User:PhiCrates
Philippe Druez – Artist
Based in Ghent, Belgium, Philippe Druez has developed an expanding practice that includes interactive and multi media installations, mixed media, sculpture, photography, film and performance. His critical engagement with the public is key in all his work. In his projects he explores society, the psyche and the individual within the social fabric in which we live, asking questions about artificial intellignce, the climate and men itself.
Druez grew up with one foot in the film and -then- emerging video world and the other foot in a world of electronics, mathematics and information systems. This made him one of the first multimedia developers who understood image language, IT-hardware and logical structures. With his company, The 8ighth Day, he challenged storytelling in museums by designing cutting edge technological projects and producing innovative interactive documentaries and installations involving all kinds of (new) media for major museums and heritage sites, among them BOZAR Brussels, City Visit Berlin, Vleeshuis Antwerp, STAM Ghent, Roger Raveel museum, C-Mine Genk, Museum Experts Louvre - Paris and permanent art installations in the MAS museum in Antwerp. The commissioned works evolved from cutting edge technological to art systems and in 2012 he decides to focus ardently on his artwork.
As an artist he creates open systems that emphasize organism over mechanism, dynamic processes of interaction among elements and the participant's role as an inextricable part of the aesthetic experience. His interdisciplinary and new media art projects are multi-sensioral, interactive, multilayered, philosophical and challenging. The artist works as engineer, maker, developer, hacker, designer, architect, composer, director and researcher, mastering, exploring and using all disciplines to create scientific works that use all media to lift objects, ideas and concepts out of the conventional to reveal, question and rethink everything.
His studio provides in an electronics, mechatronics and IT lab (Macs, PC's, Arduino...), analog and digital sound studio with modular synths, Ableton, MAX etc, analog and digital photography (from 8mm to large format), including a dark room, 2D and 3D printing, a 1000+ art & philosophy books library and lots more art & craft stuff.
Currently Druez studies Philosophy at the University of Ghent (UGent) and Machine Learning (Artificial Neural Networks - ANN, AI) for Artists at Goldsmiths University of London. He holds Academic Bachelors in Computer Science and Mixed Media Art and a Master degree in Visual Arts at Luca School of Arts, dept. of KU Leuven.
