The VOX ePŒTICs project, initiated in 2024 by artist-researchers Marc Veyrat and Philippe Franck, will be presented during this international conference dedicated to Jean-Pierre Balpe — poet, theorist, educator, and pioneering figure of digital literature in France.
For nearly fifty years, Balpe explored a little-known yet fascinating field: the automatic generation of literary texts, at the crossroads of poetry, fiction, theory, and artificial intelligence. He developed unique software capable of producing algorithmic literature, deeply challenging our understanding of language, authorship, meaning… and the machine itself.
This international conference offers, for the first time, a collective exploration of his hybrid and abundant body of work — often unfamiliar to the general public, yet profoundly influential in the field of electronic and digital literature.
Researchers, artists, educators, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries have been invited to share scholarly papers, testimonials, and creative works inspired by Balpe’s universe. The event is complemented by an exhibition of archives and artworks, along with an evening of performance readings.
VoXr e-Poetics
From poetic fragments, electro organic soundscapes and anonymous words recorded in situ in the host city/country prior to the international conference and voluntarily integrated into the multimedia device, this hybrid AV performance/conference will try to discover and develop in several theoretical reflections around and from this research – creation device: what are the issues and potentialities around the evolution of theoretical-poetic-sound discourses using digital technologies? What are the particularities of these hybrid writings? What interactions do they have with virtual and augmented reality environments. Which structures these participatory and immersive poetic sensitive maps
constantly produce in our necessary hybridizations with the Other and the machine? How the respective constructions of these identities augmented by these immersive encounters with a territory and a specific language are structured and questioned. How the way of hearing, receiving and translating bodily, intentionally or not, consciously or not, sounds, voices, songs, the musical dimensions of words open up and irrigate new fields of research…
By opting for an intermedia hybridity like the practices and discourses it calls upon, the presentation will thus be a game, a new way of meeting an audience based on cards associated with the multiform XR work ‘i-REAL’ (initiated by Marc Veyrat within the Société i Matériel, of which Philippe Franck creates the sound and poetic component) poetic-prospective which will be heard and seen live.
Conception: Marc Veyart (images), Philippe Franck (sounds)/Société i Matériel – Laboratory CiTu – Paragraphe / University Paris 8.
Program (french)
Jeudi 12 juin
9h-9h30 : Ouverture du colloque par Erika Fülöp (Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès, PLH) et Alexandra Saemmer (Université Paris 8, CEMTI) :
9h30-10h30 : Conférence plénière : Philippe Bootz (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe) : « Balpe: Stop ou encore ? »
10h30-11h: pause café
11h-13h : Générations de générateurs (présidente de la séance : Alexandra Saemmer)
- Samuel Szoniecky (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe) : « Des générateurs chaotiques aux IA génératives »
- Alexandre Gefen (CNRS/Sorbonne, THALIM) : « La littérature générative à l’heure de l’IA »
- Dashiel Carrera (University of Toronto) : « Nabakov’s Cards: A New Approach to Prewriting for LLMs »
- Marc Veyrat et Franck Philippe (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe) : « VOX eP≈íTICS @PARIS »
13h-14h : pause déjeuner
14h-15h30 : Contextes historiques (présidente de la séance : Erika Fülöp)
- Marie Vicet (Centre Pompidou) : « De l’exposition Les Immatériaux à Mémoires du futur »
- Andreas Broeckmann (Malmö Art Academy) : « Machine aesthetics in the work of Balpe and ALAMO »
- Claudia Kozak (University of Buenos Aires/CONICET) : « From Analogue to Digital Experimental Poetry. Divergent and convergent lines in France and Latin America since the mid-20th century »
15h30-16h : pause café
16h-18h : Mémoire et transmission (président de la séance : Samuel Szoniecky)
- Alexandra Martin (Université du Québec à Montréal) : « Rencontrer le passé dans l’art numérique : une étude de cas sur l’esthétique de la mémoire dans La mort dans l’âme de Jean-Pierre Balpe »
- Elen Riot (Université Paris 8, LED) : « Echos d’Ossian à Jean-Pierre Balpe »
- Nathalie Brillant Rannou (Université Rennes 2, CELLAM) : « L’apprentissage infini : Balpe sur l’enseignement de la poésie »
- Marie Julie : « Un “roème”, de la blondeur conceptuelle, sauvagerie, multimodalités, curry etc. »
18h-19h : Table ronde des souvenirs avec Imad Saleh (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe), Ghislaine Azemard (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe ; FMSH), Sylvie Leleu Merviel (Université Polytechnique Haut-de-France, LARSH)
19h : Vernissage de l’exposition Jean-Pierre Balpe en ligne, Erika Fülöp et Dene Grigar (Washington State University Vancouver, ELL), avec les contributions artistiques d’Alexandra Martin et de Gaël Patron (La mort dans l’algorithme) et de Margot Mellet (Un dégénérateur de texte: Perdmens) et cocktail dinatoire
Section 2
Vendredi 13 juin
9h-11h : Réseaux et remédiations (président de la séance : Philippe Bootz)
- Nasreddine Bouhai (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe) : « Démarche de remédiation technologique d’une œuvre pionnière de la littérature générée “Trajectoire” de Jean-Pierre Balpe »
- Everardo Reyes (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe) : « Poésie générative et visualisation : une approche sémio-numérique des poèmes Stein »
- Alexandra Saemmer (Université Paris 8, CEMTI) : « “Faire un roman de rien(s)” : Jean-Pierre Balpe et les réseaux sociaux »
- Servanne Monjour (Sorbonne Université, Sellf) et Nicolas Sauret (Université Paris 8, Paragraphe) : « Archives de chercheurs sur Jean-Pierre Balpe »
11h-11h30 : pause café
11h30-12h30 : Table ronde : Archives littéraires nativement numériques et hybrides : conservation, traitement, analyse : Laurence Le Bras (BnF, Archives et Manuscrits), Alexandre Faye (BnF, Dépôt légal numérique), Aurèle Crasson (ENS, ITEM) et Jérémy Pedrazzi (ENS, ITEM), Erika Fülöp (PLH)
12h30-13h30 : pause déjeuner
13h30-15h30 : Liens interartistiques (présidente de la séance : Nathalie Brillant Rannou)
- Flavie Maury (Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès) : « Quand la machine poétise : typographie et auto-réflexion phénoménologique de l’esprit chez Jean-Pierre Balpe »
- Gaëlle Théval (Université de Rouen Normandie, Marge) : « La littérature générative comme performance : oralité et performographie balpiennes (sur Trois mythologies et un poète aveugle) »
- Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi : « Dialogue créatif – quand la musique générative rencontrait le texte génératif de Jean-Pierre Balpe »
- Maurice Benayoun (Université de Nanjing), Carte blanche
15h30-16h : pause café
16h-17h : Conférence plénière : Grégory Chatonsky : « Excession »
17h-19h : Hervé Nisic : Présentation du documentaire Personne (2000) et projection
Marc Veyrat (Fr)
Artist, Aggregated Professor, HDR Senior Lecturer in Art Sciences; Head of the Hypermedia Communication Department at the University Savoie Mont-Blanc, and researcher at the CiTu Paragraphe Laboratory at the University Paris 8; Associate Researcher at the UNESCO / ITEN Chair (Innovation, Transmission, Digital Edition).
Marc Veyrat is interested in the complexity of information shaping – in digital, visual and contemporary art – networking, and communication strategies, particularly in Mixed Reality (XR) devices and across social networks or the web…
Isa*Belle (Fr/Be)
Isa*Belle develops her artistic approach for and through the well-being of the body – in its multiple dimensions – associated with personal and spiritual development.
Evolving between Belgium and France, she has been working since 2005 in collaboration with Paradise Now to produce several performances and sound installations supported by Transcultures / City Sonic and broadcast internationally.
She has also collaborated with several musicians (Maurice Charles JJ, Matthieu Safatly, Stephan Dunkelman …) and visual artists (Simone Simon, Joseph Dadoune, Régis Cotentin), created the duet Unda with Ariane Chesaux and joined, in 2015 Werner Moron and Philippe Franck in the audio-poetic combo “Les ours bipolaires”.
Philippe Franck (Be/Fr)
Under the name Paradise Now, Philippe Franck has been developing, since the early 1990s, a multifaceted artistic journey in a forward-looking and willingly collaborative approach. He has produced numerous choreographic music, exhibitions, performances interdisciplinary, videos (notably for Régis Cotentin, Hanzel & Gretzel and Thomas Israel), multimedia devices (with digital artists, Philippe Boisnard, Marc Veyrat, art2network).
In addition to its collaborations with the holistic performer Isa*Belle (several installations and body/sound performances since 2005), Paradise Now also works with musicians electronics Christophe Bailleau (the duo Pastoral), Gauthier Keyaerts (within Supernova), Stephan Dunkelman, Christian Leroy, Didié Nietzsche, the vocalist/performer Maja Jantar as well as several poets (including Ira Cohen, Gerard Malanga, Werner Moron, Eric Therer, Catrine Godin, Habiba Sheikh…).
His recording productions can be found notably on the Transonic, Optical Sound and Sub Rosa labels. Philippe Franck passed away on January 27, 2025.
Informations
- 12 > 13.06.2025 – Campus Condorcet
8 Cr des Humanités, 93300 Aubervilliers, France - 12.06 – Centre de colloques, Salle 100
- 13.06 – Humathèque, Auditorium
- balpe2025.sciencesconf.org
Production
- VOX ePŒTICs is a production of the i Matériel Society, with the support of Transcultures.
