Kirell Benzi

Kirell Benzi holds a Ph.D. in Data Science since 2016, which he obtained at EFPL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) where he teaches data visualization to over 180 master's students. He became passionate about digital art at a young age, and by the time he was a teenager started exploring digital creation by making abstract visuals based on photos that combined both art and computer science.

His expertise in software engineering and creative coding have allowed him to design new methods specially dedicated to his passion for data. Consequently, his work has been shown on over 100 websites in 10 languages, including Gizmodo, Engadget, Daily Mail, The MarketPlace, TechRadar, Co.Design, Phys.org, VICE or Digital Trends for his analysis of the Star Wars universe as well as for his interactive visualisations of the data surrounding the viral Pokemon Go phenomenon.

In their whole, Kirell's creations, whatever the material (aluminium, Plexiglas) or their viewing mode (back-lighting, public interaction) can be articulated and deciphered following an array of tones, shapes, dots, and lines that are staged according to the nature of the data, by using mathematical tools and methods which come straight from scientific research.

Kirell's approach is therefore different from that of most digital artists, particularly generative art, in that it applies scientific caution. His virtual gallery is composed of iridescent supernovas the mysterious aesthetics of which hide a painstaking amount of work. First of all, the task of collecting the data beforehand, the base material that needs to be sorted, cleaned and analyzed. This treatment requires the development of mathematical formulas or models that are often inspired by nature.

As for the wells of information retained at that precise moment in time, they constitute the clusters and networks of communities determined according to a premise or specific theme, that will then be illustrated by dots of varying sizes according to the number of people who belong to these communities. This information can be dynamic and connected in real time to current topics or to a particular event. Recognizable in the artwork by a specific color, sets of information can sometimes be interconnected by strands that bring to light the bonds that tie them together. These beams of knowledge, viewed as artistic displays, can just as easily be found inside the virtual prism (websites, smartphones, etc) or in a spreadsheet or a directory. This is the very nature of Data Art, the purpose of which is to render a hidden mass visible. In other words, to transform micro into macro or vice versa.

Through a hypnotic visual semantic, Kirell works to show that algorithms have a soul… In other words, that we can generate emotion and curiosity through calculations. Even though this logic can seem cold in the collective imagination, it might be able to seduce even the most averse to algebra. The purely creative part is in the choice of the color scale and the resulting shape of diverse combinations between networks. Whether they be static or dynamic, these shapes (that turn by turn may evoke anything from stars, spheres, fireworks to jellyfish) stand out against a black background, plunging the viewer into the field of the digital constellation. These concretions of data that give shape to the artwork allow for an infinite number of topics. Notably, as the son of a writer-composer-interpreter, Kirell has focused particularly on the musical field. For this reason, Kirell created the Genezik app, an intelligent playlist generator based on the user's preferences.

Big Data: a hot topic. Since the 25th of May 2018, the GDPR text (General Data Protection Regulation) aimed at all countries of the European Union has hereby gone into effect. It's therefore appropriate to recall that personal data, the current object of an incredible gold rush, doesn't directly concern the data viz that are present in Kirell's gallery, in so far that they only reveal massive data mining. The way in which he exploits the vast universe of data allows him, in fact, to place a different view on all the controversy related to their exploitation and, by extension, to artificial intelligence.

It's not only his profession as a data scientist, but also his activity as a data artist that encouraged him to create his startup, Kirelion, in November of 2017. Kirelion offers companies and institutions playful and creative experiences around the analysis and valorization of their own data.