Simon Doury, Creative Coder for the Google Cultural Institute Paris

Simon Doury graduated from the Concepteur Réalisateur Multimédia program at GOBELINS Paris in 2008, and is now a freelance Creative Coder and Interactive Developer & Designer. Since 2016, he has worked mainly for the Google Cultural Institute Paris. Passionate about music, he has also developed an activity as a musician and experimental composer.

When I left school, I worked for " La Surprise ", a small communications agency, and then became a freelancer quite quickly.

I often had a good relationship with the project managers I worked with during my apprenticeship or at the start of my career. So it was natural for me to turn to them when I launched my freelance business.

I started working for agencies and studios, including BETC, Atoma and Les 84 (which at the time was a small production studio). I worked mainly on "experiential" sites and flash games.

Since 2016, my freelance time has been mainly dedicated to Google, as a member of the Google Art & Culture Lab.

Many of the projects I work on use machine learning and AI research carried out in-house by other teams.

I propose a project, then make a prototype, and if the idea appeals, I collaborate with other teams and artists in residence. The field of research is varied and the teams have access to the latest technologies, so the working environment is very stimulating.

Google Art & Culture is a non-commercial initiative. Its main mission is to protect and safeguard cultural and artistic works.

Part of the team works with institutions and museums to digitize and enhance artistic and cultural collections. The content is presented online and on an app to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

Assisted Melody, Google Art & Culture Lab

The most importantprojects I've been able to work on have been developed at the Google Art & Culture Lab.

Last year, for example, I developed a visualization of the Timbuktu manuscripts. Over 40,000 pages have been digitized in order to preserve them and give everyone the chance to study them.

Art Palette is another of my favorite projects. It's a tool for searching works of art by color palette , developed with Etienne Ferrier. This project was very interesting for me, as I was able to take the time to optimize it to make the tool as fast and user-friendly as possible.

I also worked on several music projects that fascinated me, notably Assisted Melody, which lets you harmonize a melody in the style of a composer.

Yes, very often! Several alumni work at the Google Art & Culture Lab. In agencies, I've also often come across GOBELINS alumni (in project management, motion design, development, web design, etc.).

I also collaborated a lot with Lab212, a collective of artists from my graduating class. We're still in touch and work together regularly on interactive installations.

I've been making music for a long time, and I also listen to a lot of it. It's my preferred means of expression.

Although I sometimes produce music for commissions, particularly installations, I approach musical creation as an artistic expression, not as a way of recording commercial works.

I'm not attached to any particular style, and my creations move between techno, ambient and contemporary music...

I'm currently in discussions with a label. So there are a number of recent projects I've finalized that I haven't yet released, but I hope to do so soon! My music is available on my bandcamp.

At Google I regularly collaborate with the Magenta team, an open source research project that explores the role of machine learning as a tool in the creative process. The team's research focuses on AI and Music.

Right now I'm working with their latest model, MusicLM, a machine learning model that can generate music from a textual description. It's to music what Midjourney, Dall-e, Stable Diffusion,... are to images.

I've released several projects via my bandcamp. Right now, I'm looking for a label to publish my latest projects and do some concerts.

Interactive table for children / Simon Doury - Lab 212

I have a lot of fond memories, especially during the production of end-of-year projects. We helped each other out and also took time out to relax around the ping pong table!

My work group and I built an interactive table for children. At the time, it was all very new, and it was very exciting to build this table.

Put your heart and soul into your personal projects!

Interview by Sophie Jean