Archive for the 'Créations' Category

Usual Suspects

Publié le 08/09/2011 dans Créations

Interactive installation, 2011
Camera, computer, projection or screen

A camera focussed on a public place frames in a red rectangle any moving person or object. The device is extremely sensitive and reacts to any movement: passers-by but also pigeons, plastic bags carried by the wind, light reflections, opening windows, etc.

Using a CCTV system rendered absurd by the indiscriminate nature of the machine, the installation stages the fictionalisation of reality shared by the “surveillance society” and blockbuster films: law enforcement as a spectacle.

Usual Suspects was exhibited in 2011 for Hotspot, along with IRL (Contexts, Paris). It is also one of the works presented for Augmented Window exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in June 2011.

In connection with: Hotspot, IRL, See You, Outside Lectures – See also the Credits page.

IRL

Publié le 08/09/2011 dans Créations

Generative video installation
LCD screen, computer, internet access

IRL is a generative video installation that involves a prior intervention of the artist on the exhibition site. A series of short silent video shots show details of the neighborhood around the exhibition site. The screen also displays a news ticker giving the time, breaking news and showing stock quotes.

The shots are taken in situ in the language of a news bulletin (mini stills, zooms and panoramic shots). The whole is edited automatically at random by a real time computer programme, while an RSS feed provides the time, news and stock quotes. This configuration provides infinite superimpositions of text and image, where the banality of the TV shots is contaminated by the news – and vice versa. A work on the “fictionalisation of reality”, a subject also developed with the exhibition Hotspot and the interactive installation Usual Suspects.

In connection with: Hotspot, Usual Suspects, See You, Outside Lectures – See also the Credits page.

Limbo

Publié le 08/09/2011 dans Créations

Interactive installation, 2011
Camera, infrared projector, video projector, computer – variable dimensions.

Facing the spectator in an unlit room a video projection acts at first sight like a mirror. The visitor’s silhouette is reflected in blurred white on a black background. However, by projecting the silhouette from a different angle it creates at once a discrepancy and tension in the visitor’s perception.

After some seconds there appears on the screen a slow-moving blurred shadow sliding through space: the silhouette of the visitor himself, out of sync with real time and in slow motion. The perception of his own presence is caught up in this triple combination of a gap in space, a slowing down of movement and the resulting gap in time.

Akin to the worlds of both Peter Campus and Hideo Nakata, Limbo leads the spectator from an expected specular reflection of himself into paradoxically chasing after his own past shadow.

Limbo was first created and shown at the choreographic production Entrelacs by Lionel Hoche (Centre des Arts d’Enghien et Centre national de la Danse, 2010 et 2011), with the support of the Dicréam. In connection with: Reanimation, FeedbackroomOpen Source.

Hotspot

Publié le 25/06/2011 dans Créations

Solo show at Contexts (Paris, France)

Press release

Contexts (1) presents a new project by Thierry Fournier, Hotspot, which fills the entire exhibition space as well as exterior display surfaces.

Crushed underfoot, glass debris smashes as spectators cross the exhibition floor. Amplified and distorted, these sounds are mixed with sound bytes from disaster films. Meanwhile, media coverage broadcasts breaking news and current affairs reports to the street outside, it too under surveillance via video and sound recordings, mapping, etc.
A derisive theater of operations, the exhibition creates an interface between these worlds of observation and surveillance: inside and outside, mutually threatening, where the spectator is both observer and protagonist. The storytelling of fear in experimentation.

Associating raw material, video, sound, interactive systems and cinema, Hotspot takes up the themes that characterize the work of Thierry Fournier: the articulation of situations and experiences that engage the spectator and the body, and the inquiry into the relationship between art, politics, fiction and the documentary, deployed here in situ.
Hotspot was produced in collaboration with Jean-François Robardet, at the Electrohop research and creation studio, supported by the École nationale supérieure d’art de Nancy and Artem (2).

(1) Contexts brings together three experts in mediation: Pierre Marsaa, Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau, and Mari Linnman. In one common location, Contexts is a bureau of studies, production and distribution agency, and exhibition space.

(2) With the collaboration of Vanessa Hérault (student at the École nationale supérieure des Mines de Nancy), Florent Camus, Léa Chambe, Thibault Dumontet, Elsa Gauthier, Laure Goujard, Marie Laurent, Benoît Le Quan, Maxime Pellerin, Deborah Ruffinoni, Pauline Soudier, Lucile Villeneuve (students from the ICN Business School), and students from the Electrohop research and creation studio.
Coproduction: Artem, École nationale supérieure d’art de Nancy, Contexts, Pandore Production.

Augmented Window

Publié le 25/06/2011 dans Créations, Curatoriat and Recherche

Interactive installation and curating

Designed and directed by Thierry Fournier, Augmented Window is a “sensory observatory”. Different artists and authors have been invited to produce a critical reading or original work on the landscape itself. Each contribution is geo-localized and presented on a touch-screen window looking out onto a landscape that is simultaneously displayed as a live video feed on the window itself.

The observed landscape is the starting point for all these contributions, from the critical approaches and questions it raises to the very modes of observation it evokes: immersion vs. distancing, surveillance, geo-localization, etc. Invited authors produce these contributions either while exploring the landscape (in situ with a smartphone), or remotely (via an online content management system). They are superposed to the live video feed of the landscape seen from the window.

Augmented window is exhibited for the first time at the Pompidou Center (Futur en Seine festival) from the 17th to the 26th of June, 2011, during which the following 16 artists and authors will address the Halles district of Paris: Benjamin Laurent Aman, Ivan Argote, Felicia Atkinson, Christelle Bakhache et Clément Féger, David Beytelmann, Marie-Julie Bourgeois, Pierre Carniaux, Céline Flécheux, Juliette Fontaine, Thierry Fournier, Marie Husson, Tomek Jarolim, Jean-François Robardet, Marcos Serrano, Antoine Schmitt.

The screen acts like a window, framing the landscape as a real-time video. By zooming in and scanning the window intuitively through touch, visitors explore the different contributions, comparing and contrasting them. The choice of a fixed and vertical frame favors rich and comprehensive interactions via a sensory experience.

Augmented Window thus produces a curatorial, collective and prospective representation of a landscape, where typically separated approaches (art, geography, architecture, documentary, fiction…) overlap in a common critical perspective, implemented through the principles of “augmented reality”. In this sense, augmented reality is not addressed here in terms of immersion or additional layers of information, but rather questioned as a possible means for creating a field of tension between different points of view.

The Augmented window prototype was the subject of a research project coordinated by Thierry Fournier at the research laboratory of the Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (Drii program, Sensory surfaces framework). It has been developed in partnership with the Sciences Po médialab, under the auspices of Prof. Bruno Latour.

Only Richard

Publié le 29/09/2010 dans Créations and Recherche

Création scénique
Avec Emmanuelle Lafon

Résidences de création au Théâtre de la Mauvaise Tête (Marvejols, Lozère) et à la Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon – CNES, en novembre 2010. Présentation de travaux à la Chartreuse le 25 novembre à 18h30.

Richard II de Shakespeare décrit la trajectoire d’un homme convaincu d’échapper aux lois du réel par sa nature divine. Face aux événements qui lui échappent, son interrogation permanente sur son rôle et ce qu’il représente le conduira à la destitution, la prison et la mort. Le projet Seul Richard met en scène ce parcours et cette relation destructrice au réel, à travers une proposition théâtrale qui convoque également le cinéma et les arts numériques.

Richard est seul au plateau. Il est interprété par Emmanuelle Lafon qui joue et transforme un film comportant tous les autres personnages de la pièce et le monde extérieur. Ce rapport à l’image construit son jeu en retour, dans une relation réciproque de pouvoir et de manipulation. L’ensemble du film se déroule dans un jardin. Acteurs et amateurs, les interprètes interviennent face à une caméra subjective qui est l’œil de Richard : un œil prolongé et transformé par les gestes de l’actrice. Autour d’elle, trois opérateurs prennent en charge la musique, le son et les manipulations du dispositif vidéo interactif.

Deux réalités, deux espaces, deux temporalités et deux paroles se confrontent, au fur et à mesure que Richard, s’enfonçant dans la nuit, s’éloigne d’un monde dont il perd la maîtrise.

Équipe de création

Seul Richard – librement adapté de Richard II de William Shakespeare
Traduction de François-Victor Hugo
Conception, réalisation du film et mise en scène : Thierry Fournier

Adaptation et collaboration artistique (1), direction de jeu (2), création musicale (3), scénographie (4) :
Juliette Fontaine (1, 4), Thierry Fournier (1, 2, 3, 4) Jean-François Robardet (1, 2, 4).

Interprètes au plateau :
Emmanuelle Lafon (Richard),
Juliette Fontaine, Thierry Fournier, Jean-François Robardet (opérateurs, son et musique)

Interprètes du film : Pierre Carniaux, Judith Morisseau, Sandrine Nicolas (acteurs), Éloïse Chabbal, Aurélie Claude, Charles Gonin, Mathieu Guigue, Sophie Jaskierowicz, Marianne Kaldi, Émilie Legret, Alexia Mérel, Claire Moindrot, Tram Anh Ngô (étudiants de l’Atelier de recherche et création Electroshop)

Ingénierie interactive et programmation informatique : Mathieu Chamagne, Jean-Baptiste Droulers, Thierry Fournier
Production déléguée et portage du projet : Pandore Production et Bipolar Production
Chargés de diffusion : Frédérique Payn et Grégory Diguet / Bipolar

Projet co-développé dans le cadre de l’Atelier de recherche et création Electroshop à l’École nationale supérieure d’art de Nancy

Coproduction : Pandore Production – École nationale supérieure d’art de Nancy – Région Lorraine et Communauté urbaine du Grand Nancy – Fonds d’aide à la valorisation de la recherche – DICRéAM – Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (aide à la maquette et à la production) – Avec le soutien du CIDMA (Création ingénierie diffusion des musiques d’aujourd’hui), du Studio-Théâtre de Vitry, de l’Arcal Lyrique, de l’Avant-Rue et de Mains d’Œuvres.

Unfold

Publié le 26/11/2009 dans Créations and Recherche

Interactive cinema, 2008-09
In dialog with the film Last Room by Pierre Carniaux
Original title : Dépli

The installation Unfold is conceived in dialog with the movie Last Room shot in Japan by the director Pierre Carniaux, who broaches relations between the collective and the private, word and landscape. The movie and the installation form a diptych, based on the same rushes. Their relationship proposes an interrogation about the evolution of the cinema esthetics and writing, and the status and praxis of the film viewer.

The installation is arranged and enacted in a cinema: a multitouch interface, set in the middle of the auditorium, enables spectators, on an individual basis, to try out an on-going browsing within the space and the temporality of the film’s rushes. Cinematographic space-time is here treated as an on-going form of matter, through which the spectator browses through the middle, and seamlessly, via a multitouch interface which physically engages him.

This browse is experienced like the itinerary of a body and a way of seeing: movements in time, shifts from one rush to the next, slow motion, jumps, and freeze frames.

Related to: Siren, To Agrippine, Open Source – See also the credits page.

Infocus

Publié le 23/11/2009 dans Créations

Installation and series of photographs, 2009

Infocus establishes a relationship between a projection apparatus and a photographic still protocol. A series of fixed-focus photographs of the body are taken with an extremely short depth of field, the position of the operator being the only variable parameter.

Almost entirely blurred, these photographs are projected with a slide projector on autofocus mode, thus unable to stabilize itself. A slight movement results from this permanent oscillation. The apparatus associates three instabilities and focusing concerns: from operator, the projector and the spectator.

Related to: See You, Reanimation – See also the credits page.

infocus_00

Fermata

Publié le 12/11/2009 dans Créations

Interactive installation, 2009
Original title : Point d’orgue

Fermata takes place in a room where a display window gives onto a passing public
place (street, square…). At the far end of the room the image of the street is video-projected in real time, filmed from inside, along with sound. This mirror image is visible from the street, through the window.

As soon as one or more visitors enter the room, the video’s speed is disturbed by their movements and gestures. This behavior depends on the person closest to the screen. If the visitor stops, the image is frozen but a vibration, which reacts to the slightest gesture, lives on. The sound is suspended, like a drive head remaining active. While image and sound are frozen, the camera goes on recording the image of the street: if the visitor moves again, the video starts up again, speeded up, and becomes gradually synchronized with the real time outside.

The apparatus introduces an endless mise en abyme: a circular, burlesque relation of observation, surveillance and control between all the protagonists present and their images. Passers-by see themselves in a mirror controlled by other observers, who are themselves part and parcel of the scene seen through the window. In the room, the toings and froings are introduced between the real passage of time in the street, its projected and “enactable” double opposite it, the visitor responsible for the action on the image, the other people present in the room, passers-by who may stop to take a look at the people looking at them, and so on.

Everyone is “in the image” – an image made public at variable levels depending on the intervention methods of their bodies and their eyes. The illusion of a power over time becomes the springboard for a generalized loop of exhibition and collective interaction.

Point d’orgue has been premiered in October 2009, within the frame of a residence at Kawenga (Montpellier, France). Related to: A+, Circuit fermé, Reanimation. See also the credits page.

Ready mixed

Publié le 15/12/2008 dans Créations

Performance, 2008
Esther Salmona and Thierry Fournier – Series of performances Outside Lectures (Conferences du dehors)

The actress reaches artist Esther Salmona by cellphone. Esther complies with a protocol which consists in do not change anything in her daily schedule and answer the phonecall whatever her activity may be at the time. A few words are exchanged: Esther talks without pause her immediate sensations and perceptions about the situation she’s experiencing. Her voice is retransmitted through a loudspeaker. And so the dialogue echoes the actress activity: movements, questions, bonds between the acting space and the space of the other talking.

Read also the critical texts about Outside Lectures.

Ready mix is performed by Emmanuelle Lafon. Related to : Outside Lectures, Closed Circuit, Ready Mix, At Home, The Right Distance, Department of Outside, Frost, Sentinel. Photographs Frédéric Nauczyciel and Alexandre Nollet. See also the Credits page.