Laurent La Torpille is a self-taught digital artist who has worked in electronic music, graphic design, and interactive environments since the 1990s. Laurent La Torpille's practice centers on real-time manipulation of image and sound, using custom software developed for each project to explore the representation and dematerialization of reality.
La Torpille began exploring NFTs in 2020 while researching the environmental impact of blockchains, looking for a platform that would limit that impact and put more power in the hands of the community than a single dominant entity. That search led to Hic et Nunc, an open-source NFT platform built on the Tezos blockchain, where La Torpille minted a first NFT on April 10, 2021. Over the following year, La Torpille worked exclusively on NFT projects, writing new software for each one to allow live, real-time rendering. Much of this work is hosted on Teia, the community-run platform that emerged after Hic et Nunc shut down in 2021, alongside listings on objkt.com and alterHEN.
La Torpille's installations, including ELDORADO, 13 Septembre 1858, BuBBle Story, and L'île inventée, explore the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds.The print and software project LifeGraph treats each pixel of a photograph as a living cell, tracking its color and transparency to identify pixels that are dying and replacing them with new generated elements, a process that can restructure the entire image.La Torpille taught digital arts at ECV Nantes between 2014 and 2023 and joined the interdisciplinary workshop collective PEDAGONG in 2016.
