Electronic Shadow
Yacine Aït Kaci, a multimedia creator born in Paris in 1973, and Naziha Mestaoui, an architect by training, born in Brussels in 1975, met in Lille, during the FIFI (International Internet Film Festival) in 2000. With a shared belief that change in the world was imminent at the dawn of the digital age, they founded Electronic Shadow, a hybrid artistic production platform that mixes architecture and digital imagery. In 2003, Electronic Shadow files a patent for the ‘space/image production system’ developed through three years of experimentation and sharing of expertise. The pair’s statement piece, 3minutes², is presented at the 2003 Nuit Blanche, in Paris. Electronic Shadow experiments with projection onto water with H2O in 2004, then on a moving textile sheet, with Chaos Theory in 2009, and onto a forest of elastic threads, with One Man One Tree — an interactive and ecological work — in 2012. Since then, Yacine Ait Kaci has created the character Elyx, which became the digital ambassador of the United Nations Organisation in 2015. Naziha Mestaoui has developed personal work based on her experiences with Electronic Shadow, focusing on the theme of the environment and more specifically the tree. After completing her 1 heart 1 tree project, an interactive work projected onto the Eiffel Tower in 2015, she creates Live Oak Tree of Life (2017) on an oak tree in Innovation Square, Gainesville, Florida. Naziha Mestaoui passed away prematurely in 2020 from a rare disease.