Portrait Factory Public meeting with the artist Michel Paysant

From March 15 to 20, the artist Michel Paysant and his collaborators are installing the Portrait Factory in the Winter Garden at the Villa Sauber. The workshop is comprised of a series of digital drawings using live models where a simple movement of the eye is transcribed onto the computer screen in the form of a portrait. This device which exploits the “eye tracking” technique was elaborated by the architect and engineer Olivier Herbez who collaborated on the project. The device enables the artist to look at the subject and create a near instantaneous transformation of the gaze into a pencil drawing on paper.

Impassioned by classical and experimental drawing, Michel Paysant has developed, in the space of fifteen years, a project in cognitive science entitled DALY (Dessiner avec les yeux) or “Drawing with the eyes”. The project has enabled the artist to experiment with the aid of the ‘eyetracker’ all the possibilities of the ‘eye as a tool’: for drawing, painting, sculpting, creating architectures and even composing and interpreting music with the eyes. The portraits produced during the workshop will form the object of a final installation.

The first part of the week will be dedicated to the shooting of a film entitled Voyant Non Voyant made by Philippe Puicouyoul. The result of a collaboration with the non-sighted artist Claude Garrandés and the association Arrimage, the film is a drawing project based upon a meeting, a dialogue between the non-sighted artist and Michel Paysant. In the form of a workshop/ performance, the sighted artist equipped with his ‘eyetracker’ will carry out a series of portraits of the non-sighted artist with his own eye movement. The non-sighted artist will conduct a comparative exercise of the sighted artist with his inner strength and vision. The non-sighted artist will then be invited to work with the ‘eyetracker’. These artistic and scientific territories, which are totally inexplored, the experience   thus far non-attempted with the non-sighted will provide a great source of astonishment and curiosity.

The week’s project will equally be an occasion to present a recent co-production NMNM/DRAF David Roberts  Art Foundation in London where the artist wrote a partition of music using his eye movement.

The form ‘of inaudible interior musicality’ is defined as a ‘music of silence’. One of the ‘eye partitions was interpreted and musically assembled by Siegfried Canto, a composer who explores the territories and frontiers of contemporary composition, electroacoustic music and the visual arts

Open to the public from Thursday 17 to Sunday 20 March from 10am to 6pm

– Patricipation to the Portrait Factory upon reservation only and upon availability ; information and booking : public[@]nmnm[point]mc or +377 98 98 49 37

– Free guided tour

Public meeting with Michel Paysant on Friday March 18 at 6pm

In the frame of LAB, behind the scenes of Monaco’s art museum.