︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎   
* ec 
The journey of my protagonist, the Angel of History,
inspired by Paul Klee’s 1920 monoprint, Angelus Novus, and conceptualized by Walter Benjamin in 1940,
functions as a foundational framework for my research into the role of resolution
in image processing technologies.

He writes:
Her eyes are staring, her mouth is open, her wings are spread. This is how one pictures the Angel of History.
Her face is turned toward the past, where she perceives a chain of events: catastrophes piling wreckage upon wreckage.
The Angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.
But as the pile of debris before her grows skyward, a storm is blowing from Paradise;
it has caught her wings with violence, propelling her into a future to which her back is turned.
This is the storm we call progress.*


A century after her first appearance, image processing technologies have evolved dramatically.
The Angel traverses a landscape littered with piles of obsolete technologies,
where trade-offs stifle progress and standard settings obscure clarity.

Caught in ripples of distortion and impaired by blind spots,
she finds it more and more impossible to render the world around her.
The Angel is now stuck,
desperately trying to navigate an endless spiral of digital 'advancements' in resolution
or: Hologram PenRose-Stairs of Progress.


*[transformed from:] Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on the Philosophy of History",
Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, New York: Schocken Books, 1969: 249. 

*Destitute Vision: a research in Research into the ways compromise and loss define what remains visible
and what becomes or remains unseen.
︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎  
When digital mediations replaced the typically continuous analog signal with discrete data, artifacts like clipping, truncation, and quantization were introduced, raising questions about authenticity and integrity.

This shift led to a crisis of fidelity, challenging the reliability of the signal.




////////////////////////////
Collapse of PAL
was produced for TV-TV
curated by
Kristoffer Gansing
and Linda Hilfling Ritasdatter
(2010)

This rendered version of the Collapse of PAL was produced during my residency at LabMIS São Paulo in 2011,
thanks to IMPAKT (NL).


 The Collapse of PAL (rendered version, 2010)
.
0000 — HOROLOGY: PROGRESS CAUSING OBSOLESCENCE

In a live television performance titled the Collapse of PAL, the Angel of History gloomily reflects on the transition from analog Phase Alternate Line signal (PAL, 625 lines, of which 576 visual) to Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB, 720 x 576 pixels).

She expresses a desire to make whole what has been broken, but remains a passive observer, rationalizing the end of the signal:
“PAL is just not good enough.”

Unbeknownst to her then, resolution will never be an endpoint, but rather an ongoing process of endless bends and breaks. While she mourns the violent ending of the signal, invisible traces of PAL persist, haunting the ‘better’ digital systems.

Radio Dada. Music by Extraboy.
Nov 23, 2008.
To Smell and Taste Black Matter (1). Music by Extraboy. Feb 15, 2009
Washmountain. Music by Extraboy.
Sep 6, 2009.

Rosa Moln. Music by Extraboy.
Dec 11, 2009.
65 76 65 72 79 74 68 69 6e 67 20 69 73 20 (...)  Apr 17, 2010
Decay of digital data, the obsolescence of hard- and software and other unexpected breaks from the expected flow of the render pipeline  result in errors, bugs, glitches or complete loss of the image.

Some glitches may momentarily reveal the underlying, often invisible structures, exposing protocol, limitations and vulnerabilities.






////////////////////////////
Vernacular of File Formats (2010)
was acquired by the
Stedelijk Museum
in 2016
PDF available here
0001 — MATERIAL: BENDS AND BREAKS REVEALING EMBEDDED COMPROMISE

Unwillingly pulled along the looping Hologram PenRose-Stairs to Nowhere, a paradox engineers call “progress,“ the Angel is forced to migrate into the realms of digital technology.

Upset by the loss of analog connection, her initial actions are disruptive. In Acousmatic Videoscapes she rebelliously manipulates various layers of digital technology, triggering artifacts caused by feedback, compression and glitches.

However gradually, the breaks seem to reveal something more than pure distortion. To her surprise, these ruptures expose what normally remains hidden within the black box of technology. Intrigued, the Angel examines the newly revealed qualities.

A key insight comes from Unresolved, an 84.48-meters-long data file that follows a linear Bitmap organization, encoded pixel by pixel, illustrating that digital resolution is no longer solely vertically encoded (as was the case for the analog signal PAL): the long, unwrapped line of data demonstrates that digital resolutions are also horizontally quantized (and possibly via other, meta-axes). Moreover, it shows that a final render depends on how hardware reads, displays and distorts data.

Resolution is therefore not just a fixed standard, but shaped by the entire technological apparatus, the imaging pipeline, involving production, dissemination, display and reception. Digital images are never truly static, as they depend on constant reinterpretation at every step of the image processing pipeline.

Armed with this new understanding of resolution, the Angel feels confident to conduct more experiments aimed at revealing the language of digital compression. In A Vernacular of File Formats, she playfully highlights the materiality that defines the digital image by transcoding a self-portrait into nine common compression formats (GIF, BMP, JPEG, etc.). When glitching these visually identical images, she reveals the unique structure of each compression algorithm, exposing the hidden logic inherent to each file format. She documents and describes these protocols, emphasizing how compression (codecs) shape visual representation.


 
Unresolved (84.48-meters-long data file painted on canvas, partially wrapped, 2016)

UnResolved is inspired by
Beflix 29 PARALLEL STRIPES
///////////////////////////
DCT:SYPHONING. The 64th interval (2015)
was conceived during my
Oregon Story Board residency
2016 - 2017
and finished during my time at
Schloss Solitude

Feeling more familiar with the inner workings of various codecs by analyzing the aesthetics of their glitches, the Angel starts to enjoy recognizing the traces of their digital bends and breaks, as if she’s on a glitch safari. 

On one such trip, she observes a senior Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT, a key algorithm of the JPEG compression, that converts 8x8 pixel blocks into 64 frequency components), instructing a Junior DCT how to transcode data from one compression language to another, or as they call it: how to ‘SYPHON.’

In a scene reminiscent of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland (1884), Junior and Senior DCT syphon from one Realm of Compression Complexity to the next. At first, they transcode simple artifacts such as dither, lines and blocks. However, as they navigate into more complex realms—such as wavelets and vectors—they push against the limits of their compatibility and ultimately trigger their own kernel panic.

From a Penrose-Stairs to Nowhere, just one complexity beyond them, the Angel wishes to intervene, proposing a forked solution. She commits: This is information! Unlike data, information spans multiple dimensions. It moves upward, not just northward!

But the DCTs have already syphoned back to simpler complexities. 

Refusing to let her insight go to waste, the Angel develops a fork (modification) of DCT, mapping each of its 64 distinct blocks to the most frequently used characters of the Roman alphabet. A method that allows her to steganographically write in DCT error.

To the Angel, this DCT is more than a poetic, steganographic tool; the fork provides radical access to the inner workings of a JPEG, enabling precise manipulations within the Huffman table. A process that illustrates how compression fundamentally alters the essence of image data, transforming image resolution into material evidence of transcoding. These traces, or compression artifacts, left on the file and embedded in its metadata, form a record of compromise within resolution, indexing the algorithmic events along a file’s journey.




///////////////////////////
 DCT is a software that lets you write in error.
The first iteration was build by Ted Davis,
a second by Erik Axel Eggelink.

With the emergence of internet platforms and apps, the networked image arrives.

The networked image is subjected to not just Terms of Service (ToS), that can lead to censorship and filtering, it is also transcoded when uploaded (and sometimes even when reposted).

A protocol that alters the image in minor and often opaque ways (in terms of meta data alteration, cropping, re-compressing and user edits and additions). However, through iterative interactions of up and download, the image gradually degrades into a 'poor image’, riddled with trace evidence of its moves through the network.

At stake are the image’s authenticity, authorship, control and finally its legibility.

Memes, a type of networked image, start celebrating the poor image by purposefully ‘deep frying’ it.


0010 — GENEALOGY: TRACING LINEAGES OF COMPROMISE

.
////////////////////////////
Behind White Shadows && Pique Nique Pour les Inconnues
is a research project undertaken during my 2019 JMAF residency in Tokyo, Japan.
Building on her encounter with DCTs, the Angel shifts her interest from critical material research to mapping a genealogy of resolutions. This genealogy reveals how historical standards, like color calibration test cards that predominantly feature Caucasian women, have established affordances that shape what can be captured and rendered today. These biased legacy standards set limits on “normal” representation, narrowing the range of capture.

She organizes a Pique Nique Pour les Inconnues; a conference call for all forgotten and unknown faces (or shadows) of color calibration, especially those featured on color calibration test cards, rallying together against these oppressive standards.

Their gathering evolves into a desktop tele-choral performance of solidarity, during which the group sings Paul McCartney's “We All Stand Together.” They also establish a tactical presence as the i.R.D. (institutions of Resolution Disputes) and a De/Calibration Army.

The soldiers use 365 Perfect beautification software to camouflage their blemishes, enlarge their eyes and whiten their skin over countless iterations, until they themselves are ‘deep fried’. The filters distort their natural tones, quantizing them into a blurry green hue. A manipulation that eerily exaggerates the governing standards imposed by both beautification software and algorithms at large.
.
365 De/Calibration Army (2021 - )
 
. 

Before mechanisms such as filtering, censorship and algorithmic bias dictate what images are rendered, disseminated, and ultimately seen (or left unseen), the image first needs to be captured.

What is captured depends on the scope of the technology, defined by factors such as frequency range, modality, or data type, which set a baseline for what is resolved.

Through tactical interventions, scope can be expanded to support alternative ecologies of visibility.






////////////////////////////
Whiteout was created after joining the Armada de Chile on a research trip to Antarctica organised by Nicolas Spencer for Polar
it was also inspired by Axis research done with Mario de Vega and my time at ARTS COLLIDE Barcelona CERN
Whiteout (2020)

0011 — SCOPE: EXPANDING SELECTIVE CAPTURE
Painfully aware that even the latest software and filter may be rooted in severely flawed protocol, the Angel chooses to explore a broader spectrum of noise and manipulation and mounts antennas in her eye sockets, to explore an expanded visual ecology and undo any type of bias.

A quest that ultimately leads her into a Whiteout: oversaturated with noise and devoid of resolution, the Angel is once again caught in a storm. Struggling to render anything, she loses a sense of direction amidst overwhelming distortion. 

Desperate for ways to gain control over her frequencies, she develops a Rainbow Generator, designed to Refract a Spectrum of Lost and Un/Named Colours. However, the device relies on a narrow LED spectrum rather than a full-spectrum light source, introducing a limitation she is unaware of.

Even though the generator is meant to give her back control over the frequencies of light, it only seems to emphasizes the limits of her vision, forcing her to consider that this space may require a different type of sensor; eyes that are larger, slower, or more sensitive to other frequencies of light.


Rainbow Generator (2024).
W/ Support of Herman Hermsen and So Kanno.

////////////////////////////
A Spectrum of Lost and Unnamed Colours
was commissioned and produced in the framework of EPFL - CDH Artist in Residence Program 2023, Enter the Hyper-Scientific
Partners: EPFL Center for Imaging, Edward Andò, CLIMACT Center for Climate Impact and Action UNIL & EPFL
Credits: Rosa Menkman
Support: Lotte Menkman
Curator & head of program: Giulia Bini