Altlas of the Cloud

An overview of the artist’s work

Everyone is kept under the illusion of living in the centre of a huge cloud, from which information, products, ready-made meals, drivers, potential relationships fall as if by magic... All information, all things, all people are accessible in a click. Every desire is fulfilled, every action optimized.

However, in reality, this cloud is anything but immaterial.

What seems immaterial is in reality based on infrastructures, heavy, immense, expensive and polluting;
What seems to be volatile is in reality heavy;
What seems algorithmic is actually based on click workers and/or ubiquitous worker;
What seems fluid is actually perennial and hegemonic;
What seems practical is actually extractivist;
What seems innovative is actually toxic;
What seems free is actually expensive;

Extract from ‘Atlas of the Cloud’, a project by Stéphane Degoutin and Gwenolla Wagon.

Atlas of the Cloud, Stéphane Degoutin & Gwenolla Wagon, 72 sheets, 48 x 35 cm, color, 2021

World Brain

Projection

World Brain is at the same time a cinematographic essay, an online map and a video installation. It proposes an excursion through the folklore and the beliefs related to the Internet. It explores the hidden stories of data centers, animal magnetism, goes back to the original myths of the Web, looks at the inner life of rats, experiments with natural communication networks, of a group of researchers trying to survive thanks to Wikipedia, connecting kittens with stones...

About

Stéphane Degoutin and Gwenola Wagon investigate by searching the Internet, drift in the space of hyperinformation, tell post-cybernetic fables, tinker with alternative lifestyles, create films, books and installations.