Born in 1961 in Strasbourg, Alsace, Antoine Schmitt is a contemporary French artist, also known as a programming engineer and designer. At the age of 16, he began teaching himself programming. In 1984, he graduated as an engineer from Telecom Paris and started his career as a programming engineer specializing in artificial intelligence and human-computer interactions in Paris. He worked for Act Informatique for five years, from 1985 to 1991, before moving to Silicon Valley as a research and development engineer for NeXT with Steve Jobs for three years, from 1991 to 1994. Concurrently, he also served as the technical assistant to filmmaker Chris Marker and collaborated with companies such as Hyptique, Incandescence, Virtools, the BBC, and Violet. 

Since 1994, Schmitt has gained recognition for his work as a visual artist, earning numerous awards and featuring in many exhibitions. The following year, he published Puppetsprinte 1, an artistic CD-ROM, with creator Alberto Sorbelli. In 1999, he authored "Drjouin pour une musique illimitée," the first CD-ROM of generative music. A year later, he founded the web portal gratin.org, the Groupe de Recherche en Art et Technologies Interactives et/ou Numériques, a reference in programmed art. Currently, he is participating in the exhibition "Escape, Digital Generations," which is available for display in French cultural network establishments. 

In his creations, Antoine Schmitt evokes the notion of forms "programmed to be free." He envisions minimal, abstract, and efficient works to better address contemporary or timeless themes. Through these pieces, he questions freedom, systems of reality, and the forces and their forms. All these works are developed around programming, an artistic medium he elevates into an innovative method in its active dimension. Thus, he establishes himself as an heir to kinetic and cybernetic art. 

Antoine Schmitt has created an aesthetic capable of interrogating movement, employing techniques derived from life and artificial intelligence. He draws particularly from philosophical and psychoanalytic approaches to craft objects that challenge human freedom in their environment. The artist has, for instance, intertwined these artistic fields with others such as dance, music, cinema, architecture, and literature. 

Antoine Schmitt is represented by Galerie Charlot in Paris and DAM Projects in Berlin. His work has been celebrated with numerous awards at international festivals such as transmediale, Ars Electronica, and the UNESCO International Festival of Video-Dance. Additionally, his work has been exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Sonar, and Nuits Blanches. 

In 2024, he is participating in the exhibition "Escape, Digital Generations," presented by the Institut français. His work "Le Grand Générique" is featured in the traveling exhibition within the network of French cultural establishments abroad and their partners. Conceived as a journey into the core of major contemporary digital issues, this exhibition is available for two years, from November 2024 to November 2026.