im/possible images (2019 - 2021)
////////////////////////////
is a research project in the framework of my Arts at CERN COLLIDE Barcelona award.
curated by Monica Bello
is a research project in the framework of my Arts at CERN COLLIDE Barcelona award.
curated by Monica Bello
With her environment momentarily resolved, the Angel reflects.
She now understand the digital resolution of an image as data in process,
shaped by stitched limitations, filters, bends and breaks,
imposed by the moment/um of a governing protocol,
forever deferring perfection.
Digital resolutions never deliver a final, static image.
They are momentary myths within the procedural gospel of progress—
algorithms deployed in a specific time and place.
The Angel assumes her role as media archaeologist from the future. She begins collecting various types of limits embedded in the render pipeline. She hopes these lines will provide a way to start her collection of compromised, unsupported, unknown or forgotten image renders:
a scanline, a separator, a progress bar, a ruler, a mesh, an axis, a vector, a link, a loop,
...a generator, a discriminator...?
From these lines, the Angel assembles a Binary Large Object or BLOb: an uncommitted form that doesn’t move upwards, but instead dissolves hierarchy into ambiguous dimension.
Best described as a fluid stack of shifting moiré patterns.
The BLOb becomes a living archive for all im/possible image pipelines.
Standing in front of the BLOb, the Angel considers how resolutions not only consolidate technology, but also dictate constraints on how she cannot - or choses not to - use them. They shape how she renders images, while foreclosing alternative imaging methods.
Her next mission is clear:
she will map every limit in the image-processing pipeline,
to compile an Atlas of Destitute of Vision, a collection of key observations for Resolution Studies, documenting how every technology defines what remains forever unrendered and unseen.
She now understand the digital resolution of an image as data in process,
shaped by stitched limitations, filters, bends and breaks,
imposed by the moment/um of a governing protocol,
forever deferring perfection.
Digital resolutions never deliver a final, static image.
They are momentary myths within the procedural gospel of progress—
algorithms deployed in a specific time and place.
The Angel assumes her role as media archaeologist from the future. She begins collecting various types of limits embedded in the render pipeline. She hopes these lines will provide a way to start her collection of compromised, unsupported, unknown or forgotten image renders:
a scanline, a separator, a progress bar, a ruler, a mesh, an axis, a vector, a link, a loop,
...a generator, a discriminator...?
From these lines, the Angel assembles a Binary Large Object or BLOb: an uncommitted form that doesn’t move upwards, but instead dissolves hierarchy into ambiguous dimension.
Best described as a fluid stack of shifting moiré patterns.
The BLOb becomes a living archive for all im/possible image pipelines.
Standing in front of the BLOb, the Angel considers how resolutions not only consolidate technology, but also dictate constraints on how she cannot - or choses not to - use them. They shape how she renders images, while foreclosing alternative imaging methods.
Her next mission is clear:
she will map every limit in the image-processing pipeline,
to compile an Atlas of Destitute of Vision, a collection of key observations for Resolution Studies, documenting how every technology defines what remains forever unrendered and unseen.
ATLAS OF DESTITUTE VISION
RESOLUTION DISPUTES
While the institutions of Resolution Disputes (i.R.D., 2015) formalized a foundational set of logics structuring inherited systems of image rendering, the entries in the Atlas of Destitute Vision trace newly encountered Resolution Disputes: paradoxes that arise from the Angel’s mapping of failure, oversaturation, illegibility, and compromise.
0000 HOROLOGY: PROGRESS AS PENROSE-STAIRS
Every upgrade promises improvement, but never reaches a complete final stage; each step forward defers closure. The gospel of progress is an endless loop.
0001 MATERIALITY: COMPRESSION AS ADDITIVE TRACE
Compression does not just reduce; it inscribes digital material with trace evidence of its event (of compression).
* Vernacular of File Formats
* Ecology of Compression Complexities (BY A BLOb)
0010 GENEALOGY: RESOLUTION AS ENCODED COMPROMISE
Resolutions inherit compromises embedded in the architectures and defaults of earlier systems. These defaults reflect historic priorities — often shaped by efficiency — defining what, or whom, the system was originally designed to function for.
While interfaces evolve, these exclusions persist: sedimented into infrastructure, obfuscated by default settings.
(Bias becomes inherited through the material legacy of infrastructure)
* Lexicon of Glitch Affect
* Genealogy of the Colour Test Card
0011 SCOPE: SELECTIVE CAPTURE AS GROUND TRUTH
Standardization enforces thresholds of relevance: what counts as a signal, and what is dismissed as noise. This default of selective perception produces an epistemic truth, often mistaken for objectivity.
This does not simply limit resolution; it defines what can be resolved. Standards dictate not only what is measurable, but also what is thinkable, imaginable, and rendered real.
(Epistemic norms delineate im/possibility and in/visibility)
* Spectrum of Lost and Un/Named colours
0100 SCALE: PERCEPTION AS SPECTRAL FAILURE
CAUGHT BETWEEN HYPEROPIA OR MYOPIA
0101 CRISIS: INTEROPERABILITY THROUGH EXCLUSION
Interoperability is not typically achieved through openness, but through enforced uniformity; a logic of inclusion that operates via elimination, deprecation and obsolescence.
It is not failure, but design that renders systems incompatible and data unreadable.
Paradigm shifts in the phases of the image,
or the additive crisis of the image
0. OBSOLESCENCE OF ANALOG IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES
1. TRANSITION FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING
2. PLATFORMED/NETWORKED IMAGE
3. CRISIS OF THE SYNTHETIC/HYPER IMAGE
* BLOb of im/possible Images
RESOLUTION DISPUTES
While the institutions of Resolution Disputes (i.R.D., 2015) formalized a foundational set of logics structuring inherited systems of image rendering, the entries in the Atlas of Destitute Vision trace newly encountered Resolution Disputes: paradoxes that arise from the Angel’s mapping of failure, oversaturation, illegibility, and compromise.
0000 HOROLOGY: PROGRESS AS PENROSE-STAIRS
Every upgrade promises improvement, but never reaches a complete final stage; each step forward defers closure. The gospel of progress is an endless loop.
0001 MATERIALITY: COMPRESSION AS ADDITIVE TRACE
Compression does not just reduce; it inscribes digital material with trace evidence of its event (of compression).
* Vernacular of File Formats
* Ecology of Compression Complexities (BY A BLOb)
0010 GENEALOGY: RESOLUTION AS ENCODED COMPROMISE
Resolutions inherit compromises embedded in the architectures and defaults of earlier systems. These defaults reflect historic priorities — often shaped by efficiency — defining what, or whom, the system was originally designed to function for.
While interfaces evolve, these exclusions persist: sedimented into infrastructure, obfuscated by default settings.
(Bias becomes inherited through the material legacy of infrastructure)
* Lexicon of Glitch Affect
* Genealogy of the Colour Test Card
0011 SCOPE: SELECTIVE CAPTURE AS GROUND TRUTH
Standardization enforces thresholds of relevance: what counts as a signal, and what is dismissed as noise. This default of selective perception produces an epistemic truth, often mistaken for objectivity.
This does not simply limit resolution; it defines what can be resolved. Standards dictate not only what is measurable, but also what is thinkable, imaginable, and rendered real.
(Epistemic norms delineate im/possibility and in/visibility)
* Spectrum of Lost and Un/Named colours
0100 SCALE: PERCEPTION AS SPECTRAL FAILURE
CAUGHT BETWEEN HYPEROPIA OR MYOPIA
Standardized imaging systems do not scale neutrally; they enforce thresholds of legibility, deciding what remains visible and what disappears in the folds of resolution.
Scaling is not a neutral operation, but a politics of access and control.
Use too few frequencies, and vision flattens into cartoon clarity. Reach too far, and perception collapses into whiteout: all signal, no resolution.
Zoom in too close, and an image dissolves into static. Zoom out too far, and meaning vanishes into abstraction:
you can render nothing by capturing too much.
* FF D8 De/Calibration Target Scaling is not a neutral operation, but a politics of access and control.
Use too few frequencies, and vision flattens into cartoon clarity. Reach too far, and perception collapses into whiteout: all signal, no resolution.
Zoom in too close, and an image dissolves into static. Zoom out too far, and meaning vanishes into abstraction:
you can render nothing by capturing too much.
0101 CRISIS: INTEROPERABILITY THROUGH EXCLUSION
Interoperability is not typically achieved through openness, but through enforced uniformity; a logic of inclusion that operates via elimination, deprecation and obsolescence.
It is not failure, but design that renders systems incompatible and data unreadable.
Paradigm shifts in the phases of the image,
or the additive crisis of the image
0. OBSOLESCENCE OF ANALOG IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES
1. TRANSITION FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING
2. PLATFORMED/NETWORKED IMAGE
3. CRISIS OF THE SYNTHETIC/HYPER IMAGE
* BLOb of im/possible Images
Resolution studies, classes and seminars
Resolution Studies is grounded in practical teaching and artistic research. It currently involves seven thematic “disputes,” each addressing a fundamental tension within the study of rendering, image culture, and media infrastructure:
Each dispute opens a terrain of theoretical and material exploration, inviting research, pedagogy, and speculative practice.
>>> For a deeper theoretical framing, see the long-form essay:Refuse to let the syntaxes of (a) history direct our futures. [PDF]
a myth is an algorithm that functions as a tool distinct to a time and place, then recursively an algorithm can become a myth, written and transformed by iterative updates and within procedural contexts.
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎