Stratotype Digital-ien is an autonomous computer program [bot] that randomly recomposes images of the Quebec landscape in Canada. Its function is to transform photographs taken by the artist Isabelle Gagné by adding fragments of other similar geomorphological images found on the Google Images platform.
The landscapes rebuilt by the bot enrich Quebec's natural heritage on the web and challenge digital memory by creating a new generation of images, many of them, loaded with unpredictable visual glitches. The remixed images incorporate a new layer of information and it is this desire of producing a new stratification, from where the title of this project came from: Stratotype [stratotype].
The collection of images from the WWW began during Isabelle's residence at the International Photography Meeting in Gaspésie, in August 2017. Her research was first presented at the TOPO art centre, Numerical Writing Laboratory in Montreal, in 2017 and simultaneously exhibited at the Vaste et Vague cultural centre in Gaspesie.
The project derived into the development of an on-going site, stratotype.ca, a bank of images with free copyright available to download.
Isabelle Gagné was born in Boisbriand, Montreal. She is a pioneer of mobile art in Canada, having turned naturally toward the mobile device as a medium for artistic expression in 2009. Since then, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in her country and abroad, including Italy, Australia, the United States, England, Spain, Germany, and Japan. In 2012, she presented Pixels Fossiles, the first solo exhibition of mobile art in a well-known art center in Canada. In 2015, her work was presented at Mois de la Photo de Montréal. Highly stimulated by her digital environment, Gagné pays special interest to the natural contemporary Quebec landscape, a marker standing for the patrimony. Her research takes place on several platforms. She draws her raw material from photographs, screen captures, and even graphic accidents [glitch] found on the Internet.
