20 years in 13 countries

JEAN PHILIPPE COTE

CANADA

JEAN PHILIPPE COTE

CANADA

Biography

Jean-Philippe Côté is an artist based in Montreal (Québec, Canada). His visual and interactive work is always driven by algorithms. Using open source software and pieces of “obsolete” hardware, he puts together interactive installations that bring back a sense of tangibility to this otherwise artificial, virtual and augmented world of ours.
Jean-Philippe leverages his early years as an award-winning developer to devise algorithmic approaches to creating art and re-shaping reality. This makes him a respected contributor to the open source community, especially in the fields of creative coding and physical computing.
His subject of choice is the human face which he usually draws using micro or macro line segments. While figurative, his work challenges perception. The viewer’s brain is asked to fill in the gaps and one often needs to change his point of view to fully appreciate the work.

Innocent surveillance
Installation

Innocent surveillance is an interactive installation that continually constructs and deconstructs giant portraits of visitors via algorithmically generated lines. Using a camera and facial detection technology, the installation is constantly and actively seeking faces to draw.

The installation offers a playful experience far removed from the gloomy ways in which face detection technologies are often used.

The resulting drawings are willingly flirting with abstraction. While recognizable, portraits leave a lot of room for the brain to fill in the gaps. This perceptual illusion is inversely proportional to the distance at which the user stands from the projection. As users walk away, they get a higher and higher subjective image resolution.