Damien Serban is a digital artist and musician. He gravitates around dance, and more specifically the Japanese butoh dance. His first experimental short film, Chrysalide (2005) is a hybrid between 3D animation which destroys pixels and features real video shots of a dancer. Then, in 2008, he directs the dancer Atsushi Takenouchi in Silken (grants by Arte, CNC and Arcadi – Special Jury Prize at the Festival Prisdecourts, Paris). This dreamlike film shows the feelings of an adult man who never came out of his mother's womb.
In 2013, he worked twice for live shows, creating images that react in real-time with the movements of the dancers, their skin becoming part of an augmented projection screen. (Sens Fiction then Introscope, performed at TedX Paris).
His works are shown notably at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, the Cinémathèque Française; and his films are programmed in numerous international festivals, including the Semana Experimental de Madrid, where Asomnie (2009) wins a Special Mention for the Jury.
He collaborated with sculptor Michel Lauricella, creating bas-reliefs augmented with video (Oiseaux, 2015 and Flore, 2016). These works that attempt to muddle the limits between moving image and real matter are exhibited at the Fabrica 114 and Fondation Taylor, in Paris.
Enriched by this multidisciplinary approach, he is now part of the project Sobre Sordos, hybrid song-writing, in which he explores the possibilities of creating a visual universe in dialogue with the music, through videos projected and manipulated live and music videos. Here again he is mixing multiple techniques (video, 3D, monoprints...) to create a hybrid organism, dense and electrified, concrete and fantasized...
He is now working on an abstract series of videos "in collaboration" with AI, the first one "CRISIS 1" having received the Young Jury Prize at the International Film Festival of Nancy, France.
