in their programs. We’re not experts, and AI can feel a bit inaccessible sometimes if you don’t know the math behind it. But I’m trying to prove that you can still engage with AI through other perspectives, which is important when you consider its social sustainability. As students we can feel powerless over AI, but we can use the tools we’ve been given through our programs to think critically about it.

What are you involved with outside of the classroom?

I’m an undergraduate fellow at the Milieux Institute and I also go to events like Cinema Politica, which is a socio-political film screening and discussion series. At the last one, they brought in Alanis Obomsawin to talk about film. She’s a huge figure in Indigenous filmmaking and gave great advice about making films that was relevant for Anthropology as well.

I've recently joined the executive team of the Sociology and Anthropology Student Association (SASU), where I’ve become involved in the student strikes against the Quebec government’s tuition increase for out-of-province students. We host general assemblies in which we vote on whether we as a department will join the strike or not. As an out-of-province student myself, I would love for other out-of-province students to have the same opportunities that I've had.

What do you do with the Milieux Institute?

I’m an undergraduate fellow and the idea is that you join a group that aligns with your research interests. I've always wanted to be in the kind of environment where there's tons of people who share my interests. At Milieux, everyone's doing research and they refer to it as being “in the lab”. Concordia is good at giving you opportunities for non-traditional learning that’s not just being in the classroom.

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