“Willy Le Maitre: The Dream of Information.” March 3, 2016
-
- Detail Street Process
-
- W*E*N’S Now
-
- Edia
Willy Le Maitre: The Dream of Information
For the past dozen years, Canadian artist Willy Le Maitre has been using stereoscopic imagery as a means of exploring the intersections of exterior and interior vision. In his screen-based performances—which thrust the viewer into a space that the artist calls Edia, a “cosmology of digital space” wherein “the self [is] no longer confined to an individualist notion”—and series of 3D videos, Le Maitre insists that stereoscopy
has the ability not only to mirror the function of eyesight, but to open us up to possibilities that were only previously visible in the mind’s eye. Le Maitre’s work is inspired by the writings of Oxford zoologist Andrew Parker, who posits that the explosion of biodiversity in the Cambrian period of 500 million years ago was brought about by the development of vision in primitive animals—that vision, in essence, provided the evolutionary inspiration for animals to take on a plethora of new forms. Accordingly, in his stereoscopic work Le Maitre aims to move beyond merely representing the world to reimagining it.
Shooting with moving and still 3D cameras, Le Maitre takes the resulting imagery and manipulates it digitally, often letting a process develop of its own accord. Documentary images of Toronto neighbourhoods and NYC’s Zacotti Park during Occupy Wall Street blend and reshape themselves as recognizable landmarks fracture into associative patterns; texture mapping transforms recorded environments into topologies of space and pixels are set free to take on lives of their own, becoming brush strokes that “paint the dance of appearances.” The resulting visions are ecstatically surreal: beautiful and amusing apparitions that visualize an ecology of human-digital interconnectivity and extend the possibilities of the virtual world
Outlook Expressed dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2011 | 4.5 min. stereo-3d hd video
Occupy Image dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2012 | 13 min. stereo-3d hd video
After the Ediacaran dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2008 | 6 min. stereo-3d hd video
Edia, excerpts from ‘Edia’s Dividuals: The Distributed Self in Digital Space’ dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2011 | 12 min. stereo-3d hd video
Chiral Eyes dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2011 | 4.5 min. stereo-3d hd video
Detail Street Process dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2014–15 | 8 min. stereo-3d hd video
W*E*N’S Now dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2014–15 | 6 min. stereo-3d hd video
Insight’s Cataract dir. Willy Le Maitre | Canada 2008 | 7 min. stereo-3d hd video
Willy Le Maitre in person.
Thursday, March 3 6:30pm