With a PhD in media archaeology, a discipline that studies the impact of the integration of technologies in our societies, Marie realized during her thesis that everything she had learned about digital until then was wrong. What we see on our screens is not a reproduction of the physical reality we experience. When we face the camera, our image is recreated by a series of pixels in a virtual form, but never has any materiality other than that of the hardware elements of the computer. Where it really exists is in the physical object, each element of which can be dismantled. In A geology of Media, theorist Jussi Parikka reminds us that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as media: everything comes from the earth. On the other hand, philosopher Vilém Flusser notes our fascination with technological objects as totems or magical objects.
Marie believes that this fascination will disappear once we understand that the computer in our hands is only earth. To achieve this, she seeks to put the human back at the heart of digital creation, while moving away from the idea of interface. Her main motivations are based on the reduced use of digital processes. The first is based on a personal observation: in digital art exhibitions, the technical side takes precedence over the conceptual message and its scope. As a result, we see a profusion of technological objects whose function and intent we understand neither. The second is that we spend a good part of our daily lives looking at screens, and the artist wishes to propose an alternative to the permanent visual spectacle we experience. The final motivation is ecological: we've become accustomed to digital objects without having a clear idea of how they're constructed, or of their environmental impact.
Marie takes up the basic principles of digital technology, namely immersion, communication, interaction and interactivity between materials, while seeking to show us what lies behind our screens. The idea then occurred to him to create an object, or more broadly a space, in which the materials, their mechanism and the energy that drives them will create a form of information, and will be visible to the public. Imagine typing a key on our computer keyboard, and being able to observe the entire mechanism and routing of the information until the sign appears on the screen. As with an interface, Marie wants to translate energy into a signal, and show us its progress from start to finish. In reference to the No School's low-tech approach and collective spirit, she calls her project « NO_SCREEN ».
The artist then embarks on a design approach combined with reverse engineering to create her work. To begin with, she had to dissect a computer and study each material, in what form it was an energy conductor, and whether or not the communication signals between the materials were visible. The metals and minerals were raw before being polished, washed, fabricated and then integrated into the manufacturing circuit of a motherboard, for example. Marie then tries to understand how the interaction of these materials with energy will be transformed into action. Technically, implementing such a process should be quite difficult through a single object; given the quantity of materials and the complexity of the mechanism, logic leads Marie to consider the immersive installation as a medium, as if the public were inside the machine.
This is where design issues come into play: how do we make the parts fit together? Will there still be a need for manufactured products? Should the parts be positioned against a wall? Will any levers need to be activated? What is the reading direction of the work? How does the work interact with the public? What form will the information take: an object, an essence, words? To answer these questions, Marie needed to surround herself with experts: a geologist for the materials, an architect for the layout, and an engineer for the computer operation. She drew up sketches of the rocks and imagined how they could be cut to make them fit together more easily, and thought about generating energy by friction, like a dynamo. She visualized the installation in a 10m2 room, to give a sense of globality to the audience, who would have to perform a series of gestures to activate it.
? Interview by______
OBSOLETE STUDIO