Chevalier started his career in the late-1970s by painting on glass slides and projecting images on recycled television screens that he sold in small galleries. By 2013, as evident through the video El Origin del Mundo (below), Miguel was engaged with large commissions that funded his projecting images onto massive buildings in public settings in Mexico and within buildings whether private homes or the Chapel at King’s College, Cambridge. (see page 37).
Initially working at the start of his digital career with computer cards being inserted into and analyzed by computers oftentimes as large as a building, the development of personal computers allowed Chevalier the ability to work quickly to produce art on his own in real time. The static recycled television screens upon which images were projected have morphed into flat screens and large projected 2D and 3D images, whether generative “seeds” and “flowers” of the 2022 Paradis Artificiels or more “cyber” presentations of cities and territories of Meta-territories. Copying machines reproducing images have since been replaced by 3D printers, allowing Miguel to produce not only solid poly forms of seeds and flowers but the
2013 head of Janus, which was the largest 3D
printed sculpture at the time.
Chevalier has also moved his art forward into
greater interactivity – both with individuals and through equipment and code. For example, Miguel collaborated with a team of engineers from the Music2eye collective to produce a software program called Ultra-Natures.
The program included 18 “virtual” seeds, which contained “very specific intrinsic qualities related to color, size, and shape.” The program allowed plants to grow at different speeds and in different ways. Being “reborn,” the effect was self-regulating gardens.9 At this stage, it is an "artificial nature" which transforms and creates infinite variations– sometimes this garden of light is very minimalist with a minimum of plants and flowers, sometimes this garden will become very abundant even luxuriant. As in nature, there is a part of randomness and chance which generates this great diversity of forms.
Mind you, it must be emphasized that Chevalier doesn’t use commercial software for his artworks. He uses custom tools that have been developed according to his needs and instructions. Since Ultra-Natures, he has collaborated with Cyrille Henry to develop the Fractal Flowers and Extra-Natural virtual herbariums, and Claude Micheli for Trans-Natures gardens.
And equally as interesting from the point of
El Origen del Mundo 2013
Leftt:
El Origen del Mundo 2013
Palacio de Bellas Artes, México D.F.
Filux, Festival International de las Luces México
Generative and interactive virtual-reality installation
Credit: Miguel Chevalier
Film by Claude Mossessian
https://vimeo.com/80280737
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