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Prix
The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Digit
Julien Maire
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Digit is a live performance that is also conceived to be presented as a piece of living art. A writer sits at a table writing a text. Simply by sliding his finger over a blank piece of paper, printed text appears under his finger. The spectators can come very close to the “writer” and read the text following the movement of the finger. The writer remains absorbed in his task.
The performance is simple but quite disturbing. Nothing appears to come between the thought and the printed words. It seems that there is a short cut somewhere: there is no visible hardware, no computer, no display, no noise, no projection. The spectator is free to follow a text written and drawn in a natural movement.
Digit is located between a cinematographic process and the process of writing. The “magic” of the apparition of a moving image is transcribed into a different cinematic set-up. Digit enlarges the concept of projection and the concept of a project that operates in the interstices between literature and the moving image as well as referring to the surrealistic tradition of cutting and rearranging text: Digit is a kind of “Soft Machine” (cf. William Burroughs). In contrast to other types of writing where a machine interferes, the human movement is free and can print in any direction. The performance interfaces the human process between the thought and printed word.
The performance is simple but quite disturbing. Nothing appears to come between the thought and the printed words. It seems that there is a short cut somewhere: there is no visible hardware, no computer, no display, no noise, no projection. The spectator is free to follow a text written and drawn in a natural movement.
Digit is located between a cinematographic process and the process of writing. The “magic” of the apparition of a moving image is transcribed into a different cinematic set-up. Digit enlarges the concept of projection and the concept of a project that operates in the interstices between literature and the moving image as well as referring to the surrealistic tradition of cutting and rearranging text: Digit is a kind of “Soft Machine” (cf. William Burroughs). In contrast to other types of writing where a machine interferes, the human movement is free and can print in any direction. The performance interfaces the human process between the thought and printed word.
Digit was developed in a residency in Berlin (supported by the Conseil Général de la Moselle) and in Villa Kujoyama, (AFAA) in Kyoto in 2005.
Julien Maire (FR), born in 1969, studied fine art in Metz, lives in Berlin. Solo exhibitions at galleries in France and Germany, performances include venues such as Transmediale 01 and 04, Berlin; Future Cinema, ZKM 2003); Ars Electronica 2004 (Honorary Mention for Demi-pas); Film Festival Rotterdam (2007).