Joël Chevrier
As of November 2025, the total number of views on my Art&Science articles published in The Conversation and Echosciences is beyond 900 000. Thank you to all readers. EN version
CV-BIO Professor of physics @ Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)
Teaching, exploring, learning with students in Anthropocene, and passionate about contemporary art
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Art&Science All this started for me in 2014 after publication of an article entitled : Les Outrenoirs de Pierre Soulages, obsession d’un physicien ? . As consequences, i) the Swiss Fondation Jean Claude Gandur pour l’art et l’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have then invited me as a scientific curator of the Soulages exhibition Noir, c’est noir ? (2016-2017) centered on Les Outrenoirs de Pierre Soulages, and ii) Pierre Soulages has initiated fascinating conversations with me at his home in Sète. Since then, I have also been involved in many collaborations with artists like Giuseppe Penone, Fabienne Verdier, Yoann Bourgeois…
I here want to contribute to the intersection of art and science, blending elements of both fields in my research and outreach activities. For a physicist, certain universal questions such as motion, light, space, time, matter, water, air… are the bedrock of our lives, and everyone makes them their own. Science produces in-depth knowledge on each one, yet each scientist’s contribution is often no more than a grain of sand. Art, too, takes up these universal questions, but this is another world: each artist enters one or more of these universal questions with her/his unique creativity. My aim is then to explore how to ground my interactions with artists in scientific concepts and in more accessible and aesthetically engaging ways for a large audience. Not surprising, all this led me to reconsider my way of being a scientist with the youngest students.
With works of artists such as Pierre Soulages, Olafur Eliasson, Tomas Saraceno, César, Marina Abramovic, Giuseppe Penone, Yohann Bourgeois, Roman Opalka, Fabienne Verdier and many others, I explore how artists and scientists, we can share our views and propose to all a new way to enter a conversation about challenges of our time.
I then focus on how scientific concepts can inspire new ways of seeing and exploring the world, much like art does. I try to emphasize that both fields share a drive for innovation and creativity.
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Present project about art, science and education: Sensitive Pen 2.0, a pen as a sonic machine. We write with our hands—but what if writing could make sound? With movement microsensors built into pens, we’re experimenting with turning the simple act of writing into a sonic experience.
Writing is fundamentally a movement. Beyond the literal message, the graphomotor gesture carries a personal and expressive dimension. Today, digital pens like our Sensitive Pen 2.0 — traditional pens enhanced with an IMU (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer) — capture movement far beyond the visible trace. Initially used for handwriting learning and detecting difficulties such as dysgraphia (PhD by Ana Phelippeau, supervised by Joël Chevrier, 2024), our project now focuses on the expressive qualities of movement, especially through sound. Since writing is a highly refined and widely shared gesture, we believe Sensitive Pen 2.0 can be used to control sound and enable a personal, instrument-like form of expression.
AI and Digital Pens: New Tools for Measuring Handwriting, Its Learning Process, and Dysgraphia
Research article: Sensitive Pen: An Open-Source And Low-Cost Digital Pen For Diagnosing Children With Dysgraphia
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my bio on A&S Published articles on …Pierre Soulages, Giuseppe Penone, Fabienne Verdier, Cédric Poulain, Yoann Bourgeois, all I had long conversations with, and also Olafur Eliasson, Tomas Saraceno, Anish Kapoor, Roman Opalka, Marcel Duchamp… here is the full list of articles
Here my 2023 art&science book “A physicist at museum“
Art&Science lecture (Fr version) I propose: Art and science shares and explores the same list of universal questions at the heart of our existence as human beings. At the end of the day, it does not matter who you are, what is your business, we all share the same list as it is grounded in how we live together on this planet. During this meeting, we can explore how art and science can have an inspiring and original dialogue with you about key universal questions at work in your business, in your activity, in your life.
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Anthropocene a physics professor at the university seeking to accompany students in Anthropocene
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Science&Design interactions Full professor at UGA (65) presently Scientific Director of the UGA Design Factory for transitions . The Design Factory is : Giving students the ability to imagine creative solutions and the confidence to undertake in a world of transitions.
UGA Design Factory coordinates and develops training programs in creativity, design, entrepreneurship and innovation through active, interdisciplinary teaching methods.
When developing project-based teaching for/with groups of students, at the heart of the open, complex issues facing humanity today and tomorrow as never before, three key pillars root my ideas: Anthropocene, Science&Design interactions, Art&Science. No surprise, in my pedagogical exploration, interdisciplinarity, design and “Fablab learning by doing” are here somewhat like « oxygen in air we breath ».
Based on supervision of many workshops with students from various disciplines (2016-…) : Design Factory Université Grenoble Alpes, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble, Ecole de design ENSCI Les Ateliers, Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires Université Paris Cité, Tsinghua University Shenzhen, Central Saint Martins London. Visiting professor at Da Vinci Innovation Center Paris.
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With the creation of a lab, the Motion Lab (2018 – 2023), The Motion Lab gathered scientists, designers, teachers, students and researchers. Its motto was « The moving body at the heart of learning leveraging digital tools: a new paradigm for education. »
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Researcher at Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique (LIPHY) Université Grenoble Alpes
Scientific activity through numbers : Research gate Google scholar
Archives (2014-2023)
mails: joel.chevrier_at_icloud.com or joelchevrier_at_gmail.com
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Teaching, exploring, learning with students... 