Dominique Moulon (born 1962) is a historian of art and technology, art critic and curator, specializing in French digital art. He is the author of the books Art contemporain nouveaux médias and Art Beyond Digital.
[1][2][3]
Background
Dominique Moulon began his activities as an art historian of new media art and computer art by obtaining a Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique in 1987 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art in Bourges France. In 1993 he obtained a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies en esthétique, sciences et technologies des arts from the University of Paris VIII. He obtained a PhD in Arts and sciences of the art from the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne in 2017.[4]
In 2002 he completed an extensive research project called Outils et Création Numérique, which in detail conveyed the techniques computer artists were using in France. He paid close attention to interactivity and developed a philosophical investigation of the real and the virtual, and its multisensory nature by stressing an aesthetics of technology. This work was conducted for the Recherche et Innovation department of the Délégation aux Arts Plastiques of the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication. Here Moulon began his work documenting the historical record of the relationship between technology and digital forms of art, extending the historic work of Frank Popper, Jack Burnham and Gene Youngblood. Key to his initial thinking and activities as an aesthetician, cultural theorist, curator, teacher, and art critic was his encounter with the work of Pierre Restany, Jean-Louis Boissier, Roy Ascott, Edmond Couchot, Christine Buci-Glucksmann and Fred Forest.
Working with the Délégation au Développement et aux Affaires Internationales, in 2004 he created a website to share his research at nouveauxmedias.net. In 2008 he initiated the English version of this website on newmediaart.eu. He also created mediaartdesign.net in 2011 and artinthedigitalage.net in 2018 to continue sharing his research on the relationship between art, technology and society. He was responsible for the digital art section of the French paper magazine "Images Magazine" from 2003 to 2010 and has contributed to the French Magazine “Art press” since 2013. He taught at the Parsons School of Design in Paris from 2014 to 2021 and has been was a regular visiting instructor since 2007 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He has also curated exhibitions, such as L'art et le numérique en résonance at the art center of Mason Populaire in Montreuil, France, Variation Media Art Fair and Zero Autonomy at Cité International des Art in Paris, Human Learning at the Canadian Cultural Center in Paris, by focusing on the using of digital in art to highlight societal issues.[5][6]
Exhibitions
Memo Akten: Boundaries,[7] Santa Maria della Visitazione, Venice, April 20 - November 24, 2024.
Reactivations,[8] Danae, Paris, February 28 - March 28, 2024.
Noise Media Art Fair,[9] Kadıköy Kent Museum, Istanbul, January 13–21, 2024.
Multitude & Singularity,[10] Le Bicolore - Maison du Danemark, Paris, December 8, 2023 - February 25, 2024.
Endless Variations,[11] with Alain Thibault and in collaboration with Catherine Bédard, Canadian Cultural Center, Paris, December 7, 2023 - Arpri 19, 2024.
Another Perspective,[12] [Senne], Brussels, April 20 – May 7, 2023.
Computing Beauty,[13] Gallery A.dition, Seoul, May 27 - September 27, 2022.
Art Me!,[14] Galerie Charlot, Paris, April 21 - July 30, 2022
Decision Making[15]: The Decisive Instant, with Alain Thibault and in collaboration with Catherine Bédard, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, December10th 2021 - April 15, 2022.
Human Learning: Machines Teach Us,[16] with Alain Thibault and in collaboration with Catherine Bédard, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, February 5 - August 28, 2020.
Publications
Masterpieces of the 21st Century, 2021, Art in the Digital Age, 224 pages, ISBN 979-8-547-78536-8.
Japan, Art and Innovation in Transphere 2016 - 2020, (exhibition catalog), Japan Foundation, Tokyo, 2021, p. 48-49, ISBN 978-4-87540-183-4.
Art, Technology and Trends, in ats@50: Art and Technology Studies; 1969-2019, Eduardo Kac (edited by), School of the Art Institute, Chicago, 2019, p. 40-47, ISBN 978-0-578-51202-0.[17]
Capturing the invisible, in Mathilde Lavenne (exhibition catalog), Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, 2019, p. 2-3.
Moulon, Dominique, Art Beyond Digital, Link Editions, Brescia 2018. Paperback, 352 pages, ISBN9780244085926.
On Combinations at Work, in Pascal Dombis (monograph), Supernova, Paris, 2018, p. 115-119, ISBN 978-2-490353-00-2.[18]
Exhibiting the Museum: The Hybrid Spaces of Workspace Unlimited, in Practicable: From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art, Samuel Bianchini & Erik Verhagen (edited by), The MIT Press, Leonardo Book Series, Cambridge, 2016, p. 543-549, ISBN 9780262034753.[19]
Moulon, Dominique. Art et numérique en résonance, Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2015, French, 158 pages, ISBN 978-2-35988-156-1.
Conversation, in Bill Vorn and his hysterical machines: robotic art and culture, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński (Edited by), CCA Laznia, Gdansk, 2014, p. 52-73, ISBN 978-83-61646-05-1.
Fifty questions for Eduardo Kac, in Life, Light & Language (exhibition catalog), Centre des Arts, Enghien-les-Bains, 2011, p. 10-84, ISBN 978-2-916639-17-8.
Imagination versus Reality, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium, 2022.[20]
Reality versus Imagination, Bozar, Brussels, Belgium, 2022.[21]
Interconnections between Visual Art, Digital Art and NFTs, with Frederic Laffy, Masha Maskina, Albertine Meunier and Pau Waelder, CADAF, Online, 2021.[22]
Future potential of Virtual Reality, with Tina Sauerländer, Jay Kim and Olivier Fontenay, Symposium Making Lemonade, Online, 2021.[23]
The art of acting somewhere else, Symposium Adventures of Identity: From the Double to the Avatar, Institut d'Etudes Avancées, Paris, France, 2018.[24]
Machines, Intelligence and Creativity, Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 2018.
Creation and Contemporary Art: Digital art does not exist!, International Digital Arts Market, Phi Centre, Montreal, Canada, 2018.
Coefficient of Digital, International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Manizales, Colombia, 2017.[25]
Digital Coefficient, International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Vancouver, Canada, 2015.[26]
Digital as Contemporary Art, Media Art Futures Conference, Centro Párraga, Murcia, Spain, 2015.[27]
Digital practices of contemporary art, Interface Culture, University of Arts, Linz, Austria, 2014.
De la ville comme atelier pour un art de relations, Lumières de la ville, 5e Biennale Internationale Toronto Montréal Lille, laboratoire Hexagram CIAM, Université du Québec à Montreal, Canada, 2013.[28]
