Abécédaire (Alphabet)

Old works recreated online in 2026. and new works.

Online artwork.
An abecedary of Stéphan Barron’s works — from pieces made in the 1990s with technologies that were just emerging, some before the Internet existed, to recent and previously unseen works. A living archive, partial by design, that will continue to grow. With each new visit, a never-before-seen logo appears on the home page.

B Le Bleu du Ciel 1994-2026

Two computers in Tourcoing and Toulon, connected to light sensors and linked by Minitel, calculated in real time the average colour of the northern and southern skies. The 2026 version recalculates, every thirty seconds, the average between grey and blue, based on two cities chosen at random from forty-eight.

C com-post 2000-2026

Com_post is an online planetary compost heap. You post a text, which comes back each week a little more decomposed. Texts are sent from the com-post.org website, and the successive decompositions arrive at the address given. A few months after its creation, the work broke down under an avalanche of robot-generated spam. In 2026, a version faithful to the original has been recreated.

D 3Dedalus 2014-2026

Initially conceived as a 3D-printed sculpture, has now been recreated as a 3D animation. A third version, produced in 2026, simulates a Corten steel sculpture intended for public space.

N Le Jour et la nuit – 1996-2026

Le Jour et la Nuit makes us perceive the course of the sun across the Earth, its eternal rotation, its dynamic and living equilibrium. The work connects us to the immensity of nature and lets us feel the forgotten alternation of day and night — this primordial rhythm, shared by all sentient beings, one of the most fundamental and ancient experiences humankind has ever known.

The piece captures the precise moment when two antipodal skies simultaneously live through dawn and dusk: the golden hours, the planetary balance. The averaged color of these two skies, separated by twelve hours, becomes the image of the work — a vertical iridescent gradient, from sunrise to sunset, shifting imperceptibly with every passing second.

The original version (1995) connected two computers via the Internet, each displaying the averaged color of the Brazilian and Australian sky. This version, accessible at n.riendespecial.com, expands the device to forty-eight cities distributed across the entire globe. Each city is represented by a luminous dot whose color is calculated in real time — from the deep black of night to the vivid blue of full daylight, passing through the reds and golds of sunrise and sunset. The forty-eight dots form a circle, a planetary clock: it is not the dots that move, but their colors that change continuously.

Technology can make us lose all perception of nature; it can also help us rediscover it with a wider perspective. This version was developed in collaboration with an artificial intelligence, allowing the artist to realize the work himself, without technical intermediary.

R, R – 2024

R, R (2024), an online installation, is the first work in this abecedary, the one that inspired and prompted its creation. In response to Marcel Duchamp’s Air de Paris, R (subtitled Air de banlieue, Air de rien, Air2…) turns pollution measurements from cities around the world into voices sung by Stéphan and Balthazar Barron.

Currently in progress:

Other works are in progress.

RÂ is a light installation inspired by Ra, the sun god who in ancient Egypt embodied perpetual creation through light. A variation on light diffraction, RÂ offers a meditation, a trance through colour. RÂ 2026

Au bord du soleil draws on the Tibetan rainbow body, a symbol of the body’s dissolution into pure light: a transcendence in which matter melts into energy and consciousness. In augmented reality, the work makes a shifting rainbow halo appear in the sky, and invites us to see beyond: to the edge of the sun, but also to the edge of ourselves.

Au bord du Soleil – 2020-2026

The Abécédaire is an archive, a portable museum in the manner of Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise. Planetary and open, it extends the CD-ROM Art Planétaire and offers an updated version of it.
A work in permanent creation, it will grow over the years with remixes and new pieces.

Aura Terra – 2000-2026

In 2026 and the years that follow, new works and reinterpretations of older works will be added to the Abécédaire.