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.
The mineral image
— between art and astronomy,
the remanence of rocks
in visualisations
and their imagers
The mineral condition of images, called minerality here, outlines an iconographic field common to photographic experiments in art and astronomical visualisations. Both in the patterns proposed by these representations and in their production process, the mineral appears and operates. Minerality invokes dialogues of scale
(celestial object/image of the celestial object), form (concrete substance/abstract figure) and material (photograph of a mine/sensor made of crystals). These interactions occur between the objects we seek to see, the devices that record them, and their resulting images.
Silicon photosensitive sensors, lunar craters, glass lenses, granularity of the image, silver telescope mirrors... inorganic elements enable the invisible to be converted and translated for the human eye. Stones also became new subjects of representation when photography first appeared, closing the loop between the material of the technical object and its visual production. Through a number of case studies from the fields of art and astronomy, the thesis offers a very concrete analysis of mineral forms (Images of Mineralities) before exploring the tangible components that make these visibilities possible (Mineralities of Images). The symmetry of the whole constructs a photographic palindrome.
The aim is therefore to measure how minerality fits into contemporary astronomical imagery and photographic experiments as a visual, material, semantic and even genetic node. To this purpose, the study perpetuates the mirror effect as a method and draws on two approaches: one based on words and the other on forms. It takes the form of a theoretical text approached through the prism of the plasticity of language and an exhibition of the artistic proposals developed for this reflection.
The historical focus on light in writings and practices surrounding photography seems to mask the materiality of images. The omission of minerals in the study of visualisations raises questions about collective perception and understanding of the forms produced by our technological devices. By considering the link between images, their image makers, and their terrestrial or extraterrestrial environment, the thesis questions the abstract concreteness of contemporary imagery. A return to the physicality of captured images — especially when they transcribe the traces of Arts and sciences Arts and sciences imperceptible phenomena — is essential to understanding a world that is more and more perceived through its representations.
The number of photographs produced by humanity may soon exceed the number of stones on Earth. The irreversible conversion of a geological environment into images of that same world reveals all the complexity, paradoxes and implications of technical visual production. Minerality is not a neutral property; it leads us to replace the image in the sphere of material objects.
Thesis presentation in French