Fiac: the Digital is Off
Our visit to Champs Elysées and even to Slick led us to write wrongly that Digital Art was very discrete this year. The scene is totally different at the Fiac-Off. We shall give more precisions later, but begin here with a list of the artists present.
- All the artists are French but Arikan, Sommerer and Venieri
- Nearly all the artists were known, but two thirds of the works are recent (2012-2011), proving the vitality of the field.
- New (at least for diccan) arists : Burak Alikan, Julie Morel, Flavier Théry, Lyda Venieri.
- Among the absent ones, one can quote : Jean-Pierre Balpe, Maurice Benayoun, Fred Forest, Hugo Verlinde, Catherine Nyeki.
The works presented in the "Show-Off"
Burak Arikan (Turkey) : Burö (2000-2012). Both interactive software and prints. Apparently abstract, resembling Zagega generative art, but with reference to social issues. This artist was up to now unknown in France. His works deserves attention due to the graphic quality and and theoretical reflexion about images and society beyond them.
- Samuel Bianchini : Keywords (2011), All Over (2009). Scientist as well as artist if not philosopher. Keywords elaborates around the "key" concept. All over plays with typographical printing, a reference to vintage computer works.
- Christophe Bruno : Fascinum (2001). Real time display of the most looked at news pictures on the web. "A panoptic vision of topics which fasninate mankind". That recalls the basic Internet search of Maurice Benayoun in his Mechanics of Emotion. Will Bruno, like Benayoun, extend this kind of exploration to transmedia applications ? That would be a natural extension of his performance/networking rorientation.
- France Cadet : Hunting Trophies (2008), Gaude Mihi (2009), Anatomies (2010). This last work, serigraphics to be stracthec, is a funny, clever and evocative graphic transposition of the know robotic works of this artist.
- Grégory Chatonsky : The Forest I (2009), The Forest II (2011). Here also, external data are real-time transformed in graphics and sounds. In Forest II, the work includes the artist's hand, tied to a robot. Here again, like Bruno, a work of art takes the Net as a nearly infinite, and constantly changing source of new forms and emotions. The good old Nature of the landscape painters gives up one's seat to the cyberspace.
- Miguel Chevalier : Silène luminaris sive Muflier de Borges (2011). A rather long title for these typically Chevalier vegetals... but that conveys the soft dry odor of an herbarium. As it is hung near the Ballets Quantiques by Schmitt, the comparison is striking between these two forms of generative algorithmic art. You could a well hand a Monet landscape just on the side of a Malevich black square.
- Pascal Dombis : Post-Digital Mirror (K A3, K A4, KA1). Generative images, but the documentation does not let easily understand the generative logic. It looks more like and optical play with layered mirrors.
- Reynald Drouhin : Gridflow (2012) (a version of). Another series of works based on the web, here from RSS feeds.
- Félicie d'Estienne d'Orves : Monolithe (2010). Multimedia ?
- Christian Globensky : Valise-Paradis (2011), 1490 (2011). A militant artist, with symbolic works.
- David Guez : Hard disk on paper series ( La Bible, Ancien Testament (2011), a reflexion about perennial storage. Le voyage dans la lune (2012)), Radio 2067, Telephone 2067
- Eduardo Kac : Featherless (2006). This work takes place into the "GFP Bunny series", with transgenic animals.
- David Letellier : Versus (2011). Two sculptures in dialogue. Large (around 1m diameter) contraptions of steel and black glass, moving slowly.
- Julien Levesque : Face à Face (2009). You can see the work on the net. A play on blurring, in quest of mystery.
- Albertine Meunier & Julien Levesque : Croisements (2011). Our ways are crossing, the work "is an object that measures, real time, the distance between Albertine and Julien.
- Albertine Meunier : My Google search history (2006-2011). The title speaks for itself. Text and graphics.
- Julie Morel : Le E dans l'autre (2009). A kind of rather rare digital art : play with texts and letters.
- Joseph Nechvatal : Anus (2011). The artists keeps up on his quest about life and digital images.
- Stéfane Perraud :
- Maïa (2009). LEDs on a cranium
- Modifié #02 Soja (2009). LED's as metaphor of plants...
- Lignes de faille (2011), LEDs, gold, paper.
- Héraldique (2011). Print and etching.
- Olivier Ratsi : Darty v2, Y's v2 et Sanyo v3. Graphical deconstruction of architecture.
- RYBN : ADM8 (2011) A stockexchange trading robot designed ans shown as a work of art.
- Antoine Schmitt : Ballets Quantiques 100:811 (2011). This work is the most abstract research of Schmitt, mathematical an as little figurative as possible. Hung near the bright flowers of Chevalier, it demandes to the spectator some mental effort. It is the kind of work that would benefit of explanations of the spot, for those who have not had the pleasure to get explanations from the author himself.
Schmitt is also present in Fiac Grand Palais and at Schlick.
- Michael Sellam : What you called the dark is golden for me (2012), Expérience de physique quantique après l'école (2010). Experimental ?
- Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau : The Value of Art (2010). It is a derisive work : a small printer gives out a tape with the time spent in front of the work par spectators, and converts into dollars. Like the small and both funny and slightly disgusting typewriter shown in Karlruhe, this work tends to show that Sommerer & Miignonneau are not, presentely, producing large works with ecological evocations, but concentrate on limited topics. Can we hope that they will find again, in the future, new projects more in scale with the wide openings expressed in their book Interface Cultures, Artistic Aspcets of Interaction (Springer 2008) (with D. King).
- Société Réaliste (France) : Universal Position & Universal Date (2012). A kind of graphic philosophical reflexion about "universal".
- Flavien Théry : Les contraires 1 (2012), Les contraires 2 (2012). More an experimental work on light and liquid crystal screens that art proper. But one could say the same as famed artistgs like Albers and his experiments on color.
- Lydia Venieri : The supper (2012), Moonlight (2010). Something between painting and photography, using digital tools. Richly semantic.
-Du Zhenjun : Vent, Tour de Babel et Vent (2010). A sort of digital Brueghel...
Congratulations to Dominique Moulon, who so managed to gather all our French stars, some foreign artists and some newer artists. His book Art contemporain, nouveaux médias (Nouvelles Editions Scala, 2011), remains a short (128 pages) but dense and mind stimulating reference about digital art.
The works presented in Yia Art Fair
A little farther from Champs-Elysées, Yia Art Fair (Website) presented two digital artists :
- Van_Eetvelde Catharina. Perhaps the most original of this year 2012. With geometrical drawings, possibily in part generated by computers, and sometimes transformed into films, with iPad applications in view.
- Kasper Sonne. Danish. Mainly a painter, on large black surfaces, but sometimes with text. This year, on the ground, a small untitled work, a black screen showing a succession of phrases, the last word of each one determining the first of the next one. A deterministic approach, not random. If that implied a meaning, we did not find, but certainly not the rosy way, this artist given the main place to a dark view of the world... though another shown work, Borderline (2012) placed light bulbs on a large metal grating. Somehow the end of the tunnel ?
And nothing at Chic Art Fair
This show was to be hosted by the Cité de la Mode et du Design (Quai d'Austerlitz). But it has been canceled. It's a pity, since "couture" and clothes design are interesting domains for digital technologies (Sed fabric in diccan).
10/22/2012
DICCAN'S PARTNERS:
Paris ACM Siggraph, the French chapter of ACM Siggraph, worldwide non-profit organization of computer graphics.
Les Algoristes, an association of artists using their own algorithms in their work.
