Cyclomorphe

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Cyclomorphe is an installation by Dylan Cote and Tanguy Clerc, created with the support of the Zero1 Festival and the French National Research Agency, and inspired by a series of discussions with researchers Jeanne Lallement and Florence de Ferran. Their work emphasizes the importance of a sensitive and embodied approach to promoting soft mobility as a means of combating the ecocidal impact of carbon-based modes of transport.

The installation takes the form of a low-tech projection machine, powered by a bicycle. When someone pedals, a signal triggers a mechanical system that sets a transparent grid in motion in front of a series of printed images. This superimposition creates graphic animations through the optical process known as “scanimation,” reinterpreted here within a contemporary setup. The images are projected in large format using an upcycled overhead projector, fitted with a powerful LED and inspired by the open-source project Visiophare (of which the artists are members).

Hybrid and straddling different eras, the installation stands as an imposing machine-sculpture, deliberately out of sync with today’s digital tools. Noisy, mechanical, and bulky, it contrasts with the discreet and opaque nature of modern video projectors. This very contrast is what gives it meaning: Cyclomorphe seeks to overturn the logic of the “black box” by making the mechanisms behind the image visible. The viewer is invited to observe the process of visual creation and to interact with it by changing the overlays placed on the device.

By exposing its inner workings, Cyclomorphe invites the audience to understand and reclaim technology. The installation functions both as a projection device and a kinetic sculpture, inspired as much by pre-cinema as by generative art. It questions our relationship with technology by taking the opposite path from high-tech devices: rather than complexity and performance, it embraces simplicity, transparency, and direct experience, much like the bicycle, a quintessentially convivial object.

For its creators, Cyclomorphe is not merely an exploration of the moving image, but a proposal for another way of producing and sharing it.