Péguy LUMUENE LUSILAVANA is a researcher in contemporary philosophy, a lecturer in the philosophy of mind and communication, and an epistemologist in political science. His primary areas of interest include digital technology, artificial language, and research methodology. A specialist in Bergson—whose work is also discussed in this issue through Bernard Gast’s artistic approach—he has notably published: “Bergson’s Thought in the Age of Cognitive Neuroscience” published by Hermann in 2021, and several articles in Plastir, including issue no. 78 (Plastir 78/09-2025), which addressed the challenges of digital communication in emerging countries; issue no. 73 (06-2024), “Repairing and Being Repaired: A Path to World Peace,” and issues 69 (06-2023): “Transgenerational Relationships and Brain Plasticity” and 62 (09-2021): “From Closure to Monadic Creation: Leibniz’s Error.” For this issue, he invites us to reflect on the humanities in the digital age through the interaction between bio- and semiocultures. Digital technology serves as both a microscope (a precision tool) and a mirror (revealing new behaviors) for the humanities. The challenge in this approach for the days ahead is to show how to ensure that artificial intelligence remains a tool in the service of human culture without becoming a substitute for it. In this context, the nature/culture distinction becomes obsolete: humans are the product of a biocultural and semiotic coevolution. This hybridization not only heralds the advent of a “noosphere” (the sphere of human thought) that is entirely interdependent with technology. It also opens up the possibility of a digital semiosphere that is not predatory toward the biosphere, but rather a genuine interface for coexistence? The biosphere–semiosphere interaction in the digital age must not be an absorption of life by artificial algorithmic language, but a mutual translation. The humanities act here as interpreters, ensuring that our “digital layer” remains at the service of life and not the other way around. In short, in this vast project, the role of the humanities is to guide us toward a new humanism—one capable of reconciling classical “wisdom” with technical efficiency so that the digital realm serves human emancipation rather than alienation. Here, religious wisdom and indigenous knowledge (particularly African) must not be ignored.»
Adèle TILOUINE is a science-artist whose practice aims to poeticize the empirical and explore the potential of bridging the study of living organisms with artistic forms. Through a wide range of media, she develops a body of work in which data, imagery, and experimental protocols are reinterpreted through aesthetic lenses that question the representation of living organisms, the perception of reality, and the aesthetics of the invisible. With a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from EHESS (2013), she pursued a Ph.D. between France and the U.S. She then moved into the art market, working as a gallery owner, curator, and art critic, before embarking on her career as a science-artist in collaboration with French and international research laboratories. Presented internationally—in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States—Adèle Tilouine’s work has received numerous accolades: the Prix des Amis du Salon d’Automne (2019, 2022), the ADAGP Prize in Digital Art (2021), Emerging Scene Art Prize (Dubai, 2021), finalist for the Arte Laguna Prize (2022), and winner of first prize in the Neuroverse SciArt Competition (2024). After earning a Ph.D. in biological engineering from the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC, France) in 2003 and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the BIOTEC Institute in Dresden (Germany), where she developed expertise in atomic force microscopy (Advisor: Prof. Daniel Mueller), Céline ELIE-CAILLE joined the FEMTO-ST Institute (UMR6174 CNRS) in Besançon (France) as an associate professor in 2006. Since 2013, she has focused her research on extracellular vesicles and on how to combine multi-scale analysis and characterization tools for their characterization. In January 2023, she launched her research team, Nano2BIO, bringing together expertise in biochip development, biodetection, in-depth analysis of biomolecular interactions, nanobiocarakterization, and chemometrics, for the detailed and discriminatory characterization of submicron objects of interest in a complex biological fluid. Jérôme DEJEU is a professor and researcher at the Supmicrotech engineering school in Besançon. After earning his Ph.D. in chemistry, he quickly turned his attention to surface modification to study interactions between biological molecules—without labeling and in real time—using optical methods (plasmon resonance and/or interferometry). Science outreach to the general public has always been very important to him, as evidenced by his regular participation in the Fête de la Science and the Nuit des Chercheurs. The result of a collaboration between science artist Adèle Tilouine and nanoscience researchers Céline Elie-Caille and Jérôme Dejeu (Nano2Bio, FEMTO-ST Institute), this article explores the potential of atomic force microscopy (AFM) for characterizing extracellular vesicles at the nanoscale. Drawing on data and images produced in the laboratory, the project undertakes an artistic reinterpretation of the cartographies of the nanoworld, where scientific modes of representation open up new forms of perception. The article puts the associated instrumental developments into perspective, along with their fundamental and biomedical implications, while demonstrating how AFM imaging transcends its analytical function to become a medium for artistic representation. At the intersection of nanoscience, imaging, and contemporary creation, this approach proposes a reconfiguration of the regimes of visibility of the living.
Sonia KEBAÏLI is a professor of education and subject-specific pedagogy at the University of Manouba (Tunisia) and a researcher in the pedagogy of biological sciences. She is also a member of the Laboratory of Genetics, Genomics, and Epigenetics at the University of Tunis El Manar (Tunisia). With a focus on the relationship between power and knowledge, her research—which incorporates Michel Foucault’s contributions to science education—examines the epistemology and nature of the sciences, scientific mediation, university pedagogy, and the training of future teachers and school inspectors. She is co-organizing an international conference titled “Epistemology, History of Science, Arts, and Didactics: Thinking, Cultivating, and Teaching Science and the Arts,” to be held November 4–6, 2026, in Tunis. She summarizes her approach as follows: « Seeking to understand what life is and what the history of living beings is has always intrigued human thought. Placing biological knowledge in a historical perspective would enrich it, allow for a better understanding of current biology, and situate contemporary debates in their context to better appreciate their importance and discern their meaning. The aim of this article is to offer an archaeological reflection, drawing on Foucault’s approach, on the discursive and non-discursive foundations that made possible (or not) certain pre-“biological” formulations regarding aspects of the living world and its history. The focus is on the Middle Ages, often described as the pinnacle and “golden age” of Arab-Islamic civilization and as barren and stagnant in the Latin world, followed by the Classical Age and the Enlightenment. To this end, we draw on the work of Michel Foucault by borrowing three concepts: the episteme, the dispositif, and problematization. »
Bernard GAST – also a psychoanalyst and philosopher – is a painter and poet whose work is defined as “Painting with Cinema.” Through his art, he explores the very process of creation (the aesthetic concept of “painting without paint”) by employing various media. The main ones are drawing (KOLéOM), photography, and video, notably including 35mm films, which he describes as “sensitive films—the skin of world cinema.” Noting in the 1990s the negative impact of the advent of photography and cinema on pictorial expression, he pioneered a new way of conceiving painting in the light of cinema. A new aesthetic concept was born: “Painting with Cinema!” ” (See glossary in the appendix) encompassing all forms of art (installations, engravings, poems, photography, icons, abstract or figurative painting, pop art, kinetic art, surrealism, installations….). His tour de force lies in using 35mm film as a backdrop without ever becoming hybrid. This return to Painting through Cinema led Olivier Michelon, curator of the Vuitton Foundation and former curator of the Gast exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Center (2007), to say that this “work is far more pictorial than a painting.” Numerous exhibitions in France, Germany, Bosnia, Switzerland, Canada, and Japan. Among his recent activities was a spiritual gathering with the poet François Cheng, who wrote two essays on his Cine Painting (June 2025), and Annette Michelson’s book (Volume 1) on Bernard Gast’s work, *L’intuition éclairante ” – A Journey to the Heart of Henri Bergson’s Thought, a book by the author published in 2025 by I Gallery, followed by an article on the philosopher published in the journal TK 21 Arts & Society, and several exhibitions (Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay, BNF, 2021; Berardo Museum, Lisbon 2023), participation in the Art Brut exhibition (Decharme Donation, Grand Palais – RMN – Centre Pompidou featuring “L’école du monde,” a sketch by Peter KOLéOM (a pseudonym for Bernard Gast’s drawings), and the screening of “La peinture-sans-peinture” at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival). This editorial gets right to the heart of the matter. However, have we said it all? Far from it… I Gallery summarizes this article, which Plastir has the honor of publishing, as follows: “An overlooked aspect of contemporary art: since the 1990s, by ‘painting’ with 35mm film, Bernard Gast has given birth to Painting with Cinema.” More information: https://www.bernardgast.com/. Annette MICHELSON, co-author of this article, is art critic for the French edition of the New York Herald Tribune and later for Arts Magazine and Art International, as well as an American film critic. She edited issues of Artforum and Special Film Issue in 1973 before founding her own post-structuralist journal, Octobre, which published works by Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Sergei Eisenstein, and translations of texts by Georges Bataille. Academically, she taught in the Department of Film Studies at New York University until 2004, with the goal of establishing avant-garde and experimental cinema as a visual art form. In 2015, she donated her documents and archives to the Getty Research Institute and published a collection of her writings on these two cinematic fields titled « On the Eve of the Future: Selected Writings on Film » (MIT Press, 2017), shortly before her death in 2018.