Paul Lacroix is a creative technologist and media artist based in Tokyo since 2005. Since his early teens he has been curious about technology, and especially about writing code. That interest led him to major in computer vision at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. Although his background is technological, over the years he has felt a growing pull toward the organic, the analog. It is a direction he is still following, not to leave the digital behind, but to let something more living into it.

It did not begin in art, but in engineering. In his early years he worked on 3D scanners and other optical sensors, capturing the human body through precise measurement. It was serious, rigorous work, applied to the medical and cosmetic fields. At Polygon Pictures, his work began shifting from pure engineering toward the creative. The animation studio was a multicultural environment full of talented creators from many disciplines. He contributed to productions that reached audiences worldwide, among them Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and the series Tron: Uprising. Beyond the projects themselves, it was the people who left their mark: directors, supervisors, animators, modelers, composers, colorists, each with their own craft, their own way of working, and their own sense of time. His time among them broadened his perception and gave him a lasting respect for the craft of others.

In 2009, he started exploring new ways of combining his knowledge in computer vision with CG programming and design. He developed real-time interactive content, using sensors that reacted to the people before them: "It creates a link with the audience that is no longer a simple observer, but also becomes a full actor of the digital composition." During a project for a virtual fitting room, he developed a strong interest in physics simulation: "Design a mathematical model to represent something real in a computer, precise enough to give a realistic aspect, but simple enough to be able to run in real time." In the same period, he conceived a live 3D character system for SEGA's Joypolis amusement park, a kind of Virtual YouTuber before the term existed. Based on optical motion capture and real-time rendering, it brought together not only CG creators but also stage professionals and dance performers. Working alongside the performers and choreographer, he saw technology and live art shape each other in real time, and it stayed with him. He also became actively involved in projection mapping, acting as a bridge between the creative team and the technical team, designing the workflows needed to generate 3D content for complex projection situations. He worked on the Seikei University projection mapping, one of the first large events of its kind in Japan, and on the permanent outdoor system Dockyard Garden in Yokohama.

His experience in human body sensing and in projection mapping led to OMOTE, a collaboration in which he designed and built the world's first real-time face tracking and projection mapping system. The video went viral, seen more than five million times in a single week. But the project also marked something quieter: the emergence of a more philosophical approach to his work. Transforming someone's face raised questions others had asked long before: the inner self, the gaze of the other, the self that gaze constructs. How much of a person is only the surface others are given, and what part does technology now play in the space between the two? As his facial mapping technology evolved further, he formed a lasting partnership with makeup artist and art director Hiroto Kuwahara. They came to trust each other deeply, and the line between technology and aesthetics blurred. Together they worked on Face Hacking, broadcast on Japanese television, the Japanese promotion video for the live-action Ghost in the Shell, and collaborations with the British-Irish singer Empara Mi and the Japanese band Kamiboku.

Then the technology advanced. OMOTE had required small reflective markers on the performer's face and heavy preparation. The new system was markerless, and the work could now be shared and experienced by anybody, beginning with a Van Gogh face projection mapping at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. The Lady in the Wood pushed it further. Shot in a forest near Mount Fuji, it was a personal piece rooted in his European heritage with echoes of Latin American folklore, and the first he directed himself. Far from the controlled conditions of a studio, taking the system outdoors was also a challenge, demanding a more robust setup. Two months later, that robustness proved essential. For the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, the French delegation asked him to join the team and support the singer Bilal Hassani. Within only forty seconds, the system was brought onto the stage and ready to go.

Projection mapping on a full body had been an ambition for years. Face was just a first step, but the body was another territory: every joint moves, every muscle shifts, every contour changes with the slightest gesture. The projection had to be subtle enough to feel less like an addition than a second skin. An early attempt in Paris in 2015 was followed two years later by EXISDANCE. It was in 2020 that he reached the quality he was after: PARTED came out of a collaboration with Daisuke Hashimoto and Yae Doi, starring Mari Katayama. For close to a year, they shaped the system, the movements and the content together. The piece questions the relationship between identity and technology, and the perception of beauty and taboo in our societies.

Having spent a decade researching interactive pieces, he had the counter-intuitive idea to strip away the interactive part and focus on algorithmic art, driven by physics simulation and mathematics. In particular, his line and flow work came out of this: thousands of luminous lines drifting through invisible fields of noise, streaming and folding like light caught in a current. There is a hypnotic quality to them, a story told not through words, but through position, movement and acceleration, a choreography unfolding on its own and quite impossible to predict. Pursuing this further, he created Path of Noise (r, θ, φ), a meditation on the randomness of our lives and the paths we take. It was designed to be displayed on a spherical screen. Where a flat screen has edges and a center, a sphere has none, no border, no beginning and no end, so special programming techniques had to be used in order to compensate. He also wanted to offer something hopeful in the tough post-pandemic times. The work closes on cherry blossoms. The artwork received an award at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2022.

Beyond his artistic practice, he is also active in a more professional context: immersive installations, projection mapping, interactive systems, video walls, augmented reality content, all of it nourished by research and development. Among his recent projects, he developed an immersive experience in the entrance hall of a company in Tokyo: two 6.5-meter LED screens lining a corridor, the imagery shifting with the seasons and responding to visitors as they pass. And at the 2025 Japan International Expo in Osaka, he was video technical director and lighting coordinator for a pavilion.

As he watched his algorithmic works, he noticed that from time to time, results of unexpected grace would emerge, leading him to ask himself: "How does beauty rise out of chaos?" Surprisingly, he found some elements of an answer in ikebana, the Japanese floral art. It values restraint and empty space, playing with structure, shape and direction, contrast and asymmetry. But ikebana became more than a way to understand his own work. Over five years it grew into a practice of its own, a need to make something real and analog, and a deeper passage into the culture of his adopted country.

Across everything, one instinct recurs: he works at the intersection of multiple fields, blending them into something new. His practice is fundamentally research-driven, built on experiment. "Each project becomes a learning experience, not only for me but for everyone involved." Though he often works alone, he enjoys creating with others just as much. "Starting from an idea, a dream, a vision, we talk about it together and find a way to turn it into something real." More recently, ikebana has become one of his main research axes. Besides the formal practice, he also explores bringing a quiet touch of technology into it, projecting light onto and around his compositions. One of the oldest Japanese arts and the newest of technologies meet on the surface of a flower.