Vintage Anomaly 125: Antoine Schmitt’s “Puppet President,” Issue 7
Definitely one of the more unusual works that’s been published in Anomaly, Antoine Schmitt’s “Puppet President” might be just the solution you’re looking for to the problems you don’t intend to solve. This piece of web art makes use of a (somewhat snarky) bot to respond to whatever you’d like to tell the “Puppet President” in a “highly protected private crypted conversation.” While his answers might not be incredibly useful, they are amusing and successful in showing off the creativity of their maker, who was originally featured in the web art folio of issue 7, Spring 2005.
Antoine Schmitt creates artworks in the form of objects, installations and situations to address the processes of movement in all of their modalities, and question their intrinsic conceptual problematics, of plastic, philosophical or social nature. As theoretician, speaker and editor of the gratin.org portal, Antoine Schmitt explores the field of programmed art. His work has received several awards in international festivals such as transmediale (Berlin, second prize 2007, honorary 2001), Ars Electronica (Linz, second prize 2009), and UNESCO International Festival of Video-Dance (Paris, first prize online 2002), and has been exhibited among others at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris), at Sonar (Barcelona), and the Ars Electronica (Linz). It is part of the collections of the Foundations Artphilein (CH), Fraenkel (USA), Meeschaert (FR), and others. Antoine Schmitt is represented by Galerie Charlot (Paris), and collaborates with bureau Olivia sappey d’anjou. He lives and works in Paris, but you can find him online at antoineschmitt.com