> Tuesday 02/04/03 - 23:00 [ABSTRACT ALGEBRA]

Antoine Schmitt, born 1961, is an internationally award winning artist and programer. He designs and moulds computer programs and builds, based on this, multimedia installations and objects in real and data spaces. His work centers around creating agile "characters" with autonomous behaviour, many of them able to communicate interactively with the visitors/listeners/users. New concepts of music and audio art play an important role in many of Schmitt's productions.

Schmitt's works signpost a new emerging notion, which conceives art not primarily as a product, but as a living digital "creature" or a dynamic-responsive environment. This according to the visionary dictum by media art theorist Roy Ascott: "Not so much meaning, content, appearance, in brief: semiology will be important for the future of art, but ist behaviour toward the recipient."

At club transmediale the Antoine Schmitt improvises with the nanomachine, an semi-autonomous audio and visual abstract minimalist instrument that he built for the occasion.

Schmitt's work has recently won various prizes at international festivals: First prize Net Art at "medi@terra" (Athens, 1999), First Prize of outdoor installations at "Interférences" (Belfort, 2000), honorary mention in software art at "transmediale.01" (Berlin, 2001).

www.gratin.org/as/