French curator and academic Dominique Moulon is about as wired into the digital art scene as they come.

In fact, the international expert is delivering a keynote speech here on Friday (August 14) as part of the huge International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) based at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at SFU Woodward’s. His trip here is being sponsored by the Consulate General of France in Vancouver.

Specializing in aesthetics, science, and technology, Moulon is a member of the Observatory of Digital Worlds in Humanities, of the International Association of Art Critics and is founder of MediaArtDesign.net. He is the artistic director of the media art fair Variation Paris and curator in residence at the art center of the Maison Populaire in Montreuil. Dominique Moulon teaches new media at Parsons (The New School for Design), Ecole de Communication Visuelle, and Ecole Professionnelle Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques in Paris. He has also been a regular guest professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and elsewhere.

Yesterday he spoke to the Straight about some of the themes of his keynote address: the explosion of digital culture and its effect on art, the movement toward more material-based digital art, and the mass acceptance of multimedia art amid contemporary galleries and collectors.

"The community of digital art and the contemporary art world, I think in a certain way, are merging, and I really appreciate that. I try to participate with it by showing artwork of artists using digital media and technology, but in the context of an art fair, its finally become normal," said Moulon.

With all the electronic art coming out of Vancouver, from hubs like VIVO and the Western Front to large-scale events like the New Forms Festival, his words should be enlightening.

ISEA runs from Thursday to Wednesday (August 14 to 19); more information can be found here.