4 April 2024

09:00 – 09:45

Amphi 3

Jacques Charbonneau

Jacques Charbonneau was born in Hull, Quebec, Canada. He has exhibited throughout Quebec, Canada, Europe, South America and the United States. He took part in the Images du Futur 1987 and 1989 exhibitions in Montreal, the Festival des Arts Électroniques de Rennes (France) in 1988, the I.S.E.A., (International Symposium Electronik Arts), in Gröningen Holland in 1990, the Canon Center in Paris in 1995 and the FusionArt Museum in New York, USA, in 2008. He founded several art organizations: the Motivation V gallery (1979), the Centre Copie-Art (1982) and the Arts technologiques gallery (1992), where experimental and contemporary practices were presented. This was followed by networks of European artists, whom he invited to explore and experiment with electrographic art and try to push its limits. In 2022 and 2023, he received several international awards in recognition of his artistic career, notably in Paris (France), Milan and Lecce (Italy) and the Prix Artiste de l’année 2022 des Laurentides in Quebec. He pursues his research in analog and digital art, and is interested in new trends in contemporary art. His eclectic creative process and research reflect an exceptional and innovative use of new technologies in media art.

Is electrographic energy the precursor to AI?

The aim of this talk is to bring the history of analog and digital visual art from the 70s and 90s back to the forefront of the current generation’s interest. After briefly defining the field of electrographic art, a selection of works by international artists that were produced on printing equipment (photocopiers, printers) at the Centre Copie-Art in Montreal, will be viewed and interpreted, along with my own eclectic experiments in the field of electronic art over some fifty years. We’ll discover how the hybridity of the works that were produced through the artist’s creative energy was able to hijack the inherent properties of this equipment of the past, whose primary function was merely to reproduce in order to conceive original works. We’ll try to unravel the mystery of the indifference of art specialists of the time to their interest in, and concern about, the power of A.I.’s digital data hijacking. Could it not be said that electrographic artists breathed a primal energy into the spirit of self-generating recuperation that characterizes A.I.? We’ll take a look at the process of image appropriation that I’ve called Pirate Art, and which, based on past technological equipment, has intuitively nourished the current debates around notions of authenticity and copyright that are emerging with A.I. today.