antoine schmitt
| Antoine Schmitt atypically first lead a successful software designer career before becoming an active artist, exhibited internationally.
Antoine Schmitt invents new forms of dynamic shapes, by exploring the realm of the dynamic object and especially these so special objects that are the living beings. By abstracting and recreating the causes of behaviors, the forces behind the movements, inside algorithmically driven installations, online exhibitions and CD-Roms, he confronts the spectator to abstract others, which essence is perceived through their audio and visual manifestations, externalizations of their inner modes of being. Antoine Schmitt hunts down the shape of the being deep inside human nature. Happening underneath langage and meaning, sensation is at the heart of his artworks.
His artistic work yields installations, performances and online works, 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), Life5.0 (Madrid, 2002).
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. His work is considered part of the emerging 'software art' field. Dismissing the conceptual as well as the technological aspects of computer art, he concentrates on sensation, and promotes the idea of the aesthethics of the cause.
http://www.gratin.org/as/txts/bios.html awards & exhibitionsmedi@terra (Athens, 1999), Interferences (Public Jury, Belfort, 2000), transmediale (Berlin, 2001), International Festival of Video-Dance (Paris, 2002), Vida5.0 (Madrid, 2002), machinista 2003 (Russia), CyNetArt 2004 (Dresden, DE) | artist artist homepage |
work
 A new series of pieces for the internet: Little broken musical mechanical automatas, which evolve endlessly and autonomously. In-between the individual presence of the objects and sounds, and presence of the ensemble. |
 It is a piece that I made in 1998, and on which I reworked a few times up to recently. It is visible on my web site, but I also show it around on selected group exhibition sites (like www.incident.net soon). I hope that you like it. Note that you have to be online to see it the first time, as it autodownloads an Xtra from the net.Here is a short description of it: Venus #1 is one of the variations of my works on artificial beings. I first created Venus #1 so that she could dance live during a concert in 1998. I wanted a creature with a real body, which internal states and forces would be directly influenced by the music. The influence between the music and the image happens at a deep physical level: the simulated muscles of Venus #1 are triggered by physical dynamic properties of the live sound. Venus #1 belongs to the realm of what I call the aesthetic of the cause : it is the cause of what we perceive that creates the aesthetic sensation. |
