The project investigates how the core emotions shaping Challand’s artistic practice can become training data for an AI model capable of regenerating images from EEG signals. These images are then translated into new sculptural forms and installations, opening a dialogue between artistic intuition, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and material expression. The visit will also offer an opportunity to align artistic and research perspectives and to discuss possible public outcomes later this year at the Institut Français de Cluj, in the framework of Novembre Numérique.
Benoit Challand is living and working in Lyon, France. Trained for five years at Bellecour Art School in Lyon, the artist began his career in 2009. Since then, he has explored space as a creative sanctuary, questioning what we leave behind after our passage - first in terms of energy, more recently in terms of emotions. Working at the intersection of the physical and the virtual, he sculpts in the language of algorithms and renders dreams in polygons. Through 3D modeling, digital sculpture, and additive fabrication, he orchestrates a delicate dialogue between matter and image, inviting tangible forms to converse with their digital ghosts. His current work dissolves the membrane separating pixel from particle, exploring the porous territories where the digital bleeds into the physical realm. His works have appeared in Wired, The Times, Art Travel, Le Monde, Elle, and IDN, and have been shown notably at the Musée des Archives nationales and the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. Read more
