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Hervé Fischer

Born in Paris, France in 1941, Hervé Fischer graduated from the École Normale Supérieure (Rue d'Ulm, Paris, 1964). He defended his Master's thesis on Spinoza's political philosophy with Raymond Aron and devoted his main research to the sociology of colour. For many years he taught the sociology of communication and culture at the Sorbonne, where he was promoted to master lecturer in 1981. At the same time, he developed a career as a multi-media artist and creator of "sociological art" (1971) and 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 the 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 the Franco-Canadian participation in the Marco Polo electronic novel project, which involved writers from Africa, Europe and Canada.

He is co-founder and co-president (1985), with Ginette Major, of La Cité des arts et des nouvelles technologies de Montréal (the exhibition Images du Futur, the Café Électronique, the International Computer Animation Competition - Images du Futur and Cyberworld). He was also co-founder (1986) of Infographie Canada. In 1990 he started the Téléscience Festival; in 1993 the M.I.M. (Multimedia International Market), and Science Pour Tous (a network of Quebec's science and technology institutions), of which he is president. In 1999, he joined Martin International as vice-president of multimedia, science and technology. Since 1997, he is the founder and president of the International Federation of Multimedia Associations - FIAM. He is also a member of the Boards of Directors of numerous societies, including SDM - La Société de développement de Montréal.

He was honored by the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology with the first Leonardo Makepeace Tsao Award, shared with Ginette Major for the activities of the Cité des Arts et des Nouvelles Technologies de Montreal (1998).

He has published numerous articles and papers on the sociology of art and communications, notably: Théorie de l'art sociologique, Casterman, 1976; L'Histoire de l'art est terminée, Balland, 1981; Citoyens-sculpteurs, Segedo, 1981; L'Oiseau-chat (on the Quebec identity), La Presse, 1983; "La Calle ¿A dónde Ilega?," Arte y Ediciones, Mexico, 1984; Mythanalyse du Futur (2000), an open-ended interactive 300 page book, published directly on the Internet; La Couleur et les hommes is forthcoming.

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 is fluent in French, English, German and Spanish.

SOURCE : Concordia University

© 2000 FDL