Hello Paul! You'll be participating in the NellyRodi conference "Beautiful? New Definitions, New Incarnations" on June 27th in the morning, and we can't wait to hear you!
We'll start with a somewhat philosophical question: what place does beauty hold in your life?
When I discover a work, an object, a territory, a person, I'm interested in the details before seeing the overall view. In my opinion, it's often in these details – or even these imperfections – that beauty resides.
I really love the landscapes in the background of paintings, the cat with the strange gaze in Manet's "Olympia," the dissonant chord in the final moments of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, or the pure energy of a drill sound.
Can you tell us the last time you were captivated by the beauty of something or someone?
Last month during a rainy day, I explored a forest. I was completely alone, I crossed paths with several animals, and suddenly the sun broke through the branches. I was seized for several minutes by the beauty and silence of the scene, by the light we could see and the one that remains invisible.
You use technology to create works of art, would you say that algorithms can bring beauty to the world?
I don't think algorithms alone are sufficient to bring beauty to the world when used in artistic practice, just as a brush alone is not sufficient in painting. Certainly, technology opens new perspectives, is capable of digesting large volumes of information, offering an additional form of serendipity to the artist. But it's the artist who, through successive choices and clumsiness, generates the roughness to which, subsequently, visitors become attached.
