project description

The still living series of visual installations revolves around the concept of living graphics : graphics using immediately readable visual codes - pie-charts, bars, curves, etc... - but animated by the same internal forces that they are supposed to describe. The sign and the thing become one. Each artwork is infinite and autonomous, a particular delicate situation: a still life, but living.

With this new setup, my main intention at the level of my personal practice is to approach the subject of the living, the human and the nature of reality in a fresh and new way. Also, at the artistic level, this series allows me to explore in a more precise manner the "aesthetics of the action" that programming as a material enables. Finally, still living takes a voluntarily political stand by making the living pulsate under the ubiquitous charts of our daily life.

These installations are designed to be exhibited in public or exhibition space, on individual screens or projections of human size, in a sober and minimal way: business style.

related text

still living by Antoine Schmitt is a silent and, at the same time, Dadaistic meditation on the forces that make the world go round. However, what we see in this piece (or rather, in the ten variations) of generative art is not a linear movement or development towards a future of ever continuing growth, but rather a system (an economy?) short-circuited with its own visual codes, displays and graphical surfaces. Pie charts, bars and curves representing the generic visual language of modern economy are “animated by the same internal forces that they are supposed to describe.“ (Antoine Schmitt) The title 'still living' is an obvious allusion to the art historical genre of the still life – depictions of Vanitas alluding to the passing of time in general and to the fugaciousness and transience of all human life. But in comparison to the allegorical elements of the still life – dead animals, fruit, skulls, vases, clocks and jewellery – the miserable and pathetic graphs bending in this or that direction are not awe-inspiring but rather convey a feeling of going in circles. Abandon all hope after crossing the threshold of this office, traveller! Antoine Schmitt’s 'still living' is poking serious fun at generative art and real time visualisation and is, at the same time, an acidic commentary on the belief in (economic) progress and development. (transmediale.07 jury statement, excerpt)
 

archive.transmediale.de/site07/nominees+M5c9b69eadda.html (transmediale website archive)

related links

project site: www.gratin.org/stillliving

image credits

[01] Antoine Schmitt: still living
[02] Antoine Schmitt: still living