FAKEWHALE INTERFACING WITH FRANÇOIS VOGEL

François Vogel’s Entro_py series challenges the linearity of vision by folding the body, camera, and editing timeline into a single entropic performance. Through a practice that bridges digital craftsmanship and embodied choreography, Vogel reclaims glitch as a living gesture of elastic perception.
We at Fakewhale had the pleasure of speaking with him to unpack the processes, tools, and philosophies that drive his radical approach to video art.

Fakewhale: Your Entro_py series explores the structural fragility of linear vision. How do you see your body’s movements as a tool for sculpting time and space?

François Vogel: I like when there is a link between the action that the camera captured and how the image was manipulated afterwards. It is as if the tridimensionnel reality of the scene would be connected to the two dimensions of the picture. Moving in front of a camera is like creating an animated sculpture, and distorting the resulting image is another way of sculpting. I like when the two ways become one.

Fakewhale: In your work, distortion feels less like an effect and more like an event. How do you conceptualize glitch as a performative act rather than a post-production technique?

I think the main reason is that there is no additive element in the post-production process. The raw material of the shoot is manipulated and changed but not augmented. I have this manipulation in mind when I shoot my videos so the action is a choreography that I invent in relation to the visual effects I will do later on. This close relation between the visual effect and the action on camera makes it a complete process that is close to a performative act.

Fakewhale: You describe your process as “sculpting in time and space.” How did you arrive at this method, and how has it evolved over the years?

I had the chance to chat with the astrophysicist and poet Jean-Pierre Luminet. His research revolves around black holes and the shape of the universe. Dealing with the four dimensions of time and space is an everyday routine for him ! So I asked him if he had sensitive connections to those four dimensions, if he could not only play with them using equations but he was able to feel them concretely, and not like abstract maths. His answer was no, because our brain works in three dimensions, not four. It is easy for us to imagine a cube, but a hypercube remains an abstract object.

In my work, I get a sensitive feeling of what time and space looks like but I cheat because I am only using the two dimensions of an image plus one dimension of time. This allows me to work with a real feeling of sensitive time and space manipulation, just like sculpting.

Fakewhale: Many digital artists rely on automated effects or generative systems, yet your approach is highly manual and artisanal. What draws you to this hands-on manipulation in an era of AI-driven production?

I prefer home made food over processed food… maybe it is the same thing for art ! Having a manual and artisanal approach also gives me full control on what I do. I don’t need prompts that would need to adapt in order to get what imagined. That being said I see  a lot of very interesting stuff in generative art and AI art. But I must say that AI scares me for the amount of energy it requires. There are currently a lot of investments into data centers and power plants. In our time, building a new industrial site on a site that is or could become a natural site is a regression and should be debated.

Fakewhale: Entro_py blurs the line between authentic reality and constructed illusion. How do you think this tension affects the viewer’s understanding of what is real?

I think the viewer fully understands what is real but wonders how the distortion or the expansion of the reality happens. They can tell everything is real but are intrigued because they see a different way of looking at it. It is a kind of shift in the glance.

Fakewhale: Your practice often involves custom-built tools and unconventional workflows. Could you share more about the technical and conceptual decisions behind these choices?

I use classical tools such as after effects or Maya. Basic stuff from those tools can already take your creativity to unexplored areas. For instance, moving a line of pixels in after effects, and then using a grayscale ramp to distort it in time is an easy way to create slitscan images. Or using the conversion texture tool in Maya can simulate a kind of virtual pinhole camera that can distort images as if you were manipulating a real negative inside a camera.

I also have another interesting tool that developers programmed for my computer. This tool allows me to create slices of time and space in a virtual spatio-temporal cube. It may seem crazy, but it's really what happens! The cube I visualise in Maya is a flip-book, with the front face being the image and the depth being time. I model and animate a polygonal plane in Maya that pierces through this cube and extracts a video sequence from it. It literally creates slices of time and space.

Fakewhale: Looking beyond Entro_py, what new ideas, techniques, or directions are you interested in exploring within digital performance and video art?

I don’t know precisely. I have many things that I shot and would like to finish when I have time. I’ve just finished many commission works and I want to take some time for daydreaming and think about about new ideas.