With "3600 secondes de lumière" Thibault Brunet captures the ephemeral beauty of clouds by utilizing a virtual space created in a video game. He observes the effect of the passage of time on the colors of the skies by creating a cycle of virtual sunrise and sunset. He creates a series of 3D-modeled cloud portraits, illuminated by this virtual sun, taking on different hues depending on the time of day. Thibault Brunet thus compiles a catalog of clouds, a typology of their shapes and changing colors.
The images created by this project blur the distinction between painting and photography. The clouds appear to us as paintings. As we approach, we realize that these images are simulacra created by a video game engine.

Building on his explorations of virtual and modeled reality, Thibault Brunet produced Territoires circonscrits, a series of photographs taken on the coastline of the North of France and of Brittany. The Leica Geosystems firm, which took part in the project, provided Thibault with a three-dimensional scanner (ScanStation) enabling him to film his environment at 360 degrees thanks to a cluster of points transposed into volumes. Rather than merely creating a copy, Thibault Brunet used this state-of-the-art equipment to lay the foundations of a space that one might think of as a drawing. Reality, as filtered by the camera, gave birth to a gradually fading distorted and fantastic universe.

AULT by Thibault Brunet is a book unlike any other. Its carved spine was inspired by the reliefs of a cliff spread out over thousands of pages. Thibault Brunet's goal is to scan the limits of the world. The Ault cliff, whose flanks run into the Channel, is a transition point on the coastline. It is the very edge of the landscape. To capture its relief, Thibault used a Lidar.
AULT lets the rock unfold page after page in a prolonged traveling of 3D modeling, we are right there on the cliff, we note the hollows, the ridges, clinging to what we recognize, taking in the sheer vastness of the cliff. The slice of the book, meanwhile, is sculpted like a block of stone revealing the roughness of a place.
AULT offers a way of experiencing the very ends of the landscape and speaks to our inability to capture the immensity of the world.
Publisher: Mille Cailloux
Award: Révélation Livre d'artiste 2019 ADAGP / MultipleArtDays
Partners: Woma Paris / Artefactorylab / Cercle Cite

The Black Boxes series was born out of a strange feeling – that of being a voyeur and critic of the lurid excitement procured by an algorithmic aesthetic devoid of ethical considerations. Thibault Brunet created the shots in the series using YouTube videos, keeping only those that came from the press, which he then converted into JPEG, and modeled in 3D.
The software's "black box" encoded reality into figures and turned the ruins of Aleppo and Damascus into a model world – somewhere between a video game and a museographic restitution. Paradoxically, simulation simultaneously derealized and embodied the miniatures. The object seemed to be delineated and circumscribed by a physical body whose sand-coloured bricks and grey-blue concrete blocks are reminiscent of bruised skin. The eery physicality of these membranes – closed in on themselves as they are – returned them their black box function while preserving the memory of the disasters of the war...

With "typologie du virtuel" (typology of the virtual), Thibault Brunet set about to explore the French territory using Google Earth.
The images in this series were taken from buildings located in rurban areas that had been modeled in 3D by GE users. Shopping centres, social housing and the high-rise buildings of large commercial firms shaped global architectural typology that is completely disconnected from the territory itself. The artist anchored them into a specific space and time by adding a drop shadow defined according to the day and time of their construction. The context is the shadow, creating a space for projection which disappears into a mist that the artist compares to a "digital cloud" from which his buildings seem to emerge like pop-ups.

« Minecraft Explorer » est une mission d’exploration scientifique virtuelle, composée de chercheurs (CNRS, IGN, INRA), de médiateurs, d’une illustratrice, d’une autrice et d’un photographe. Cette performance a débuté en janvier 2021 avec des interventions régulièrement diffusées en direct sur les réseaux sociaux. Ensemble, nous sondons et expérimentons les infinies potentialités de cet univers immatériel en constante évolution.

The Vice City series is evidence of the relationship between Thibault Brunet's photography work and digital creation. Removing himself from the gamer's playful and hyperactive status, Thibault let his avatar wander through the virtual world capturing moments of beauty, like a modern vagabond. The beauty of urban poetica in deserted lands is an invitation to a contemplative gaze.
Questioning the in-between and ambiguity, Thibault Brunet created hybrid images, between artifice and reality, photography and pictorial tradition. Thus, the artist disrupted the nature and role of the video game by giving this popular medium artistic and historical depth.