Romain Tardy, BE
True / False
Immersive digital installation
A tour of artworks in public spaces as part of the Aix Biennale
Friday 30th and Saturday 31st October
from 7pm to 11pm
Terraces of the Grand Théâtre de Provence
Aix-en-Provence
Legal Notices
A CHRONIQUES CRÉATIONS Platform project.
Sound design: Before Tigers.
Co-production: Stereolux, L’Hexagone Scène nationale Arts Sciences – Meylan. With the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International, the Centre WallonieBruxelles Paris and CHRONIQUES, the regional centre for digital environment creation – SUD Region – Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, as part of the Biennale des Imaginaires Numériques.
5 modular micro-architectures · 57 RGB LED tubes · 15 LED screens · spatialised sound
Videos generated by artificial intelligence
Sound design: Before Tigers
Media perspective
True / False explores the mechanisms that lead us to believe a piece of information. In this age of constant information flow, it is no longer simply a matter of distinguishing truth from falsehood, but of understanding why certain pieces of information seem credible to us even before they have been verified.
L’installation diffuse en continu des informations authentiques et des fake news ayant réellement circulé dans les médias avant d’être démenties. Présentées selon les mêmes codes, elles deviennent indiscernables : rien, dans leur apparence, ne permet de les différencier.
They are broadcast by a fictional media outlet – with no name or country – which takes the familiar form of a television news programme. From one segment to the next, it shifts between different eras, languages and continents. The same piece of news thus seems to pass from one channel to another, much like a rumour spreading across the world.
Faces, sets, voices and opening credits are generated by artificial intelligence: not to make AI the subject of the work, but to construct a plausible media organisation devoid of its own identity — an area in which AI excels. The content itself is based on real events: it is the way it is presented that is fabricated, in order to restore the credibility that the fake news may have enjoyed.
Spatial perspective
The five micro-architectures form a sculptural landscape based on the principle of anamorphosis. From within the installation, the forms appear scattered. But from certain vantage points, they align to reveal the words ‘TRUE’ or ‘FALSE’. Perception then becomes a matter of position, distance and perspective.
This binary opposition is deliberate. Yet between truth and falsehood lies a whole spectrum of nuances: uncertainty, interpretation, omission or distortion. By reducing this complexity to two categories, the work highlights the fragility of our certainties and the mechanisms that shape our judgement.
Immersed in the midst of a stream that cannot be taken in at a single glance, the visitor must move around to find the vantage point from which the words appear. But this revelation, which suddenly seems to make sense, is itself constructed by the installation.
Going beyond the question ‘Is it true?’, True / False thus raises a more fundamental question: what makes us believe, and how can we understand what lies between these two extremes?
Romain Tardy
Romain Tardy has been working in the field of contemporary visual creation since 2008. His work, developed as a series of poetic experiences using light, video mapping, objects and sound, can often be found in numerous countries around the world. The matter of our relationship with technology as well as the bearing it has on our society are at the heart of his work. That said, Romain Tardy refutes the “digital art” tag—his first goal is to create tangible artworks and physical offline experiences in which the screen is never the limit.
