Philosopher and multimedia artist Hervé Fischer graduated from Paris’s École Normale Supérieure. With a Ph.D. in sociology, he taught sociology of culture and communication for many years at the Sorbonne.
Since 1999, he has been working as a digital artist and has held individual exhibitions in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires (2003), in the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales de Montevideo (2004) and in the MNBA de Santiago de Chile (2006).
Fischer has worked tirelessly to promote innovative art forms that utilize and highlight science and technology. He is co-founder and co-president, with Ginette Major, of La Cité des arts et des nouvelles technologies de Montréal. In 1990, he started the Quebec International Science Film Festival now called Téléscience, of which he was the executive director until 2002. Since 1997, he has been president of the International Federation of Multimedia Associations. Fischer is also a member of the national advisory committee for the Canadian Culture Online Program (Canadian Heritage).
Fischer was elected holder of the Daniel Langlois Chair for Fine Arts and Digital Technologies at Montreal’s Concordia University (2000–02) and developed the concept of a media lab—a consortium between Concordia and UQAM universities—which has become Hexagram, a non-profit centre of excellence in multimedia research.
He is an internationally recognized lecturer and has published numerous articles, papers and books on art, communications and digital technology. Fischer speaks French, English, German and Spanish fluently and even some Chinese. He holds citizenship in both Canada and France.
Short-listed 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation