Augustin Berque is a geographer and Orientalist, and a retired director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). His teaching focuses on mesology—that is, the study of “milieus,” in line with Jakob von Uexküll’s Umweltlehre and Watsuji Tetsuro’s fūdoron.
In this interview, he draws on his understanding of Japanese culture to outline his vision of the “milieu”.
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Justine Emard is a visual artist. Her installations use AI to understand the living, exploring the boundaries between organic life and artificial intelligence. Bee swarms, encephalographic recordings and prehistoric paintings become learning supports for algorithms that, contrary to dystopian imaginations, generate new supra-hyper-organisms.
AI is a new form of intelligence whose development is stirring up concerns and dystopian fables. Far from replacing human intelligence, AIs are emerging as new tools to be trained, controlled and shaped to achieve the desired result. For the artist, photographer, architect, film-maker, musician or illustrator, AIs become an agent with which to collaborate, resulting in co-creation. Inaugural lecture of the “AI and Creation” series at the Stream Innovation Center.
Eric Mangion has been director since 2006, after managing the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur from 1993 to 2005. His research has long been focused on the artistic gesture of disappearance – in all its forms, from the alteration of the work to the disappearance of the artist. At the Villa Arson, he develops a program around ephemeral practices. He develops here the link between his research topics – the disappearance, the ephemeral, in the art and more generally, in the culture – and the evolution of the architecture.
Theoretical experiments around the concept of the “metabolic-city” place living organisms at the heart of a new paradigm, encouraging a systemic approach. In urban and architectural practice, what tools are available to measure metabolism? Pauline Detavernier, Doctor in Architecture and Research and Development Project Manager at PCA-STREAM, examines existing measures of the life cycle and urban metabolism to outline a methodology.
Using scientific facts as artistic material, Dutch artist Thijs Biersterker seeks to emotionally connect the public to global questions, to inspire a desire to take action. He uses technology, in particular AI, as a medium. His immersive installations highlight the intelligence and communication systems of plants: thus creating a bridge between living beings.
Never once has Sissel Tolaas, Norwegian artist, chemist, linguist and researcher, uttered the word “perfume”. For the past twenty-five years, she has been collecting, inventing and breathing new life into smells, refusing to be part of the world’s aseptisation. Through her olfactory installations, she invites us to sense reality, its geography and its temporality. Most recently, she has recreated the smell of Pompeii, between sensory experience and memory of the past.