on June 17, 2025 at 2:15 pm
Donatien Aubert, artist selected by Le Fresnoy - Studio national as part of the FEDER CornelIA project.
Abstract In Europe, men and women of letters and scholars, at least until the 17th century, were used to practising their knowledge and honing their memory by means of intense visualisations, organised according to heurastics known during the Renaissance as the ‘arts of memory’, listing and hybridising a range of ancient (‘artificial memory’) and medieval (‘memory machines’) techniques. Mastery of these techniques conferred on those who practised them prodigious mental retention capacities, a characteristic that made them particularly appreciated in scholarly circles during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when printing did not exist, and then once it had been democratised during the Renaissance, to organise knowledge that had become prolific. These techniques were based on compiling edifying images, indexed in mental spaces that could refer to real or imaginary places.
The composition of mnemonic images has followed fluctuating rules over the centuries, but the earliest texts on the subject suggest that their evocative power derives from their beauty, if not their violence. Their synoptic quality has interested poets and painters. Recognition of the cognitive processes involved in recollection, as part of an imaginative but also combinatorial activity, has aroused the passion of logicians for these techniques. While medieval ‘memory machines’ such as Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna inspired Pascal and Leibniz to create their first metal calculating machines, the arts of memory are firmly rooted in the development of a rationality that is properly algorithmic. Rediscoverded in detail in the second half of the twentieth century by famous academics such as Paolo Rosi and Frances Yates, they inspired engineers specialising in human-machine interaction to develop more intuitive models for governing digital communications. What forms have the updates to these procedures taken? What wider cultural significance do they imply for the arts, the humanities and the field of artificial intelligence? The remobilisation of the arts of memory in techological artistic practices has encouraged the emergence of installation-based plastic productions, facilitating the narration of the artists intentions, in the manner of a Gesamstkunstwerk. Donatien Aubert will apply this analytical framework to present his own work.
Biography Donatien Aubert is an artist, researcher and author. After graduating with honours from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts of Paris-Cergy, he did post-master’s research at the Laboratoire de l’École National des Arts Décorartifs (EnsadLab). He was part of the Spatial Media programme, specialising in the creation of virtual reality experiences are shared 3D environments. Hes also holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the Faculty of Letters at Sorbonne University. His thesis, written as part of the Labex OBVIL, deals with the updating of the arts of memory (techniques for spatialising knowledge whose origins date back to Antiquity) in the field of human-machine interaction.
Donatien Aubert’s hybrid works include videos, interactive installations, virtual reality experiences and sculptures created by computer-aided design and manufacture. They balance epistemological and historical perspectives with forms that owe as much to the classical culture of curiosity (scientific and literate) as to contemporary technoscience.
Digital technologies have transformed the production, access and circulation of knowledge, opinions and aesthetic experiences: Donatien Aubert has been analysing this epistemological, political and sensitive transition for several years. He is particularly interested in the role played by cybernetics in the development of digital cultures. He has contextualised its influence on the transformation of conflict resolution (during the Cold War and in contemporary times); he has questioned the representation it has offered of humankind and its potential obsolescence; and he has endeavoured to show its importance in the reshaping of scientific ecology.
Donatien Aubert’s visual research is based on treatments that have been enhanced by digital technologies (generativity, interactivity, immersion), using a visual grammar that is capable of balancing a baroque and romantic aesthetic with more minimal and industrial influences. Donatien Aubert has been exhibited at several biennials (Némo, Chroniques, Elektra) and his work has been shown internationally (Kyoto, Esch-Belval, Basel, Montreal Goa). He is the winner of the CNAP ‘Image 3.0’ photographic commission in 2020. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Odile Ouizeman, Paris, in 2021, at 3 bis f, Aix-en-Provence, in 2022 and 2023, and at Le Hublot, Nice, in 2024. He recently took part in the ‘Machina Sapiens’ exhibition at the Conciergerie, organised as part of the Summit fir Action on Artificial Intelligence. He will be guest artist-professor at Le Fresnoy for 2025-2026. He is published by Éditions Hermann (Vers une disparition programmatique d’Homo Sapiens?, 2017) and has contributed to scientific works, including L’art de la mémoire et les images mentales (2018), published by Éditions du Collège de France.
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