They ran it through a proprietary codec, called “sörensen- 3,” which blended the French plateaus with a person’s figure. “As basis for ‘pastell compressor’ we have been using time- lapse shootings of clouds drifting by, which we took on the plateaus in the south of france ,” they wrote. One of the most influential examples of the technique was a 2003 video called “ Pastell Kompressor,” by the artists Owi Mahn and Laura Baginski.
As Kraftsow mentioned, datamoshing is a type of glitch art - which, in the context of art history, can be broadly defined as art created by corrupting or otherwise manipulating an existing file - that has roots in the net art movement of the early aughts.
