ART - PERSON OF THE MONTH
Scenocosme
Scenocosme – a creative duo consisting of Grégory Lasserre and Anaïs met den Ancxt was established in 2004. Although the duo's work is a synthesis of art, science and new technologies that come to life with the participation of the audience, their aim is to show feelings and human reactions.
What does it mean to be an artist?
We are a couple of artists. We work and live together since 12 years now. We are doing interactive artworks installation. An interactive installation deals, above all, with relations, whether they are visual or audible. Beyond a frontal relationship with the work, we are trying to provoke relationships, exchanges between the spectators. Our works are forms of small intimate staging that favour meetings around extraordinary sensory experiences. We also think about some of our works as “mediators” between the spectators: works that live on the meetings between the spectators. It is for example the case of Lights Contacts: it is a ritual of meetings that is lived between two or more people. In one, nothing happens. The viewer must necessarily invite someone else to touch his/her body in order to create sounds and lights that will evolve depending on the energy intensity generated. We actually work a lot with sound and light, with which we compose sensitive languages.
With Akousmaflore for instance, we have composed a vegetal language. Each plant reacts to the contact of the human body through a sound, a voice. They stand for a character, a particular sound identity and a behaviour having a feedback, an influence on the reaction, the emotion and the approach of the spectator.
The installation Lights Contacts extended this reflection as lights and sounds are generated by the contact between human bodies. We offer a sensory experience by which we make our energy contacts (electrostatic) with others audible and luminous. This friendly space generates a time of exchanges, of shared and extraordinary meetings. The light and sound vibrations subsequently appear fragile; they depend only on the electrostatic exchanges of the contacts between the spectators. Sound textures truly evolve depending on the approach and the energetic intensity of the body. We are interested as well in the way in which a sound can influence the relationship between the spectators. We explore its power of feedback in apprehending the other and in touching him/her: from the caress to the sensation of playing the body as, for example, a musical instrument.
What do you think is it necessary for artist to have education in art or it doesn’t influence on art activities?
It's necessary to be curious. For example, as media artists, we are interesting in new technologies, and how it's possible to overturn its in order to create new kind of interactions, new poetic gestures. We learn and experiment every time our medium.
What is the source of inspiration for you?
Our artwork focused on hybridizations between nature and technology. We often associate technology and natural elements, which is the case, for example, for Akousmaflore (plants), Kymapetra (stones), Fluides (water), Ecorces (wood). We divert the technology in order to extract a gesture, a poetic fibre. What we are interested in is to discover the unpredictability of a work. It becomes interesting when it is not under our control, when it lives by itself, augmented by technology. In addition to the sensitive interrelations that we propose to the spectators, our works take also their own augmented directions in living by themselves, with the technology, and with the reactions that are voluntarily beyond our control.
We are also interested by different ways to feel the influences of the human body. The electrostatic energy is the trigger of our interactive artworks like Akousmaflore or Light contacts. Our artwork Ecorces reacts to the heat and the breath of the body. The breath also reveals the images of our installation Souffles. In our work Metamorphy we invite the spectator to touch the veil of the work which is a symbolic skin.
The artist must be responsible for his work, do you agree with this judgment?
We don't want to judge.
You had a problem of choosing a profession, or the decision to be an artist came early?
It's not so difficult to know what you want to do but it's difficult to understand what the society wants from you.
What is the most attractive in Russian culture for you?
The diversity of the culture in relation with the immensity of the country
Could you name a few especially significant Russian painters in your opinion?
Kandiski, Chagall, Malevitch
Do you have any ideas, which can’t be realized yet?
We have many ideas and we hope be able to realised it soon.
You work with installations, which combine sound, visual component and the newest technology. Do you have ideas, which could bring something new in current projects, or which could be the basis for your new invention?
Our new interactive artwork consist to transform all the room of a house into a sensitive room. This work is called la Maison sensible. We always continue to work on this nstallation because we could create more and more different scenarios and possibilities for feel the presence and reactions of the spectators inside the room. La Maison sensible is an interactive installation that augments the physical space and the relationship between an onlooker and a fragile and subtle environment. We use different types of discrete sensors to transform the walls, the furniture, the floor of an exhibition room staged as a living room, into delicate, sensible, sensitive, and reactive interfaces. The idea is to create a work that will be revealed if the viewer enters the space being attentive and empathic to what is going on. It develops into a visual and auditive environment that mirrors the body by revealing an interactive audiovisual organic space on which spectators leave footprints experienced as scars by the physical room.
We are also interested to work with scientists. This is for example our new installation artworks which speaks about quantum physics. It is called “Matière noire / Dark matter”.
