Seconde Nature and Zinc are two associations that aim to promote digital culture. Gathered today within the collective “Chroniques”, they organize since 2018 the “Biennale des Imaginaires Numériques” whose 3rd edition started in Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Avignon last November 10 and will take place there until next January 22.

This festival is a hybrid stage where artists from different disciplines (music, visual arts, live performances …) come to present their creations. After Levitation in 2018, Eternity in 2020, the Biennial is interested in the theme of the Night in 2022. More than 80 artists invite to build imaginary, observe and question our relationship to the night in a world transformed and conditioned by new technologies. Each edition has a guest of honor, after Quebec in 2018 and Taiwan in 2022, Belgium is the host of this 3rd edition and has co-constructed the programming.

The program presents about sixty digital works, including 16 from the CHRONICLES CREATIONS platform, which brings together 39 regional, national and international partners. During this biennial, the public can discover 21 exhibitions at the Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille as well as in a dozen partner venues in Aix-en-Provence (notably the Vasarely Foundation) and Avignon. Meetings, round tables and workshops with different communities (general public, schools and universities, professionals) are also organized.

The biennial in Marseille

The Biennale des Imaginaires Numériques opened on November 10 at the Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille with outdoor installations, concerts and the opening of various exhibitions in the city.

An international exhibition of virtual reality experiences

Chroniques joined the Galaxy Network, a community of artistic institutions aiming to present and promote high quality virtual reality works to the general public, and proposed at La Friche until December 1st an exhibition of 9 interactive experiences from the second edition of the VR exhibition ” Virtual Landscapes ” by Galaxy Network. Organized simultaneously in Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Korea and Japan, this installation invited the public to dive into different imaginary worlds, from the most realistic to the most abstract, through a selection of award-winning VR experiences, including Biolum, Abel Kohen’s dive into the abyss, or Strands of Mind, Adrian Meyer’s 360° cinematic experience.

N+N Corsino’s exhibition 7 measures per second

Nicole Corsino and her husband Norbert Corsino, choreographers and researchers, run Scène 44, a place for choreographic creation and digital innovation, located at the Pôle Media de la Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille, articulated around 3 axes:

• A creative cluster that develops the hosting of artists and researchers in residence;
• A cultural cluster that promotes the relationship between artistic creation, research and digital innovation;
• A laboratory for shared experiments.

Interested in the kinetics of bodies and landscapes, they have relied since the creation of Scène 44 on a partnership with the PRISM Laboratory (Perception, Representation, Image, Music and Sound) of the CNRS-Aix Marseille University, as part of the 10th international symposium Computer Music and Multidisciplinary Research, which brought together, in October 2013, a group of international researchers and artists on the theme “Music and Motion”. They will then collaborate with the Institute of Movement Sciences, Etienne-Jules Marey, and the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and other national and international cultural actors.

Among their creations using Motion Capture technology are the interactive applications ” Soi Moi”,” Bangalore Fictions” and their first application to use the augmented reality technique, ” Self Patterns”.

7 measurements per second

“Refining the abilities of our senses, expanding the scope of our perceptions by exploring the possibilities offered by virtual reality and AI, playing with the infinitesimal and the vertigo of augmented reality.”

During this exhibition, N+N Corsino present two new creations, ” Event by Eleven” and ” DragonFly” (their first immersive piece, a choreographic navigation in VR), a dozen recent pieces, some of them for the first time in France.

With ” Gates”, for example, they propose to the spectators to scan the ground thanks to a QR code, a dancer enters and comes to dance with them. Winner of the Créativité Croisée call for tenders launched by Rennes – Métropole, ” Event by eleven” is also a choreographic navigation. From a text by Claudine Galea, journalist, writer and playwright who works with the 2 choreographers, 11 performers have improvised dances, this creation is generated by a process of AI integrating an interactive device with the public when it moves.

Translated from IA et art contemporain : la Biennale des Imaginaires numériques se déroule jusqu’au 22 janvier 2023