Ekphrastic Objects is a conference on the relationship between images and language. As words are spoken they are processed through a computer program, allowing each phrase to be visualized as a moving text in a virtual 3D space projected onto a screen behind the speaker. Each utterance of this logical exposition becomes part of a slowly expanding visual memory of all that is said.
But at the same time, voice is continually experienced as a perfomative event, a speech act, tending to problematize the highly descriptive emphasis of the talk. This tension is heightened by the program’s own entropic propensity toward error, noise and miscommunication. During this process, a gap is opened between what is read and said, heard and seen, in which the materiality of language becomes a malleable substance experimented in real time.
Performances
- l’Ecole des Beaux Arts de Rennes, (invited by Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié), Rennes, 2010
- The colloquium “Autour de Samuel Morse : Reproduction et Transport” at l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, (invited by Jean-Philippe Antoine), Paris, 2010
- Khiasma, (invited by Frédéric Dumond) during the Relectures festival, Paris, 2009
- La Société française de photographie, (invited by Gaëlle Morel and Paul-Louis Roubert) in the framework of the monthly conferences organised at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, 2008
- mire, (invited by Miles McKane) during the Potlatch festival, an three-day event consisting of concerts, performances and experimental cinema, Nantes, 2008
- Centre Pompidou, (invited by Philippe-Alain Michaud) in the framework of Film & co, a series of evenings of experimental cinema, documentaries, artist’s films and video, Paris, 2007
- Université Rennes 2 Haute-Bretagne (invited by Nathalie Boulouch) in the framework of the colloquium “Something between… Images fixes / images mobile dans les pratiques artistiques contemporaines”, Rennes, 2007
Ekphrastic objects has also been shown, in a different form, as désambiguïsation_voice_v15f.
- la maison rouge (invited by Marie Muracciole) during Ann Hamilton’s exhibition, Phora, Paris, 2005
- l’ENSCI/Les Ateliers (invited by Christian Barani and Frédéric Dumond) in the framework of Extensions, Paris, 2005
- La Filature - Scène Nationale (invited by Paul Cottin), Mulhouse, 2004
