# François Bellabas

> Artist based in Paris, France. Works with the expanded photographic medium to question what seeing means when machines also perceive: installations and hybrid environments where images no longer fix anything — they circulate, accumulate, feed on one another. Graduate of ENSP Arles; winner of the CNAP commission "Réinventer la photographie" (2025) and the Discovery Award, Louis Roederer Foundation, Rencontres d'Arles (2024). Vocabulary note: the works use "computed images", never "AI-generated".

Site: https://www.francoisbellabas.com — every work page embeds its full statement in JSON-LD.

## Main pages

- [News](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/): current and upcoming exhibitions, talks, news
- [Works](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/works.html): index of all works and research projects
- [About](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/about.html): biography, press portrait, newsletter
- [CV](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/cv.html): exhibitions, awards, commissions, press, talks

## Research projects (series)

- [Synthetic Roots](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/synthetic-roots.html): since 2022 — probes the memory held by mainstream generative models, approaching their latent spaces as a photographer
- [Motorstudies](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/motorstudies.html): since 2016 — takes the machine as anchor to question the mutation of the American industrial model, feeding a database of photographs, videos and 3D scans

## Works

- [Embedded Presence](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/embedded-presence.html): 2026, installation — a computed double, a gaussian splat that senses and answers each presence
- [Protomaton](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/protomaton.html): 2024, installation — a machine reassembled bare on the wall generates portraits where the photo booth automated them
- [Aborted Diffusion](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/aborted-diffusion.html): 2024, diffusion prints sealed in resin — images from computations cut short
- [An Electronic Legacy](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/an-electronic-legacy.html): 2018–24, installation — California wildfire photographs, a contaminated GAN, a film
- [Random Adventure Memory](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/random-adventure-memory.html): 2023–24, interactive installation — an avatar wanders a memory that never comes together
- [Dust Reboot](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/dust-reboot.html): 2022–24, interactive installation — a simulated desert recomposed at each reboot
- [Tireribbon](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/tireribbon.html): 2020–24 — road infrastructure as plastic material: images, virtual sculptures, nearly objects
- [Motorstudies database](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/database.html): since 2016 — extract from the visual database sampled across California
- [By Default](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/by-default.html): 2024, installation — a desert photograph as desktop wallpaper, a horizon that no longer moves
- [mumble of silence](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/mumble-of-silence.html): 2024, film — nine wooden screens, the world dissolving into matter and murmur
- [Unconcrete](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/unconcrete.html): 2024, with Benjamin Roulet — skateboarding between lived gesture and dreamed city
- [Lost Level](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/lost-level.html): 2024, with Benjamin Roulet — a dystopian Paris as lost video-game level, ending in a skatable sculpture
- [Can Dogs Save The World?](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/can-dogs-save-the-world.html): 2022, with Benjamin Roulet — an augmented reality Eden of hybrid canine beings
- [Rivage Research](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/rivage-research.html): 2021, with Benjamin Roulet — parodying innovation companies to question research on the image
- [Digital Disaster](https://www.francoisbellabas.com/digital-disaster.html): 2015 — catastrophe landscapes from low-res images found online