I first got to know Dominique Leroy about 12 years ago when I invited him to be part of the Super Triennial in Hasselt for which he developed a mobile sound project – Dynamomap. In the meantime Leroy has developed a very interesting oeuvre in his native town Nantes. While initially living in Le Corbusier’s ‘Maison Radieuse’ in Rezé he organised DIY summer camps for media artists to work together, powered by solar panels and batteries. Later he worked with the local community around ecological and community gardening. With his organisation ECOS, he proceeded to design and build public gardens along the riverbanks of the river the Loire.

These days he works in his ‘caravan-lab’ – an old caravan temporarily standing in the garden of a former social office, now a small residency place for contemporary artists, called Pôle de Création Partagée (PCP). His work is a subtle interplay between sound and vibrations of natural phenomena (weather data, natural cycles, bioacoustics …) DIY open source digital electronics (sensors and mini-computers, puredata patches, small speakers), recycled architecture and designs that stimulate communities to work together – often on open structures principles. From a disciplinary view, his work is hard to classify somewhere and thus fits perfectly within the Bureau Doove profile, but it provides a relief within a larger scope of creativity and experiment, blurring all boundaries to make sense of a radical ecological purpose.

Influenced by Arne Naess and his theory of Deep Ecology the works by Dominique Leroy are integrative and avoid dominance in their environment, despite their highly technological background. His work demonstrates the non-conformistic style in which ecology and multimedia inscribe themselves within the arts.

After an interval of 12 years we currently are developing projects based in Nantes and elsewhere.

More info on his website.

(With thanks to Guy Van Belle for his text on Leroy).

Images: (n), 2017, Dynamomap, 2005, Jardin no, 2017