Development takes place in a context where digital art often requires the design of its own tools. Existing technologies are not always sufficient to meet the demands of research-creation: it is necessary to invent environments capable of handling the complexity of data while remaining faithful to the singularity of their origin. This is why we develop our own software infrastructures, at the crossroads of technical needs and aesthetic concerns.
At the center of this approach lies taupipeline, a system we designed to orchestrate the management of digital assets drawn from the body and presence of Kelly Mézino. Taupipeline automates the stages of transformation—from raw scans to simulation or rendering—while ensuring data traceability and coherence. This technical framework not only frees up creative time but also provides continuity to the entire set of experiments: each new work is inscribed within a common memory, reusable and evolving.
Thus, research and development is not peripheral to creation: it lies at the very heart of our methodology. By inventing tools such as taupipeline, we are building a digital workshop that is not only productive but also reflective—an environment where Kelly’s data circulates, transforms, and is replayed. It is this constant back-and-forth between technical invention and artistic experimentation that drives much of our research-creation.
Artificial intelligence occupies a singular place within this process. It is not merely a tool for generation or automation, but a medium through which we interrogate the boundary between autonomy and control, between otherness and familiarity. Whereas computer graphics deals with the materiality of data derived from Kelly Mézino, AI provides a re-reading: amplifying, transforming, or reinterpreting these data to grant them a new form of presence.
Within the Kellynoide project, AI becomes a vector of artificial life. It allows Kelly’s digital double to be animated not only as a puppet manipulated from the outside, but as an entity capable of responses, improvisations, and emergent behaviors. Whether through generative AI for image and sound, language models to provide a voice, or learning systems that capture and replay gestures, artificial intelligence opens the path toward a hybrid entity—at once intimate and strange.
This place given to AI raises both aesthetic and philosophical questions: how can we give form to an entity that seems to “act” on its own, while remaining deeply inscribed in the data of a real person? How can we maintain the link to Kelly while allowing a space for unpredictability and otherness to emerge? These questions lie at the center of our exploration, where AI—far from being a simple tool—becomes a partner in research-creation, helping blur the boundaries between the living and the artificial.