An electronic legacy received the jury award at the Discovery award Louis Roederer foundation

François Bellabas's project An Electronic Legacy testifies to research in which artificial intelligence is now envisioned genealogically, through different generations of tools. The image, considered as data, has become the linchpin of a system in which humans move seamlessly between real and virtual spaces. The exhibition unfolds around a single motif: fire.

2016: the artist spends several weeks in California, where vast forest fires are sweeping the land. He photographs this mythical America in flames, often from the road. Churning skies, arid landscapes or residential suburbs, the lights are intense, supernatural, even apocalyptic.

2018: Machine Learning accelerates. The artist decides to submit to a first-generation AI (a GAN: Generative Antagonistic Network) the first 5,000 shots taken in California, in which fire is often but not always present. The machine recognizes this motif, which then contaminates the entire sequence presented. The image collides with the machine: glitches and other distortions accrue. This collection of vernacular images, whose aesthetic is now codified and dated, is nonetheless symptomatic of a relationship to memory, storage and compilation that has been largely altered by technological tools.

2023: ChatGPT, Dall-E and Mid-Journey stormed into our lives. The artist contemplates his hybridized database in the light of this new generation of technology and creates an immersive installation. The landscapes that make up Firestorm is coming are the result of prompts written by the artist after soaking up the first generation of fire images in his database. Thus, he creates a tracking shot in which the images are generated from textual material (the prompt). The landscapes that burn before our eyes reflect a world where dystopia has taken hold.

Audrey Illouz