PhD Oral Exam - Alexandre Saunier, Individualized Program

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

a new way of conceiving, designing, and experiencing light as the product of material-technological-perceptual ensembles of elements that operate under regimes of real-time computation. The discussion draws on historical and practice-based case studies to demonstrate how technoscientific light creations are characterized by the types of cooperative behaviors and actions shared between machines and humans.

The dissertation has two objectives: (1) to propose a set of notions and terms adapted to the practice and analysis of light works based on real-time computation, and (2) to propose the creation of a new interdisciplinary field of “light studies” opened to the heterogeneity of practices that accompany the artistic use of light.

The dissertation is composed of four chapters. It builds on a framework combining the history and theory of technoscientific art practices, the study of science and technology, and computer science and complex system science. The first chapter traces the historical and theoretical evolution of technoscientific light practices through the twentieth century. The second discusses Thomas Wilfred’s lumia, a pioneering body work that introduces the temporality of machines into light-based art. The third discusses a series of works based on artificial neural networks to illustrate different forms of human-machine distributions and cooperations. Finally, the last chapter narrates the creation process of a large-scale multimedia installation illustrating the hybridity of material-technological-perceptual couplings that bring light into being.