Generative installation
Duration : 1h56’40″
Antoine Schmitt 2013
Created with the support of Edith Russ Haus (Oldenburg)

7 billion individual pixels cross the screen, each on its own path, at the rate of 1 million pixels per second, leading to a movie of a total duration of 1h56’40″. The movie is projected in very high definition on a screen with a larger-than-human size and above the eye level – cinema spirit, so as to physically confront the viewer to the flow. Each pixel crosses the screen from right to left in one second, giving a sense of high speed and urgency. The path of each pixel is independent of the others, so the flow seems animated by chaotic behavior with no overall organization while still reflecting the individual intentions of each pixel.

There are 7 billion human beings on earth today. This artwork intends to physically confront the viewer to the mass of the whole humanity.

7 billion pixels reflects on the overwhelming challenge of making sense of this huge number of individualities all independant of each other, and all driven by individual intentions, desires and quests. It also questions the impossible dream of trying to control such masses, impossible but still happening every day, in many different political and social systems. It also confronts the viewer to his or her own free will and life story, lost in the middle of so many other free wills and life stories. It fosters humility, and at the same time, in such overwhelming chaotic environment, everything is possible, and freedom can exist. The important is not to get lost, and to make sense of one’s own actions.

(Extract from the storyboard – Delphine Doukhan)

{ Ongoing project : status : April 2013 : shooting phase }

Fractal Film is an installation which proceed to an attempt to wear out a scene through the look of an autonomous camera.

Projected in large format, a short cinematographic scene plays, and starts over, indefinitely. Although in a loop, we never see it the same way. At each play, we see the scene with another angle, with a different movement and behavior of the camera.

Delphine Doukhan and Antoine Schmitt

Production : stereolux and Les Films du Bali Bari
Co-production : Arte Creative and Ososphère
Support : DRAC pays de Loire, Conseil Régional Pays de Loire AV, Conseil Régional Pays de Loire Multimedia, Dicream-CNC, SCAM.

Precious Random
Light bulb blinking with the purest randomness
Antoine Schmitt 2013

Bulb design : Hervé Isle de Beauchaine
created within the exhibition “Made in Light”
organized by the Musée en Herbe (Paris)
with the support of the Fondation Vasarely (Aix en Provence)

Precious Random answers the proposal of the Musée en Herbe to create an artwork starting from one of the giant light bulbs signed by Hervé Isle de Beauchaine, with a light bulb that lights on and off according to a totally random rhythm. This randomness is generated by an electronic apparatus included in the sculpture and tending toward the purest randomness.

Pure randomness is very difficult to create and nevertheless it is at the basis of al modern computer science, from cryptography to information theory. Randomness that is not pure presents shapes, recurrences, patterns, imbalances, which weakens it and make it predictable. ANd unpredictability is fundamental to guarantee the best quality of communication and the best security. This pure randomness is precious. Precious Random pays homage to it and transforms it into a radical artwork.

The unpredictable lighting up plays of course with the popular symbolics of of the light bulb that lights up to announce the event of an unexpected idea. Also, the white dot that lights on and off refers both to the white square on white background of Kasimir Malevith and to the bit of Claude SHannon, minimal unit of information that can be 0 or 1. The absolute unpredictability also raises fundamental metaphysical questions dealing with randomness and necessity, with the divine, with free will, which makes it mysterious and almost disquieting.

Azusa Kurokawa : painting
Antoine Schmitt : generative video
2012

218 x 155 cm

Canvas, acrylic, oil, feathers, paper, custom generative software, computer, videoprojector

Audio and Visual Performance (30mn+)

Franck Vigroux (music) and Antoine Schmitt (images) 2012

Just after the big bang, the universe was completely shapeless, filled with matter and energy, but irregularities were born , which became atoms, suns and planets… Within the primitive soup on Earth, indistinct molecules started to group as bacterias, to become life, animals, humans… Tempest recreates the sound and fury of these original maelstroms within which it searches for the origin of form, it looks for other forms. Audio and visual performance, Tempest associates the analog instruments of Franck Vigroux with the visual algorithms of Antoine Schmitt, to create a real system-universes of pure chaos, that can be seen in the movements of millions of particles and can be heard through the roaring of air. By manipulating the internal forces of this chaos, the performers give birth to audio and visual shapes that develop in time, with more or less stability, more or less evidence.

Production, distribution, conditions, technical rider : cie dautrescordes

Press : Interview on Arte Creative

Installation for a city

Antoine Schmitt 2012

City lights orchestra is an open visual symphony for the windows of the city. At night, each connected computer illuminates the window of its office, of the home and blinks, pulsates, beats, fades in and out, each according to its own score, but all in rhythm with all the others. The smartphones in the street do the same. Anyone can participate at anytime : the symphony is composed to accept an unlimited number of participants and it never stops. It recomposes itself indefinitely, according to a living score generated from an inital musical DNA. It deals with individuality and globality, complexity and organization, order and chaos. The whole city becomes the orchestra : both spectator and interpret of the symphony that is playing, for the time of an event, of a festival, or permanently. It is a global city experience.

An installation for the city created by Antoine Schmitt
commissioned by Vinci Immobilier Rhône-Alpes Auvergne
for the Fête des Lumières 2011 in Lyon (FR)

Antoine Schmitt 2011

series of installations :
Ballet Quantique 7 : 101
Ballet Quantique 100 : 811
Ballet Quantique 400 : 2503
Ballet Quantique 1000 : 10007

Computer, screen, wooden frame, specific algorithm.

Running time : infinite
Size : 57 x 40 x 6 cm
3 copies + 1 artist copy

The Ballets Quantiques (Quantum Ballets) are infinite generative visual artworks, each one staging a choreography of a crowd of pixels displaying apparently arbitrary and independent movements, but all actually programmed by the same quantum-type equation. This global underlying organisation manifests itself from time to time through unexpected and fugacious alignments or groupings, which the eye barely has the time grasp, with awe and delectation. This series of artworks deals with the invisible forces at stake behing complex systems, like particles, peoples or societies.

Each Ballet Quantique is carefully crafted around the relationships of a certain number of pixels and a given equation.

ACTORWEAR – artwork concept – September 2011 – Antoine Schmitt

ACTORWEAR is a distributed artwork that is based on a clothing line of T-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, etc.. displaying the word ACTOR — or its translation in another language — in white capital letters on black background, printed on the front and the back, like the FBI or POLICE jacket graphic design. The artwork is activated when someone wears such an ACTOR apparel in their normal life in public : in the eyes of the people who see him/her, the wearer effectively becomes an actor. This assertion of a fundamentally written essence of reality leads to questionings of metaphysical, psychological, aesthetical, social and political nature.

Official ACTORWEAR web site

Patrice Belin, Antoine Schmitt. 2011

3,2m x 2,4m x 2m
Steel, custom software program, computer, videoprojector
Unique piece

Produced with the support of the La Vie des Formes (NPO), of the Ecomusée Creusot-Montceau and of the Communauté Urbaine Creusot-Montceau (FR). Created during a residency at the Briqueterie de Ciry-le-Noble.