ORB | BARON LANTEIGNE

Orb (2016) by Canadian artist Baron Lanteigne is a seamless loop that is closer to an animated digital painting than a video piece. This piece is created by morphing different cloud footage together using datamosh, a glitch technique which uses the motion of a clip to distort the texture of the previous one. Datamoshing is used by Lanteigne to reveal the structure of video production and the illusion of the screen as a neutral support by literally breaking the moving image. Datamoshing for the artist is a tool to interrupt reality and to analyze the image: it reveals how the pixels are driven by algorithms in blending different images together, through an image reworking process. Everything we see in this process is somehow related to the temporality of the video. This time-based medium, however, is not interesting as a narrative tool for Lanteigne, but in its intrinsic malleability and ductility.
The pace and the quality of the loop, in fact,  on one hand enhance the apparent corporeality of the digital animation but at the same time underline how unstable is our 3D perception of it.
Orb is thus a reflection on the creation of digital images and their inner mechanisms.
Baron Lanteigne’s artistic practice analyzes our relationship with technology and its infrastructures through digital installations in which screens often act as portals connecting the real world and the virtual world. The essential core of his work derives from his involvement with many cyber-communities and from virtual collaborations that conceive the concept of connection as a real point of contact for relationships: the possibility of meeting and creating one’s own niche online is liberating to the extent in which it offers us an alternative to traditional culture. This allows cultural trends that would otherwise never find space to find themselves discussing very specific problems. The pseudo-anonymity of some platforms lets us forget the individual for a minute so we can witness the collective effort to “sort” everything and reveal the essence of their common interest.

@cover image, Baron Lanteigne, Orb, 2021, still detail

01/05/2021