BetaGirl "This is the rabbit hole into my world. I hope you all do stay a bit here in Wonderland, for I'm quite interested in visitors. I often get lonely all by my Cheshire Cat self. It's just sort of nice to know that someone is looking; here I'm defenseless, no guards, just me. In between all the spaces I touch I'm here now. There's an infinite amount of babble to be spouted but for now let's begin our broadcasting day. Stay here with me and keep me company because even if I don't see you there, I can feel you." Airalin

Dataraw with E.Pitoiset The idea of a superabundance of information as only vector of misinformation, led us to transcribe a database starting from raw information of topicality made up from the Web. TARGET, TERRORIST, BOMB, CRASH, FIRE, ANGELS. This project is a fragment of a given time. Data-raw (flow of continuous information) is a "work in progress" which draws from that database (image and sound) and recomposes in various ways.

Incidence A project using an image search engine, available resources on the internet and your requests. Encounters occur, sometimes coincidences, even incidents...

Des Fleurs Project which uses a data with about 400 sounds, 400 words and 400 images; on the topic of nature, portrait, death, with 3 different phases generated in random, always discover a "monstrous" portrait in evolution…

Histoire(s) Histoire(s) "Story(ies)" is a dialogue between a child and his father. A deconstructed story , a story to built, a endless story, a funny story, a joke, a fantastic story, a mythologic story, child's story, enigmatic story, a voiceless story, wordless cartoon, a story to tell, a story of stories, stories...

TimesSquare A square, a surface, a place, a volume, a time: TimesSquare. A project using webcams placed in New York, Manhattan, Times Square. 8 Webcams survey a square. In this space, we have the possibility of viewing traffic in real time: people, cars, landscape modifications,... Square the time...

Timescape 24 hours a day search engines seek pictures on the internet. Timescape presents a glimpse into these search as they happen, in real time. The Timescape landscapes appear as fleeting electronic canvases through an accumulation of random photographic mosaics. The contents of the landscapes are different with every new connection and each time the page is refreshed. According to the time of day, a generic grid will appear... it is up to the user to define the elements in the matrix…

!C! action attack attempts blind bombs city civil ephemeral global illegal immediate landscape now omnipresence operation plan planning power protection random strategy surveillance system target terrorism threat ubiquity violence webcam

J'eux J’eux is both a matrix and an interface project. It is constructed on the Des Frags basis then rebuilt in the network context. J’eux regenerates the portrait of a child and using a data base which finds its roots within image search engines using the key word “portrait”. A collection of links of image files from anonymous people regenerates the portrait of a child.

Om To defragment L'Origine du monde with the following keywords: art, baby, beef, body, flower, head, monroe, sun (words used by the viewers of the Des Frags project); then to animate the mosaic randomly: 72 images by the power of 8, and finally to search for 72 sounds with the same keywords.

Des Frags Defragmentation of the Internet by images; with the help of one or several key words: determine the images that will be researched (mosaic modules) in recomposing the image that you have submitted (the matrix). Des Frags is the defragmentation of the Internet network... A multitude of information is available on the web, and this project allows all this information to coexist in one final image: a matrix that will act as global reference for the different elements which compose it...

Refresh Window This project is a reference to Fresh widow of Marcel Duchamp. A "mise en abîme" of continuations, series and sequence of images gathering of small actions carried out in nature. A picnic, the insects, the flowers then progressively with the reading, one digs in the image and one arrives on scenes related to the body, milk's actions, etc...

Revenances with G. Chatonsky The Revenance of ghosts, of separations and contact. The Revenance of fiction, of stories, of history. Crossing the frontier between ghost logic and virtual technologies. The ghost, fantasies, a present and absent image. At night, the contact of the infra-mince of our skin. The enchantment of our distances and solitudes. Proposing the viewer an N.D.E. (Near Dead Experience) as (a) love story(ies).

Rhizomes A collective and ephemeral work on Internet... "A rhizome does not begin or end, it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is lineage, but rhizome is alliance, only alliance. The tree imposes the verb ‘to be,’ but the rhizome’s fabric is the conjunction ‘and... and... and...’.”

Metaorigines An exchange/communication between the viewer and the artist. Reynald Drouhin conceived and organized this initiative by inviting web visitors to respond to a photographic image posted on the project's home page. The artist also took part in this process.

Alteraction An experimental site, consisting of 12 plastic proposals. These proposals are articulated around the subjects of identity and otherness; from these 2 notions arise other hybrid concepts such as “alteractivity, deterioration, dispute, other me, alter ego, alienation, interity, interactivity, etc...”

Biography
Born in Paris in 1969. Lives and works in Paris and in Rennes. An artist who works with digital material (net and video), he studied plastic arts at Paris Fine Arts School (DNSAP) and at University of Paris 1 (Masters, DEA) and a Hypermedia Multimedia Mastère (ENSBA).
Reynald Drouhin has shown his work at ISEA 2000, in Paris, at the International festival of multimedia urban arts in Belfort, at the Biennial festival 2000 in Montreal and the International demonstration of video and electronic art organized by Champ Libre in 1999. He also took part in ISEA 97 in Chicago, Imagina in Monaco (1998).
He’s received several prizes and distinctions including the Grand Prix for Digital Creation and the Special Award of the Toshiba Jury in 2003, the Video Award of the FIAV in Tangers (2001), the Grand Prix at the Cyberfestival of Reuil-Malmaison as well as the Auvergnes-Videoformes DRACs Multimedia Award in 1999. He has obtained several residencies: at C3 in Budapest (2000), at CICV in Belfort (2000-2001), at Europeo in Italy (2001) and at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (1997). Currently he’s artist-teacher at Fine Arts School in Rennes and member of the Incident.net group.
http://reynald.incident.net
http://www.incident.net



Artist's Statement

Sometimes, mischievous children hiding behind bushes leave a banknote on the sidewalk and nimbly pull it away with an invisible string when a surprised passerby dares to try and pick it up.
I can easily imagine Reynald Drouhin in this type of exercise.
I also imagine him exploring the caves and attics of uncertain rich uncles, searching for a magical treasure.
Finally, I imagine him slowly drifting into immense wastelands wondering about the whys and the wherefores of the fate of these piles of objects abandoned by other natives.

In other words, I imagine Reynald Drouhin as someone who grew up too quickly and who has never completely recuperated from his encounter with the local population.

The locals from elsewhere glide on the web and it is with them that Reynald tends to practice virtual handgliding.
He behaves like a Sunday painter who works without a canvas, without colors or without any particular subject, and who sets up his virtual easel by the road where people walking past stop, stupefied to see images from their own imagination unfold right in front of them.
We are dealing here with a painter who contents himself with creating situations allowing others to perform every possible rearrangement, visual cross fertilizing, collages of symbols, of signs, of images... The Web is great and Datadada is its prophet. For Reynald, in any case, the situation seems clear: since everything and its opposite gravitate and bustle and multiply to infinity within the twists and turns of networks, he might as well dig into the inexhaustible (and sometimes depressing) manna of data in order to construct his visual cathedrals with virtual matchsticks.

Beneath the appearance of a lost monk in a library reduced to ashes, Reynald Drouhin, patient, discreet, enduring and clever is even able to produce an art that is cheerful, light, friendly...
Precious, isn’t it?

Pierre Bongiovanni (extract from Frags, Publication, 2003, Erba Rennes)

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