The intentional subversion of compression techniques is known as “datamoshing”. These process can be considered as a compression hacking form that produces the so-called “compression artifacts”; a sort of bizarre pixel configurations often used by artists to manipulate images and to create unique effects. French filmmaker and Internet artist Jacques Perconte specializes in the manipulation and degradation of the digital image. His research focuses on the various forms of digital compression; in particular on those processes of lossy data compression that produce distortions and pixellations.

The artist’s inspiration comes from the association between the aesthetics of sublime and the blurred effect. “I started my search when I was a fine arts student at university. At some point, I ventured towards video and computer graphics and immediately started to experiment on a theoretical level. I discovered that I wasn’t interested in the screen but in giving depth to the image. So I tried to create a personal language that could reflect both the tools that I use (video cameras and computers) and the materiality, the physicality of the image” Perconte stated. “In May 2011 I traveled to Madeira. When we reached the island it started raining; so I recorded it with my camera. It was magic! Then, the sky turned dark grey, but with a warm tone. The picture we were admiring seemed to have a purely tectonic character. As if I was shooting an earth layer and a landslide was taking place. We were experiencing the passage from a liquid world to a solid ground”.

Abstraction and color also play a big role in Perconte’s artworks. Ettrick (2015) looks back to the nature films of the 30s by artists like Ralph Steiner, whose 1929 short H2O turned rain, streams and harbors into abstract patterns. In this video, the artist does the same to landscapes of Scotland, transforming moors and highlands through digital effects into abstractions that resemble Impressionistic paintings, computer landscapes, even tweeds. Even fabric evolves into something new, as Perconte shows in mill factory footage. Disorienting, hallucinatory, Ettrick suggests a visit to another planet, or perception through alien senses; challenging the limits and meanings of the term “documentary” through a corrupted yet mesmetizing visual experiment that magically transforms nature into avant-garde.