Captatio oculi

Eléments displays the set-up that is commonly associated with media arts: in a darkened room, projectors project the recorded and transformed image of viewers on the walls. Numbering 4, these elements correspond to programming motifs often used in interactive installations: images accumulated in real time, a replaying of the recorded video sequences, a convolution effect which accompanies the outlines of viewers’ gestures, and an arbitrary colouring effect of the image on which the viewer can intervene. Circular like a camera obscura, pixelated like an 8-bit game, the projected images belong both to the analogue and digital regime and situate the work in direct relation to the viewer’s body. Just as the projection light turns off, the lighting of the exhibition room is turned on. This paradoxical dramatic surprise introduces a distanciation effect (Verfremdungseffekt)—made possible by foregrounding an artifice of the work—which obliges one to reread the piece and its effects.

Éléments was created in collaboration with Mathieu Bouchard.
 

On January 14, 2005, after a 7 year and 3 billion kilometre trip, the Huygens drone landed on Titan, a moon orbiting Saturn. This experiment carried out by the European Space Agency outlines a logbook of a never before visited region. To make this video the artist first programmed software to compile and organize the data of the Huygens probe’s voyage in graphic form. This software translates the various measurements taken by the 11 instruments aboard the Huygens into images. The title is a direct reference to the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, also known as the “Stargate” sequence. Douglas Trumbull shot this scene. Trumbulll was a technical illustrator for the NASA at the time Kubrick hired him. He devised the slit-scan technique, originally a photographic effect, which consists of combining long exposure times with a moving camera to create the illusion of forward movement. The Hugyens data is thus arranged graphically, and then compiled through an algorithm. Parameters such as speed, altitude, and the density of Titan’s atmosphere are analyzed and translated by the artist’s virtual imaging software.

Septième temps: latéral courbe (pour oeil seul) Vestion deux: Séquence is comprised of a central tower (52’’ H X 32’’ Diam.) which serves to record and project video images. There is a rotating platform on the upper part of the tower. From this platform a video projector projects an image of the exhibition room on the said exhibition room walls. To this end a camera is placed on the rotating platform for the filming. Subsequently, the same tower and its rotating platform is used to project the previously recorded images. During the shooting, Martin Boisseau is in the room and gives a talk about questions pertaining to exhibition spaces, to presence, to images as substitutes, their function and uses, mise en abyme, and the limits of language. The tower is made out of steel painted in black and equipped with an independent lighting system.

Flag is an installation that explores the concepts of choice, perception and identity. The work seeks to create an intimate connection between the artist and the public through an interactive experience. The viewer is invited to choose among a set of symbols and to display them under the watch of an active screen. The environment reacts by proposing an immersive narration that alternately produces surprise, judgement and acceptation. The signs chosen by the viewer become so many small screens on which fragments of stories, characters and impressions appear. A model of cultural shock serves as the inspiration for their behaviours and sequencing. The interactive narration draws on a relational database of words. For each presentation of the project, a database will be built based on the artist’s preconceptions and memories in relation to the exhibition context.