French artist Lucien Bitaux partners with SFD to create “Nadir”
Lucien Bitaux, a digital and visual artist and doctoral student involved with the French center for contemporary art Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, and the University of Lille, has designed and created the art installation “Nadir – Picture Elements Explorer”, which aims to investigate other ways of looking at how the world around us is constructed. In his work, he was inspired by French writer Roger Caillois, who said that inspecting the inside of rocks would reveal an alternative view of the cosmos.
Based on this statement, Bitaux designed a machine heavily focused on silicon, a material itself brought to Earth from outer space. Central to his art piece is an artificial rock, built up from materials typically used in digital photography: silicon, glass, plastics, and liquid crystals. Bitaux’s composite object is slowly broken into small pieces that fall onto a transparent bed, where from underneath, camera sensors fitted with polarization filters register a close-up view of the interior of what was the rock. According to the artist, this process could be considered as the imaging sensors taking self-portraits, by imaging their constituent materials. A video of the installation and its workings can be found here: https://vimeo.com/764716303
Associate professor Michael Debije and former doctoral candidate Jeroen Sol were asked to help in the realization of the rock by providing direct ink written cholesteric liquid crystal films. The liquid crystals represent the display of photographs, which are typically seen through the optical layers of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). The interaction between the liquid crystals and the polarized cameras additionally leads to the formation of optical effects standing out from the other materials contained in the rock, leading to unique patterns on the large televisions mounted behind the installation.
“Nadir” has received two awards so far, the “Prix Révélation Arts Numériques / Art Vidéo” from the French visual arts society ADAGP, and the Prix des Amis du Fresnoy 2022, awarded by the society Les Amis du Fresnoy. More information about “Nadir” can be found on the artist’s personal website: http://lucienbitaux.fr/projet28.php
The exposition “Panorama 24” of which “Nadir” is a part, among other works, is open to visits until the end of December 2022, in Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France.
