Hervé Fischer

Biography

Hervé Fischer graduated from the École Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm, Paris). Hervé Fischer taught sociology of communication and culture at the Sorbonne. He obtained a Masters in philosophy and a PhD in sociology. A multi-media artist and creator of "sociological art" (1971), he initiated many public participation projects with radio, television and print media in many European and Latin American countries before coming to Quebec. He was a special guest at the Venice Biennial in 1976, the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1981, and Documenta 7 in Kassel (Germany) in 1982. He had personal exhibitions at the Musée Galliéra in Contemporary Art in 1976, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal in 1980 (a retrospective), and Mexico in 1983. In 1985, he organized Franco-Canadian participation in the Marco Polo electronic novel project which involved writers from Africa, Europe and Canada, and was parrained by Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino. Since 1999, he is working again as a painter of the digital age. He had one man shows at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentine, (2003), Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay (2004), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile, Santiago (2006), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Neuquen, Argentine (2009?), Centro Wifredo Lam in La Havanne, X Biennale de La Havane (2009), Musée d'Art Moderne de Céret (2010–11), Museu da arte moderna de Sao Paolo (1976 et 2012). The ECI gallery (Paris) presents permanently his new work.

Hervé Fischer is co-founder of La Cité des arts et des nouvelles technologies de Montréal, Infographie Canada, the Quebec International Science Film Festival, the Multimedia International Market, and Science Pour Tous. Since 1997, he also co-founded the International Federation of Multimedia Associations, and has been a member of the selection committee of the Stentor Funds for new media.

He has been elected holder of the Daniel Langlois chair for Fine Arts and Digital Technologies at Concordia University, Montreal, 2000-2002, and developed the concept of a media lab, the Hexagram consortium between Concordia and UQAM universities. Since 2006, he is associate professor, director-founder of the International Digital Observatory, UQÀM. He is a researcher at Hexagram. In 1987 he co-authored and produced the 12-minute computer animated film "Le Chant des Étoiles," which won a first prize in the international computer animation competition held by the National Computer Graphics Association (USA) in 1988. He was honored by the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology with the first Leonardo (MIT Press) Makepeace Tsao Award.

In 2011 he starts what he calls tweet art, creating small digital icons syndicated on Twitter, with a philosophical and interrogative aim.

In 2013 he was elected a member of the board of Artists for Peace. He received also a Doctorate honoris causa - Dhc - from the Quebec Universities and delivered an importantlecture about mythoanalysis at the Sorbonne, Paris University.