Bérénice Serra French media artist and researcher based in Zürich (CH). Her work and research focus on the notion of publication — how contents go public in the digital age. Her projects can be web-to-print books, installations, digital drawings, web based projects, interventions and performances. She releases most of her work under open source and creative commons licences. She is currently Guest Professor at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. artworks biography and cv research teaching hello@bereniceserra.com instagram Sunsettings, 11.2023, solo exhibition, Volumes Zürich, Zentralwäscherei, Zürich, CH. Room Tour. Art in the Age of Remote Work, 11.2023, The Wrong Biennale, online, IN. Des Clous, 10.2023, group exhibition, Les Arceaux, Montpellier, FR. Customs, 06.2023, group exhibition, XXIIIe congrès de la SFSIC, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, FR
thingsnonthings.space An interactive narrative inspired by Vilém Flusser’s things and non-things, published as part of the series A throw of the dice curated by Delphine Chapuis Schmitz for the project There's something wrong with my hands. Oh yes, they're not holding you.
Image: NØ SCHOOL and Cookie Collective Tradescantia was developed during NØ SCHOOL Nevers 2021 as a way of reflecting on self-hosting web-based artworks. This project has two components: a webpage hosted on a ESP32 (microcontroller) and a QR code which was printed with solar energy using photosynthesis. The ink is 100% chlorophyll.
From where I stand is a group exhibition, feating my work SWIPE, curated by Elli-Anna Peristeraki. The Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) in collaboration with the Municipal Art Gallery of Larissa G.I. Katsigras Museum, present “From Where I Stand,” the first digital art exhibition to take place in Larissa. The exhibition and its rich program aim to connect digital arts with the public of Larissa and to promote artistic expression through innovation, while highlighting the digital artistic community of the city.
A database (last name, first name, address, telephone number, e-mail) constituted outside of digital environments allows the proposal of service and/or collaboration in the manner of a targeted advertisement.
watch the video The Swipe notebook is a writing copybook that enquires into forms of writing in the digital age. Developed in 2020, during the quarantine period due to the coronavirus outbreak, this edition is conceived to be accessible to everyone from their place of residence. It can be printed from a website, following the web-to-print technique.
SWIPE proposes to learn a writing system inspired by the principle of gestural text entry. SWIPE considers trails produced by the use of the virtual keyboard as a writing system in its own right. The writing copybook contains practical and poetic exercises to learn this writing system outside its digital environment.
Development: Bérénice Serra and Jacques-Daniel Pillon Swype/Swiftkey is a virtual keyboard developed for touchscreen smartphones and tablets that allows the user to write by sliding his finger from the first to the last letter of a word. Using a predictive text system, this keyboard can achieve a writing speed of 50 words per minute. The SWIPE project proposes a translation app that highlights a link between writing speed and the enrichment of language through graphic writing by recording the signs generated with the Swype/Swiftkey keyboard. Each word then produces a new sign.
Space Cheap is a group exhibition, feating my work SWIPE, curated by Maxence Grugier. The exhibition offers multiple perspectives on science fiction (SF). Far from reducing SF to mere "folklore", this exhibition presents artists and designers whose works dialogue with the imaginary of science fiction by tracing a more or less utopian future. Artworks and texts by Damien Baïs, Thomas Barbé, Alain Barthélémy, Ophélie Demurger, Alix Desaubliaux, Pierrick Faure, Valentin Godard, Martin Guillaumie, Jérémie Nuel, Bérénice Serra, Maeva Borg, Alexandre Lefebvre, Claire Malot and Nicolas Nova.
Les îles intérieures is a group exhibition, feating my work RESIDENCE. Image: ©Marion Bornaz Within the exhibition, the public is invited to rethink the sharing of information, focusing on the relationship between individuals. Unlike bots and the algorithmic web, it is the relationship between humans that will be discussed here. Following the example of peer2peer, the digital exhibition is thought of as a living and unstable object that changes according to the present actors.
Valis is a group exhibition, feating my work SWIPE. Ars Electronica celebrates its 40th anniversary and, as always, turns its gaze forward in an artistic and scientific survey of digital reality, its prospects and our options for action. In keeping with its title, “Out of the Box — the Midlife Crisis of the Digital Revolution,” we embark on an expedition to artistically and scientifically survey our modern world and its techno-economic influences, its prospects and our options for action.
Autonomie Zéro is a group exhibition, feating my work RESIDENCE, curated by Dominique Moulon and Gilles Alvarez. Autonomie Zéro aims to put the human back into the machine as well as to reveal the importance of the decisions or intuitions that are ours and will probably remain ours for a long time to come. Algorithms, we are told, are likely to learn by themselves if they are stimulated. It is this essential stimulation that we want to examine here, through the works of artists as closely as possible to the technical devices they use to create together.
berenice-serra.com/residence RESIDENCE is an exhibition protocol designed by Bérénice Serra. It is open to all and relies on the functions of the Google Street View application for smartphone. Established on the model of the artistic residency, RESIDENCE welcomes singular works as an online residency program, available 24/24h. The first edition of the catalog was printed in 500 copies in March 2019. In collaboration with Stereo Buro.
Art Mobile is a group exhibition, feating my work RESIDENCE, curated by Marie-Laure Desjardins. The smartphone is only 12 years old and billions of us use it. It has radically transformed the habits of many of us but also those of some artists. Sometimes they criticize it or question it. Sometimes they use it to create new forms and to spread them.
berenice-serra.com/residence RESIDENCE allows anyone to download, modify and upload 360 views inside Google Street View. It relies on the Street View app for smartphone, which allows any user to augment the online visual cartography. This tool, initially released to skirt the responsibility of the American company towards the published contents - by applying a copyright on the images taken by the users — opens a creative breach in its use. The photos are not subject to any moderation by Google and will only be removed if an "undesirable content" is reported by other users. Embracing the opportunities for detour given by the very functioning of the publication tool, this project includes the participation of Marion Balac, Raphaël Fabre, Arzhel Prioul, Seitoung, Bérénice Serra, Julien Toulze and Mathieu Tremblin. The works are visible online by all users of Google Street View.
Group exhibition, feating my work PUBLIC, curated by David-Olivier Lartigaud. Image: © Kevin Ardito
Collection: FRAC Normandie Rouen, acquisition 2021 In electronics stores all over the world, smartphones are on display for potential buyers. Fixed to the furniture, these tilted and aligned objects are no longer "mobile" or even "personal". Some visitors then activate the camera — by default, the one on the front of the device. Once the shot is decided, the image is stored automatically (and without intervention) in the phone's image gallery. Since 2014, PUBLIC has consisted of collecting the portraits left on these phones. The primary challenge of this collection is to rethink the circulation of these user-generated images and their mode of distribution. In places open to the public, the distribution of the free newspaper PUBLIC reactivates specific stakes related to the history of the portrait, at the time of the databases involving the algorithms of facial recognition.
Watch the video Galerie was performed on October 22, 2016 at the FNAC store — Champs-Élysées in Paris. Group exhibition hijacking smartphones in electronics stores. With the collaboration of Julien Nédelec, Benoît Pype, Eric Watier, Guillaume Viaud, Selma Lepart and Michaël Sellam.
In electronics stores all over the world, smartphones are on display for potential buyers. Attached to the furniture, these tilted and aligned objects are no longer "mobile" or even "personal". However, all the primary functionalities integrated into smartphones are operational: note-taking, calendar, contacts, camera, clock, etc. Some visitors then activate the camera — by default, the one on the front of the device. Once the shot is decided, the image is stored automatically (and without intervention) in the phone's image gallery. Since 2014, the PUBLIC project has consisted of collecting the portraits left on these phones.
Finalist of the Marc Charras — Creation & Invention Prize 2015 Nowadays all scales can be measured between the index and the thumb. This sculpture forces a unique measure of the gesture that usually accompanies the expression "just a little bit". The only measure that could be contained, before digital tools, between the index finger and the thumb.
A-T-T-E-N-T-I-O-N is a group exhibition, feating my work PETIPEU ÉTALON, curated by David-Olivier Lartigaud and Samuel Vermeil. Image: ©Aldo Paredes And if in the context of our digital society, where we delegate attention to machines to extract meaning from the billions of data generated on a daily basis, human attention has retained its value to the extent that it is at the heart of an "economy" that is constantly being redefined, ranging from the concentrated user (playing a video game or using software, for example) to young social media users who have become adept at multi-tasking. All the more reason to question how we develop, from an ethical, structural and aesthetic point view, the objects and environment that make up our daily, connected world.
