The Cahiers retrace the residency's day-to-day activities and report on scientific, technological as well as artistic research carried out during this collaborative working period.

LES CAHIERS DE L'ATELIER N°4

The installation by Valérie Legembre, fine arts photographer in the CEA laboratories has set off a different kind of residency compared to the ones we have hosted since 2007.

Invited upon the initiative of the INAC, and particularly that of Sylvie Sauvaigo and Jérome Planès, Valérie Legembre could follow the day-to-day work of research teams over one year, investigating four laboratories: Leti-DTBS, Arc-Nucleart and the INAC in Grenoble and the INAC in Bourget du Lac.

For a long time, Valérie Legembre has shown a keen interest in the infinitely small and we could clearly follow her transition from the micro- to the nano-world (residency at STMicroelectronics) within a few years, with the aim of producing artwork through the Peaux-de-Photos® process.

For the Atelier Arts-Sciences, this residency is a breakthrough from several points of view: it was instigated by an internal team, it stems from fundamental research instead of applied research, and it concerns fine arts instead of performing arts.

The Atelier Arts-Sciences is an open platform for novel fields of experimentation. They have chosen to support this project with their external vision expressed in this Cahier.

Christian Ruby philosopher, invited by Nayla Farouki, philosopher at CEA-Grenoble and fellow supporter of this experiment as well, has been following regularly this residency. Going beyond an experiment report, he has put forward new ideas to discuss on possible links between arts and sciences and has coordinated these articles.

This Cahier will present several possible intersections between arts and sciences as well as various points of view triggered by cross research processes.

Finally, this experiment will provide material for a future exhibit as well by Valérie Legembre. Herein, at the core of this Cahier, she offers a preview of a few images from her showcase.

[LE CAHIER N°4]

LES CAHIERS DE L'ATELIER N°2

The second Atelier Arts-Sciences Residency spanned two years of collaboration between the EZ3kiel contemporary music group and CEA scientists. Along the way, it opened its doors to another ERASME collaborator, Rhône Multimedia Centre. The residency has produced a dual outcome: The Poetic Mechanics installation by the EZ3kiel at the CCSTI in Grenoble, and concerts equipped with the interactive balloon at Hexagone Scène Nationale in Meylan. The idea of diversion was a constant and inherent part of this residency. While the first meeting with the EZ3kiel group was outlined by a researcher's dream to transform the Earth's magnetic field into music, it is an interactive balloon between the audience and the musicians that came into its own. RFID chips, usually used for labelling consumer goods, turned old pharmacy bottles into musical instruments. Motion-pods, marketed in physiotherapy, made visitors travel in the world of a flame opera.  Accelerometers normally found in a car airbag, produced images from a piano, rather than sounds... Yann Nguema, a contemporary artist raised on new technologies, puts these devices on stage following a nostalgic aesthetic.

This fruitful venture, combining EZ3kiel artists and researchers, has been nourished on this world of contrasts. This last residency opened the door for a wide range of researchers, engineers and technicians from CEA as well as from other research centres. Time was on their side giving them the chance to investigate, to stumble, to restart, to ask assistance from other laboratories, to investigate other technological solutions towards finally presenting a piece of art to the audience: The Poetic Mechanics of EZ3Kiel, ten interactive installations

.

[LE CAHIER N°2]  

LES CAHIERS DE L'ATELIER N°1

First Residency at the Atelier Arts-Sciences, Virus//Anti-Virus, taking its name from the performance which was its artistic outcome, brought together for several months a choreographer/actor and a researcher in data processing to investigate the relationship between art and technology, artistic gesture and music production through the latest miniaturized motion detector developed at the Micro-Systems and Communicating Objects Department (CEA/LETI/DCIS): the “Motion Pod ”.

The meeting between the two project holders, Annabelle Bonnéry and Dominique David had taken place several years before at the Rencontres-i Arts-Sciences-Corporations Biennial, but the 2007 Residency involved an artistic team on a larger scope: the Lanabel Company and a scientific research unit. The residency gave rise to an initial result: a choreographic performance shown at MC2, Grenoble.

This residency was organised within the framework of the Atelier Arts-Sciences, laboratory created the same year by CEA-Leti and Hexagone Scène Nationale in Meylan, with the goal to create and to explore new connections between artists and scientists, to contrast their different ways of representing the world, and to inquire about, as well as to instigate new ways of art-making. The first experience based on a human-machine interface has brought up numerous questions related to articulation, of both artistic and scientific interest, such as symbolic recognition and the status of artists and scientists along with questions about research and creative processes. This experience has also allowed them to assess the research results of a technological device diverted from its initial application to be used beyond its limits as a tool in an artistic production. Dominique David could therefore provide us on the following pages with a few scientific, but also artistic and humanistic answers raised by a research project started years earlier.

As an inherent part of the project, this collective experience was simultaneously monitored by an outside observer. She recounted different complications that were regular obstacles in daily work, she helped to highlight productive methods and fruitful experiences as well as frictions and fatigue in the imaginative power of an artist and a scientist.  A part of her notes, in form of a logbook, serve as testimony hereafter.

Thank you for all those, from near and far away, who joined us in taking the risk in this adventure.

[LE CAHIER N°1]