The Xanthopsia collection—a term evoking a perceptual condition in which the world appears tinged with yellow—is inspired by the work of Van Gogh, himself known for his perceptual disorders and his symbolic use of color. Basket of Crocus Bulbs is not one of his most famous paintings, but it embodies a tension between the natural (the bulbs as a potential for life) and its artistic representation, already shaped by an intense subjectivity.

2. The "New Human" and its "Subrealistic Echo": A Metaphysical Dialectic

- "New Human": A neologism evoking the individual reconstructed by technology—an algorithmic, fluid self, multiplied by avatars, social profiles, and generative AI. It is a being of potentialities, always in the process of becoming, but also in rupture with a fixed essence. (The concept of the "new human" resonates deeply with David Plastique's explorations in New Flesh 2.0 and its 2017 virtual gallery)—this idea of ​​a detached subject, recomposed by technological logic, where identity is no longer an essence but a constellation of data, avatars, and algorithmic projections.

It is not a radical rupture, but rather a continuous metamorphosis—a digital becoming that defies fixed categories of the self. The "new human" operates in a liminal space between the biological and the artificial, between carnal memory and instantaneity. of flows.

This transformation becomes a phenomenological laboratory—a place where the ontological reconfiguration of the human being through the interface is played out, experimented with, and critiqued.

Here I touch on something essential: what if art today were less about representing the world than revealing its underlying metaphysics?

This duality raises profound philosophical questions:

- Identity and alienation: The screen becomes a distorting mirror, where the self is both amplified and dissolved. One thinks of Lacan and his mirror stage—but here, the reflection is mediated by technical and economic logics.

- Metaphysics of the virtual: The screen is not a simple surface; it is an ontological interface, a space where a reconfiguration of being is played out. The "new human" exists in a regime of ubiquity and instantaneity, defying the classical categories of time and space.

-------------------------

3. Rereading Basket of Crocus Bulbs: Between Organicity and Artificiality

Van Gogh painted bulbs as a promise of life—buried seeds, destined to bloom. In Xanthopsia, this image is transposed to the digital age:

- The "bulbs" become data stored in virtualized acrylic paint, stored identity potentialities, ready to be activated.

- The yellow color—xanthopsia—symbolizes both digital hyperstimulation (the blue light of screens, but also media glare) and a form of perceptual pathology: seeing the world through the filter of networks.

This rereading shifts the biological to the technological, questioning what remains "natural" in humans.

-------------------------

4. Scientifically Metaphysical Approach: Between Quantum Physics and Media Theory

- Contemporary Metaphysics: The notion of "echo" refers to theories of resonance (Hartmut Rosa) and complex systems where the observer affects the observed system (uncertainty principle in quantum physics). The screen is a measuring device that transforms what it shows.

- Neurophilosophy and perception: Xanthopsia as a perceptual disorder resonates with studies on digital-induced brain plasticity: our brain adapts to the screen, reconfiguring our relationship with reality.

- Epistemology of interfaces: The screen is not neutral; it structures cognition and identity. The "subrealism" of "the new human" reveals this invisible infrastructure—just as surrealism revealed the structures of the unconscious.

-------------------------

5. Conclusion:

"The New Human" in the Xanthopsia collection does not simply describe a condition; it performs it. By reactivating Van Gogh, they create a bridge between an artistic modernity that already struggled with perception and a digital postmodernity where the boundary between real and virtual is blurred.

Philosophically, this poses the The question: are we still "subjects" in the classical sense, or nodes in a network of data and images?

Scientifically, this invites a renewed metaphysics, where the screen becomes the site of a new phenomenology—and art, a laboratory for exploring its implications.

This approach is profoundly contemporary: it responds to the urgency of thinking about the human in a world saturated with representations, where the self is both overexposed and profoundly elusive.

The New Human: Xanthopsia 164

Tribute to Van Gogh : « Basket of Crocus Bulbs  »

Original in :

Van Gogh Museum

Digital art version :

3840 x 2160 px / 4K MP4 / 198 Mo / 15 fps / 1/1 édition on @objktcom