ALEXIS FOUCAULT___ DIGITAL ARTIST
French artist and designer Alexis Foucault is a leading digital artist and co-founder of UVL, a creative studio that uses blockchain as a medium to design emotional experiences for the Web3.
Working with opposites such as light and darkness, spirit and matter and chaos and order, Foucault’s moody and deeply reflective art has been inspired from everything from Andrei Tarkovsky’s films to the early modest 20thpaintings by Kazmir Malevich, known for his exploration of negative space as much as what is depicted on a canvas. Foucault also credits the eminent Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and a founder of psychology for his inspiration — producing art with a mystical quality that takes one into another world. And of course, there’s the mathematical arm of Foucault’s art as quoted in this in-depth interview with Fluoro, “My process uses many iterations of mathematical equations to create complexity composed of self-similarities”.
To Foucault, the documentary And Then Came the Evening and the Morning where Arvo Pärt evokes Christ as Alpha and Omega with his magnificent piece Pari Intervallo playing in the background is electrifying. He describes the work of Arvo Pärt is more than music, “It’s a prayer. A cry of the heart towards the absolute which raise our hearts towards the transcendence. I can’t think of another composer that was as important in my individual and inner construction by imbuing me with minimalism and melancholy.”
F: What is negative space in your eyes?
AF: It is a place of potential.
When all matter and thermal radiation has been removed from a section of space, the physical void still contains electromagnetic fields, fleeting particles and is full of energy. Removing an object that has been present in a space for years creates a sense of absence. The emotion, the nostalgia that emerges anchors the void in eternity.
Negative space is a gateway to realms we cannot see. Negative space requires faith, the belief that absence is a presence in another space-time.
When painting Black Square in 1915, Kazimir Malevich was searching for this sacred quality of negative space. He used to say that he created it under the influence of a cosmic consciousness experience. With faith, the minimalist geometric form embodies the divine in its pure state and as an unmediated reality.
Negative space is the place where the unspeakable is expressed, where the unknown meets the known, where the unexpected makes its way to our eyes. Carl Gustav Jung emphasized it, “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
F: Describe your body of work as an artist and designer, how do these two areas link?
AF: Design is my most rational creative output. My approach is systematic, attentive to detail and uses a certain form of visual restraint to achieve a sense of timelessness. Nuance is not a limitation for me but the purest way to express a concept, to emphasize a content.
Rationality turns into abstraction in my personal art: using fractal algorithms I produce generative abstract artworks and editions of limited NFTs. My process uses many iterations of mathematical equations to a create a complexity composed of self-similarities. The part encompasses the whole, the macrocosm within the microcosm. I don’t see my approach as anything other than a duo with the machine: randomness and accidents are at the heart of this relationship. Mathematics always take me to unexplored territories by transcending my initial will.
I seek to visualize a personal cosmic vision by exploring the potential of technology. My intuition is that there is a deeper reality that underlies the universe. The world we perceive with our senses is only an illusion, a projection of a hidden coherence. This intuition is close to David Bohm’s quantum theory of implicate order or Bernard d’Espagnat’s theory of the veiled reality. Over the years I have developed a strange sense of nostalgia and contemplation, as if I had lost something from a place or time that never existed. I believe that what I create comes from this place, that these abstract images have existed, exist, or will exist independently of our reality. If the universe is infinite, then I am only activating, materializing or revealing these mathematical projections that are virtual.
With my creative studio UVL, we aim to use the blockchain and NFT medium to awaken emotions and build portals to wonder. Our first experience will be released this fall and will be imbued with a very special narrative and immersion for our collectors. As you may have guessed, the intersection between my two creative areas is digital and technology: my path to reach higher levels of spiritual consciousness.
F: What is crypto art and how do you see it as a new genre of art today?
Crypto art refers to a category of art using blockchain technology in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT). This technology makes a digital artwork authentic, unfalsifiable and rare. Crypto art is a fascinating opportunity for digital artists to create a new kind of value: scarcity. It is a paradigm shift and the birth of a counter-culture separate from the traditional art market players. With the creation of multiple platforms and the emergence of new artists, the genre is sometimes reduced to poor visual trends. These trends are ephemeral but the medium is everlasting. Artists like Pak have understood this by initiating projects that are now more conceptual than visual, using the technological specifics of blockchain.
Crypto art is just a fragment of the next iteration of the internet: Web3, a shared and total digital space without interference from platforms or corporations because the blockchain will endow independent proof of existence of everything.This new reality will set up a decentralized economy and create a new class of digital assets, experiences and interactions. Web3 will augment our digital identities, making them more reflective of our humanity, and bring us to ever higher degrees of complexity and consciousness. In the end, we could say that Web3 is the echo of the values that founded the Internet.
F: Where do spirituality and technology intersect?
AF: Humanity has always transcended its primitive nature through technology. But to reach higher heights, the human being must embrace its spiritual component. Spirit and matter no longer as two separate substances but as a single entity. I often refer to “digital mysticism” because it’s what I want to address in my artistic practice. Everything is one. This intuition has always been at the center of mysticism and spirituality more broadly.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s theory of the Noosphere proposes the existence of a layer surrounding the Earth that would materialize both all of humanity’s consciousness and all of its capacity to think. The sublime incarnation of this conscious unity of souls is the Internet and tomorrow the Metaverse. All the thinking and spiritual matter accessible by all, in any place and at any time.
Why not use NBIC technologies – Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology and Cognitive science – to accelerate our journey towards increased consciousness? Unlike mystics, technologists accept the idea that spiritual development can be infinite, not constrained by a boundary or limited potential. Let’s give ourselves the opportunity to practice contemplation like the Desert Fathers, aided by highly technological methodologies and psychic experiences born of a dialogue with science.
F: How does Paris influence your work in terms of culture?
Paris has a special place in my heart. It is the city of fools, artists, heroes, romantics, saints. Paris is a permanent reverie, an embodiment of beauty in chaos. Eclectic architecture – from Roman ruins to modernist buildings – connects me to the millions of souls who have passed through this city. Wars as well as cries of love soak these walls. It would take several lifetimes to admire all the masterpieces in the city’s museums and streets. Living in a city that contains so many artistic treasures is an invitation to humility. When night falls, Paris is an inexhaustible ocean of mysteries and fantasies. My love for secrecy was ignited in this city. It may seem paradoxical but Paris has accelerated my inner construction. Being in the midst of crowds calls for finding yourself inside.
F: Where do you see the future in terms of design and communication?
AF: See more to be more. I believe that design and communication will offer total sensory experiences that will radically transform our interactions with brands, creators and institutions. An amplification of our senses within fully immersive experiences will precipitate users to immediately access to whatever they desire. It’s not for nothing that Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, had the idea of using a pharmacological solution to open new doors of perception for users and make the movie experience total.
On the other hand, narrative and community will become even more crucial for the creative industry. We are seeing and will continue to see the emergence of communities interacting with content by using decentralized systems. Our imaginary and our collective unconscious will be renewed with these new technologies as a support.
F: What are your future ambitions creatively?
AF: My ambitions are unlimited, I want my art and my creative practice to become total, following the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. I burn with impatience to bring my concepts and the aesthetics in my mind to reality. I want my vision to envelop my life in its deepest aspects. With UVL we want to activate the full potential of Web3 by putting imagination, wonder and emotional experiences back at the center. I can’t say much about it but our first project will embody our signature and vision for the years to come.
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UVL
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Interview by John Saint Michel conducted August 2022.