Friday, 16 May 2003 | 00:00
A laptop performance by Antoine Schmitt

Nanomachine: a rythmic semi-autonomous complex machine.
An audiovisual improvisation and performance.
A public fight with a minimal 'Gesamtkunstwerk' in development.

Nanomachine is the continuation of Antoine Schmitt's visual work in the field of audiovisual performance.

Nanoensemble : a set of little detuned visual and musical automatas, which evolve endlessly and autonomously. In-between the individual presence of the objects and sounds, and presence of the ensemble.

Each automata has its own behavior and audiovisual shape; they all interact and influence each other to create a complex rythmic machine which is easy to undestand as a whole but at the same time difficult to grasp due to its complexity. The audio signature of the ensemble is a mix of ambiguous rythmic sampling loops, a kind of generalisation of Steve Reich's Pendulum Music. The visual aspect is extremely light and soft. Exemples of such nanoensembles can be seen on line on

In the Nanomachine performance, Antoine Schmitt improvises a slow construction and dis-construction of many nanoensembles. The construction process is difficult as the machines use to be unstable. As for a musical improvisation, the whole process is open and visible.

Nanomachine is a new form of VJ/DJ expression based on real time autonomous programmed systems.
The usual pictures and sounds are the audiovisual side effects of some complex underlying processes.
Sounds are not following visuals, nor the inverse : they are both originating from the same machine and its many constituting objects. Causality is slightly untuned and always changing (from object to image or sound, from an object to its neighbors, from an object to the overall ensemble) : both sensual perceptions and reasoning of the specatator are constantly triggered and he is moved between reality and abstraction.
Frank Stella told : "What you see is what you see". Here the only question for the spectator is what he is feeling.
Nanomachine is a public fight with a minimal 'Gesamtkunstwerk' in development.

about Antoine Schmitt

﻿Artist and Programmer, Antoine Schmitt stands at the crossing of abstraction and dynamic simulation. Since 1995, he has been molding software algorithms to create audio and visual objects, in the form of installations, online artworks and performances.
Autonomy and abstraction are his research paths, realtime software programming is his tool. Antoine Schmitt hunts down the shape of the being deep inside human nature. Happening underneath langage and meaning, sensation is at the heart of his artworks.

more info on﻿