Recalculating…Are We Lost in the Future of Art?

In terms of experimental art practice, drawing a map of the journey is not an easy undertaking. We need to step back and see the global picture. Now close to 40 years of practice, I understand that the multi-layered map of media art experiments takes more than a GPS to find ones way.
A simplistic reading of my artistic journey could easily mislead the reader on my actual goals.
One could recall that I started with painting, photography, video installations, computer graphics animation, Internet based art, VR installations, Artificial intelligence, Interactive exhibitions, Augmented Reality, urban screens, urban media installation, Electro-Encephalography, 3D printing Brain computer interaction…
Going further, one could observe a possible progression in scale, from my first paintings to the 70,000 sqm of the ICC Tower media façade, the highest tower in Hong Kong…
We could also list these practices in terms of genre, conceptual art, experimental photography, interactive installations, 3d CG animation (Quarxs, 1991-1993) the first HD 3DCG animation series on TV), intercontinental telematic art (The Tunnel under the Atlantic…), organic exhibition design, participative art, urban media art, neuro design…
Some could notice that this apparently linear understanding of my journey through art is seriously disturbed by the use of overtly non-technological media: performance, perfume, printing, curatorship, writing on undone projects…
Eventually, some others could pay attention to the real topics behind the media. What is at stake behind the artefact?
The motivation in art (Pièces à Convictions, 85), the time space collapse, the truth in science (Quarxs, 89-93), the artist demiurge and the metaphysics in the representation of space in art (is God Flat? Saint Denis, 94), the obscene practice of seduction in mass media (Is the Devil Curved?, Monte Carlo, 95), culture as an obstacle in remote communication (Tunnel under he Atlantic, 95), the paradoxes of memory in conflict zones (World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War, Linz, 97), the organic status of interactive exhibition design (The Navigation Room, Paris, 1997), networked loneliness (Crossing Talks, Communication rafting, Tokyo, 1999), sharing the retinal dimension of art (Art Impact, Paris, 2000), being Big Brother, I’m watching you (Watch Out, Seoul, 2002, the experience of the gaze in the urban context (Cosmopolis, Rewriting the City, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Beijing, 2005), human factor vs financial stock (Mechanics of Emotions, 2005-2012), the meaning of artistic intentions beyond the artefact (The Dump, 2008), is there something in common between all contemporary artworks? (White Cube, l’essence de l’art contemporain, 2011), the symbolic value of public monuments (War-Peace, Arc de Triomphe, Paris 2008-…), the place of the individual in the city (NeORIZON, Shanghai, 2008), the artist taking over the urban landscape, from cosmetics to critical fusion (Open Sky Project, Hong Kong, 2014-2016), knowledge economy between sublimation and reification (Brain Factory, 2016-…), the actual shape of human abstractions (Brain Cloud, HK, 2017)…
I use to say that interactive art could become the best medium to ask questions, and we know that art is definitely not there to bring definitive answers. The purpose of art as a way to interrogate the world may be the question. In this journey, technology plays the role of the catalyst, even though, carefully and critically handled, it certainly does it well.