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If you were to describe Jean-Marc Philippe as a man who has spent his life building bridges, he would probably reply that he has burnt as many along the way. Indeed, the plain facts would seem to bear him out. He entered university in the late sixties to study geophysics, abandoned that to become an anti-establishment, though critically-acclaimed painter, and finally turned his back on that to create art that uses the latest technologies in place of the artist's traditional tools, a pioneering development that has brought him honors worldwide.

Yet throughout his artistic career the theme of building bridges recurs, whether it is between people, present and future time, individual and collective art, or individual and collective memory. And he has been a pioneer in the forging of links between science, technology and art. His latest work, KEO, weaves together the various strands of this theme.

A technological miracle, a space age "message in a bottle", a time capsule, a humanitarian endeavor—these are some of the terms used to describe KEO. But to its creator, it is first and foremost an artistic project:

Given his passion for technology and space, it is not surprising that J-M Philippe had originally intended to pursue a career in science, obtaining a degree in geophysics. However an increasing dissatisfaction with the limitations of the scientific rational approach made him decide not to pursue his studies further and in 1967 he made a clean break, "forsaking the rational for the intuitive". Art, which had been a recreational activity up until then, now turned into a full-time vocation.

Becoming an anti-establishment painter, as a reaction against what he called the spiritually empty society in which he was living, J-M Philippe nevertheless secured his reputation as an artist and throughout the 1970's and early 1980's, he exhibited to critical acclaim at the Georges Pompidou Center, Museum of Modern Art in Paris, FIAC, The Basle Art Festival and Alexandre Iolas and Attali Galleries.

Though his art may be seen as a symbolic mirroring of that era's upheaval, the portrayal of man as a fractured, rootless being was leading J-M Philippe to a pessimistic dead-end in both personal and artistic terms. A turning point came in the mid-seventies when he began to experiment with emerging video technology. By capturing and manipulating video signals, J-M Philippe found that he could distort an image's shape and colors. He exploited this to produce a number of works under the theme Variations Graphiques (1978-1980). The most famous of these is a series of Van Gogh portraits (1978) which outwardly express the painter's inner madness and torment—a modern twist on The Picture of Dorian G rey.

Continuing to seek ever new horizons for his artistic expression, J-M Philippe dug back into his earlier roots. Though the divorce between science and art had apparently been clear-cut, his fascination with space remained. It was therefore not unnatural that from the mid-seventies onwards he began to appropriate space both as a source of inspiration and as the canvas upon which to "paint" with his palette of new technologies. Among the many prototypes he created at the time were the technically feasible Celestial Wheel (1980), a circle of 39 illuminated "stars" around Earth, and Venus + (1980), an artificial star which would be the first star seen in the evening and the last to disappear at dawn. Both generated media interest and critical acclaim, and J-M Philippe was credited with being one of the pioneers of Space Art.

In 1984 he came across a technological innovation known as shape memory alloys whose particular physical property allows them to "memorize" pre-determined shapes at specific temperatures and to "reconstruct" these shapes whenever they encounter these temperatures again. J-M Philippe explains:

He did. His first venture with a French partner in the metallurgical industry led to the creation in 1986 of Hermaphrodite, a bust whose shape changes from a Greek male torso at 20°C to a Venus de Milo at 55°C. The technology, still in its developmental phase, was far from perfect and the alloys unfortunately developed "amnesia" after a certain time.

Undaunted, J-M Philippe turned to Raychem Inc. in the States and became artistic partner to their R&D program, shuttling back and forth between Paris and San Francisco from 1987 to 1989. During this period, he created the first ever large-scale sculpture in the world using shape memory alloys. The Totem of the Future (1989) was hailed as a "living sculpture". This harnessing of technology for art was to receive international acclaim when J-M Philippe received the New Horizons Award of the International Society for the Arts, the Sciences & Technology (Berkeley, USA) in 1987. Further recognition came when he won the Faust Trophy for Innovation (Toulouse) in 1988 and Inventer 89 (Paris) in 1989. The media devoted extensive coverage to him. The pioneering nature of his work was further emphasized with references to it in the Encyclopedia Thema Larousse (Paris, 1994) and it even made an appearance in a secondary school physics textbook in France.

The 1980's explosion in technology impacted on the home and many French families began to use a Minitel, a sort of embryonic Internet. At the same time, the scientific community was beginning to take more seriously the possibility of other life forms in the universe. Taking advantage of these two factors, J-M Philippe set about creating what was to become one of the most original collective works of art ever conceived. Messages from Mankind to the Universe (1986), was composed of messages collected via Minitel from all over France. In January 1987, one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world transmitted them in the direction of the heart of the galaxy as the first stage in a never-ending voyage. Support for the project came from the international scientific community, the space industry and the French media.

Linking as it did the themes of present and future time, space, individual and collective memory and art, Messages from Mankind to the Universe can be seen as a precursor to KEO on a national rather than global scale. Now a decade later, with the arrival of the Internet, this reach can be extended worldwide and J-M Philippe wants to invite each person on this planet to participate in KEO so that it becomes the greatest collective work of art the world has ever seen. However, unlike its predecessor, which aimed to make contact with potential extra-terrestrials, KEO's messages are intended for mankind's own distant descendants 50,000 years from now.

This theme of a collective gift is subtly nuanced in a project currently in development. The Sphere of Mars, due to be launched on the next Mars probe, will be a gift from Earth to her sister planet, Mars. A threadlike sphere will encase shape memory alloy blades whose forms will evolve in rhythm with Martian day- and night-time temperatures. Because of this "organic growth" in form, the gift will "adapt" naturally to, rather than impose itself upon the Martian environment. At the heart of the sphere will be a diamond containing samples of Earth's life-giving elements, Earth's geological signature in the form of granite, and finally an engraving of DNA, humanity's common signature. But why include a work of art on a space mission? J-M Philippe explains:

The Sphere of Mars hopes to rekindle in the public imagination the fire of great dreams which space exploration once ignited and through doing so, melt down the segregation of knowledge into the rational and intuitive.

J-M Philippe has been working on the Sphere of Mars and KEO since 1993 and 1994 respectively, and living off his own resources to get both projects off the ground. The development of the Sphere is almost complete and now he is concentrating all his forces on KEO. He has another two years to go. "But if I do succeed, it will be the most beautiful present the whole of humanity can offer to our distant descendants to tell them what life was like for us on the eve of the third millennium", he says.