lucien.bitaux(at)gmail.com
Curriculum Vitæ
Portfolio
Graduated from Ensad, Lucien Bitaux invented Scoposcopy, a discipline that aims to represent imperceptible dimensions. He continued his work on the visible during his residency at the Cité internationale des Arts and at the Fresnoy, national studio of contemporary arts in Tourcoing. He then realized the project "Les Liminaux, metamorphosis of the being in its vision". Naively, he seeks other ways to capture and show reality. This experimental approach is based on the manufacture of his own instruments. Photography, optical capture and light projection are his favorite mediums.Today, he is beginning a thesis in artistic creation entitled "Explorative imagery - a relation between astronomical visualizations and experimental photographic practices", co-directed by Nathalie Delbard and Melik Ohanian in partnership with the Fresnoy and the University of Lille in France. He has exhibited in several places, such as La Générale or La Villette.
Explorative imagery -
a relation between astronomical visualizations
and experimental photographic practices
Starting with the observation of the formal similarities between astronomical visualizations and certain contemporary experimental photographic practices, this thesis explores the ways of seeing and perceiving contained in what we propose to call “explorative imagery”. These, inscribed in the distinct domains of science and art, converge by their processes of fabrication. Symmetry, not to say reversibility, settles down between the two disciplines: the question of defining the common field is engaged by this thesis. Rooted in art or in science, the imageries called as explorative appear following an act of visualization: the forms composing them are not completely controlled or known in advance. In this sense, astronomy as well as experimental photography discover images that are properly speaking discoveries.
Relying on the notions of habitability, palpability and minerality of images, this doctorate in artistic creation interrogates the processes of appearance of incommensurabilities. From these conversions into visibilities, a paradox appears, lodged between the finitude of images that fit in one hand, and the infinity of the macroscopic and microscopic scales they represent. Such visualizations allow us to explore forms or elements without having seen them. In other words, they appear while making appear. This ambivalence structures the work of the thesis both in its written part and in the plastic project. The artistic installation that surrounds the theoretical research aims to manipulate and produce such imagery based on the model of the astronomical observatory, displaced to the field of creation. Thus, the study is inscribed at the crossroads of arts, sciences and phenomenology to take a step back on the representativeness of the images of the imperceptible dimensions, on their relation to objectivity, and especially on their interaction with the act of seeing itself.
Thesis presentation in French