Louis Bec

Louis Bec (1936-2018) was born in Algeria and lived in France. A biologist and zoosystematician, he extended his scientific field with a fabulatory epistemology based on artificial life and technozoosemiotics. He was also both an artist and a scientist in the field of artificial life and 3D technologies.

In 1972, Bec founded the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste, where he studied the inability of living beings to understand their own existence. As part of his paranaturalistic research, Bec developed a series of potential beings that he endowed with chimerical and fictional characteristics. This extension of biological evolution and simulation of new life forms emphasises how these could have begun evolution and is a unique search for new zoomorphic types and forms of communication between artificial and natural species.

He collaborated especially closely with his lifelong friend the philosopher Vilém Flusser, who first introduced him to artistic research on artificial life. Vampyroteuthis infernalis is perhaps the most important, certainly the most public, result of Bec and Flusser’s partnership that lasted for more than 15 years.

The exhibition "Science Friction" add the picture for Vampyrotheutis infernalis, 1988.