Taking his inspiration from his collaboration with the Franco-Hungarian artist Vera Molnár and her exploration since 1959 of an “imaginary machine” (a set of logical processes that enable images to be produced by separating design and production operations) and the resonance of the words of Sol LeWitt, according to which “the idea becomes a machine that makes art”, Joanie Lemercier presents a machine that generates minute façade-scale geometric compositions Using a complex program that generates an almost infinite number of visual, sound and animation compositions, visitors can witness the staging of a “art manufacturing” process: the iterations move along and the machine “chooses” to stop at a random combination of elements. The process performed through this installation between the determination of the artist and the indetermination of accident and randomness, demystifies the limits of technology and is critical of the idea of a miraculous artificial intelligence, this dystopic illusion according to which a machine would ultimately be able to “think” better than a human.

Concept and generative code: Joanie Lemercier
Generative music architecture: Before Tigers
Artistic direction Studio Joanie Lemercier: Juliette Bibasse
Production: Nicolas Roziecki
Technical development: Martin Pirson

Joanie Lemercier is a French visual artist and environmental activist. His work explores human perceptions through the manipulation of light in space. Working primarily with light projection and computer programming, he transforms the appearance of everyday objects and forms, bending reality to his imagination.  In recent years, Lemercier has become increasingly concerned with climate change and environmental degradation, lending his projection skills and artistry to activist causes and groups such as Extinction Rebellion, as well as developing a new work, Slow Violence, which analyses the devastating effects of coal mining on one of Europe's oldest forests. He has been working with projected light since 2006 and co-founded the acclaimed visual label AntiVJ in 2008. Represented by a New York based gallery since 2010, he founded his own creative studio in Brussels in 2013, whose artistic direction was taken on by Juliette Bibasse.