VIDA 5.0 - Avec Determination

Antoine Schmitt
Avec Determination
France

Avec Determination (with determination)

"They are slient creatures, struggling against their environment, which we are part of."

This space is dedicated to my ongoing research around this notion. I use it as an immediate exhibition space, in which I show the creatures as soon as they are achieved. And so as not to overload the space, I remove the oldests.

The basis of my work is as follows: I create a body, constituted of fragments of images, usually minimal. I immerse this body in a physical universe, mainly made of a rectangular space, which the body cannot leave (a box), and in which reigns a gravity force which drags the bodies towards the bottom. This physical world, a set of mathematical equations, is embodied here in algorithms which continually act on the bodies immersed inside it.

Once this body and this physical universe are put in place, I give the body muscles, which are forces that act on the elements of the body relatively to each other. These forces are also embodied (implemented) in algorithms acting in the instant, in real time.

Finally, I provide the creature with motivation, that is of a force which pilots the muscles and makes it move towards a certain goal. For example, standing up. This motivation, which is also implemented with an algorithm, activates the muscles according to the shift between the goal and the perception that the creature has of its own position and movement (kinesthesy), following a principle known in cybernetics as predictive teleology by negative feedback.

This motivation force acts toward a very well determined goal and with clearly defined rules, but the muscles do not always work well, the joints shivers sometimes randomly, the muscles get tired, the motivation declines or raises, the prediction is sometimes wrong and the kinesthesy is not always perfect. These imperfections themselves are programmed, using random coeficients being triggered at random moments.

These defaults, as well as the opposition between the goal and the physical constraints (the box, gravity) plunge the creature in an endless struggle, of which we are the helpless spectators. All the more helpless as the slightest movement we make (with the mouse) moves the whole universe, that is the box in which the creature is placed, perturbating it even more.

For each of these creatures, I try to approach a certain essence of being. A mode of being of different quality for each of them. And for this, I concentrate on their dynamics, their movement, on the shapes that take their motivation in their reality. The function of the image is to enable us to apprehend their mode of being. The interaction itself is only a minimal link between their reality and ours. For each of these creatures, its presence, if it manifests itself, derives from a subtle relationship between the motivation and the shapes and forces of the randomness, of the body and of the universe.

I hope that this visit will give you the desire to come back.

Artistic work

The field of my artistic work is at the crossing of two forces that make me act. On one side an immoderate interest for the creation of artificiel entities, and on the other side a fundamental and always renewed questionning, of metaphysical nature, around the notion of being. On the other hand, being a programmer for a very long time, almost all of my work is done through programming.

The matter that I mold are algorithms, computer programs. I design them, mold them, and show them in action. For me, programming is really a media for artistic creation. Also, I consider that, through programming, it is a media not only new, but also radically different from the media that came before it. This point of view, I note it and have been defending it for years, but it does not constitute the heart of my reflexion nor of my work, it is only its epiphenomenon.

The concept of artificial being, that is of entities created by me, enables me to create new temporal shapes, to explore representations creating a consistent relationship between space and movement. It has a fundamental importance in my way of tackling the world, in a general way, like a prism for understanding the universe. It leads me to thinking in terms of mecanisms, of moving forces and of will. It leads me back to my nature of being.

My continuous preoccupations concerning the being, destiny chance, freedom, will, causality or circularity between perception and action, or also consciousness, along with the "algorithm" matter and the "artificial creature" approach constitute the mold of my artistic work. It gets concretized in "plastic" artworks, which heart is generally a computer program implementing a form of abstract artificial being.

This production is show in the form of installations, CD-Roms, of software downloadable or visible on web sites. I consider myself as an artist-programmer, and my biography is here.

Biography

Antoine Schmitt atypically first lead a successful software designer carreer before becoming an active artist, exhibited internationnaly.

In his artistic practice, Antoine Schmitt tackles fundamental problematics like ontology, free-will, will, chance or destiny, endlessly revolving around the question "why does it move ?". Most of his artworks involve a confrontation of the spectators, passers-by or performers with artificial beings programmed on a computer. These abstract non-human entities, autonomous or interactive, exist in the same real time as the spectator, who perceives their dynamic presence through the visual and sonic manifestations reflecting their behaviors and their modes of being.

Programmer, Antoine Schmitt manipulates algorithms like a first-class matter, and considers the computer like a radically new medium of creation, because of its nature of a place of functionning of programmed processes.

This artistic work yields installations, performances, CD-Roms, exhibited online or offline since 1995. This work has recently won various prizes in international festivals : First prize Net Art at medi@terra (Athens, 1999), First Prize of outdoor installations at Interférences (Public Jury, Belfort, 2000), honorary mention in software art at transmediale.01 (Berlin, 2001), Online prize at the 11th International Video Dance Grand Prix (Paris, 2002).

Antoine Schmitt was member of the jury for software art at transmediale.02 in Berlin in February 2002, and has created a selection of software art for the sonar02 festival in Barcelona in june 2002.

At the beginning of his artistic involvement, Antoine Schmitt also pionneered the exploration of the conceptual dimension of computer art:
- 1995 : "puppetsprite 1", with Alberto Sorbelli : artwork CD-Rom.
- 1995 : "courrier du cœur" (love letters) : virtual character on the internet.
- 1996 : "Trop tard" (Too Late) : the use of the computer internal clock as the source and structure of the movement.
- 1997 : "Now Appear", with Alberto Sorbelli : virtual friend on internet and search engine wrapup.
- 1998 : "Celui qui Garde le Ver" (The One Who Keeps the Worm - with Joana Preiss) and "Sparks"(with Juha Pekka Marsalo) : dual performance between a human performer and an autonomous artificial entity.

Also, Antoine Schmitt gathers a 20 years long experience as a designer, architect and programmer of software systems dealing with human-computer interfaces, has worked for famous companies like Act Informatique, Hyptique and NeXT, and today still consults and programs for companies in the field of programming environments, video-game, multimedia and interactive video.