Organism & Excitable Chaos

7th Elektra Biennial

Montreal's seventh Elektra International Digital Art Biennial returns to Arsenal Contemporary Art, where curator Alain Thibault has brought together the creations of some thirty artists on the theme of Illusion.

Light of Nations

60th Venice Biennial

Under the general curatorship of Adriano Pedrosa, the 60th Venice Biennale is more political than ever. From the pavilions of the Giardini to the palaces of Venice, we discover forms that are as contemporary as the causes they champion.

The Prophets

Endless Variations

The world accelerated as one industrial revolution after another produced societal and aesthetic changes. It was in the 19th century that the serial treatment of subjects became widespread in painting, as if to better grasp every aspect of them.

360° Illusion IV

Multitude & Singularity

Two notions that gained currency with the start of the new millennium are the multitude – the crowd made up of people connected with each other via networks – and technological singularity – the idea that machines will eventually become superior to human beings.

Double Negative

Another perspective

With the successive arrival of personal computers and the Internet, artists have begun to deconstruct systems of representation, thus continuing what the cubist and abstract painters of the beginning of the last century had initiated. But haven't we all been affected by this change in perspective?

Double Negative

The Fusion of Possibilities

Yesterday's possibilities are today's realities that we are constantly merging to make them even better. Over the last sixty years, many artists with a strong affinity for technology of their time have anticipated our environments or uses with their creations.

Mondes persistants & Pratiques exploratoires

Persistence & Exploration

The art [ ] collector prize founded by Evelyne and Jacques Deret was awarded to Thibault Brunet. This gave rise to an exhibition entitled Mondes Persistants & Pratiques Exploratoires at 24 Beaubourg. An opportunity to penetrate the aesthetic of this artist oscillating between the pictorial and the photographic.

La Cybernétique, le vivant et la ville

Image 3.0

The IMAGE 3.0 exhibition at the Cellier in Reims, organised by the curators Quentin Bajac and Pascal Beausse, is the result of a joint photographic commission from the CNAP and the Jeu de Paume. The practices brought together here question representation as much as gaze in this digital age.

CUSP

BioMedia

The imposing BioMedia exhibition at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, directed by Peter Weibel, questions “Media with Life-like Behavior”. The installations of some fifteen artists exhibited in Germany are also presented at the Centre des Arts in Enghien-les-Bains.

“U Scantu”: A Disorderly Tale

59th Venice Biennale

It is difficult to have a clear-cut opinion of the Biennale because the artistic proposal in Venice is so abundant. In the national pavilions, from the gardens to the Arsenale halls, to the city's palaces and other collateral events, thousands of artworks are on display.

All We'd Ever Need Is One Another (Trio)

Decision Making

Decisions are the result of complex cognitive processes. Considering them collectively, as they involve our shared futures, makes them nothing less than crucial. But, more and more often, we include machines in such processes through decisional algorithms.

Myriad (Tulips)

Intelligence in art

Digital artistic practices are decidedly plural and their trends follow one another at the pace of technological innovations, currently with a strong enthusiasm for artificial intelligence and its “neural networks”.

Life Support System

Ars Electronica 2021

The Ars Electronica is both a centre and a festival that extends to various locations, including the Johannes Kepler University and the Offenes Kulturhaus. Its artistic director, Gerfried Stocker, questions our digital world to better understand its transformations.

Metamorphosis Vol.2

Art & NFT

While there has been technology in art since the late 1960s and artworks on the Internet since the mid-1990s, it was not until 2021 that the art market took notice following a few record NFT sales. Or how digital artists approach this new territory.

Metamorphosis Vol.2

Metamorphosis

The hybrid exhibition Metamorphosis Vol.2 at the Hyundai Motorstudio in Seoul is particularly well documented. To such an extent that it can be experienced via a virtual 3D tour, i.e. without having to travel to Korea. This is very much appreciated in these times of strict travel constraints.

Tangible Data

An atypical year

In 2020 everything stopped, or almost, though artists continued to create, confined to their studios, sometimes limited to the surface of their screens. Their works emerged online or in exhibitions, between two lockdowns. A look back at a particular year.

Terminal Beach

Real Feelings

The exhibition Real Feelings - Emotions and Technology at the Haus der elektronischen Künste (HeK) in Basel brings together installations of around twenty artists. The idea: to reconsider the notion of feeling in this ‘technological’ society of the spectacle.

Zoryas, electronic activity of the sun

Signal

The European itinerant biennial Manifesta passes through Marseille for its 13th edition. In its wake, many artistic events are taking place, such as the exhibition Signal - Espace(s) Réciproque(s), which is being held at the Friche la Belle de Mai from a proposal by the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles.

Mixed_Grill(e)

On Combinations at Work

Artworks by the French artist Pascal Dombis are the results of myriads of lines, texts and images combined together, and the variability inherent in the different elements combined is taken care of by the computation of algorithms that he controls through machines.

Soul Shift

Human Learning

We have taught everything to machines and continue to supply them so that they pursue the 'desire' for autonomy we would like to grant them. Isn’t it time that we started thinking that we, too, learn from them by observing their specificities or qualities? Answer at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris.

Frame of Reference

Attitudes and forms

The exhibition of 1969, When attitudes become form, curated by Harald Szeemann, brought together many artists but very few women. Mentalities are evolving because 50 years later the Haro sur les héros exhibition of the Wallonie-Bruxelles Centre on attitudes and forms presents only women artists.

Last Breath

Ars Electronica 2019

The Ars Electronica Festival was created in 1979. With this time frame in mind, Christine Schöpf and Gerfried Stocker, the two artistic directors, have taken stock of the societal changes that digital technology is provoking and that art is amplifying. Because it is also by observing the past that we project ourselves into the future.

Rubber Pencil Devil

58th Venice Biennale

The main theme of this 58th Venice Biennale was entrusted to the American curator Ralph Rugoff. Its title, May you live in interesting times, appears to us as an injunction to appreciate the world as it is in observing it. Then the question of points of view arises!

All I have is my phone

Art, Technology and Trends

The major art schools participate in initiating trends. The ATS department of the SAIC is a leading example. By analyzing significant works by artists who have carried out studies there, we can begin to understand the range and impact of the practices under consideration and to affirm the excellence of its teaching.

All I have is my phone

Art in Brussels

Art Brussels is one of the most important international spring fairs. It is an opportunity for discovering the new Kanal Centre Pompidou and for venturing into places that, like Senne, Société and Imal, are participating in the artistic expansion of Brussels.

Lightning Ride

Plurality Of Digital Practices

Never has a technique or technology so intensified artistic practices in a way that is as dazzling as it is long-lasting, beginning with the fields of sound and image, which have been revolutionized profoundly; to the point that there is not a single work today without some digital component, as small as that may be.

Automatic War

The Chroniques Biennial

The Second Nature festival became the Chroniques biennial that takes place in various spots between Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. This first edition, artistically directed by Mathieu Vabre, welcomed Québec as guest of honor.

BitSoil Popup Tax & Hack Campaign

Ars Electronica 2018

The beginning of September, for those who scrutinize societal evolutions that researchers or artists reveal in the analysis or the use of emerging technology occurs in Linz at Ars Electronica. This year, the Austrian festival focuses on error in order to consider an Art of Imperfection.

πTon

Montreal BIAN 2018

Created in 2012 by Alain Thibault, the International Digital Art Biennial (BIAN) assures the continuity of the Elektra festival initiated in 1999. It takes place in various venues, including the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) and the Arsenal Contemporary Art.

Juliana

In The Age Of The Internet

Eva Respini, accompanied by Jeffrey De Blois, is the curator of the Art In The Age Of The Internet, 1989 To Today exhibition, at the Boston ICA, where the works are based on five sections questioning the relations that artists have with the Internet, to interrogate societal mutations.

Self portrait as a fountain

Art Brussels 2018

Art Brussels, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, acts as a catalyst as it is followed by institutions, galleries and collectors who take advantage of the opportunity to organize leading events there. In April, exhibitions took place at the same time, from the Wiels to the Centrale or the Raffinerie, or even the Société d’électricité or Senne.

Track/Trace

At ZKM in Karlsruhe

Exhibitions follow one another at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie under the goodwill of Peter Weibel, its director, who is collaborating with intern or extern curators to set up exhibitions, such as Radical Software, Datumsoria, Open Codes and Hybrid Layers.

Sonic Fountain II

Lyon Biennale 2017

This year, the curation of the 14th Lyon Biennale, cofounded in 1991 by Thierry Raspail (director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon) was handed over to the art historian and director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz Emma Lavigne. Second episode of a trilogy articulated around the 'modern' word, it is dedicated to the Floating Worlds.

Disco Beast

Ars Electronica 2017

Ars Electronica is one of the most inspiring festivals. Going to Linz in Austria year after year, it is good to discover the trends: the ones that emerge from the use or hack of the technologies of our time by artists having innovative practices.

Run Baby Run

Digital Media at Fresnoy

Le Fresnoy, France's international institution for the teaching, production and promotion of new media art, is a site for the digital contamination of images and sound. This is evident in the work of ten artists, some students and other teachers, who have been part of this school over the last decade.

Mirage

Art Basel 2017

Mid-June, the principal players of the contemporary art world gather for Basel's fair and other events in as well as off or even out. Pulling out of the market allows us to walk around a few institutions such as the Haus der Elektronischen Künste.