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IF A MYTH IS AN ALGORITHM THAT FUNCTIONS AS A TOOL
PARTICULAR TO A TIME AND PLACE,

THEN RECURSIVELY,

AN ALGORITHM CAN BECOME A MYTH,
WRITTEN AND TRANSFORMED VIA ITERATIVE UPDATES AND PROCEDURAL CONTEXTS.

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎
* ec

INTRODUCTION

The journey of 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 technology.
In this digital environment, trade-offs stifle progress and standard settings obscure clarity.

Caught by distortion and impaired by blind spots,
the Angel finds it increasingly impossible to render the world around her.
Stuck in an endless spiral of upgrades,
she desperately loops through cycles of upgrades that seem like a Hologram PenRose Stairs to Nowhere.

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

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎ ︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎ ︎

DESTITUTE VISION

A journey through the realms of digital image processing,
traversing spaces that are not fully rendered.
At the end of her travels, the Angel embraces her role as Media Archaeologist from the future,
compiling her insights on image processing into Resolution Studies.

Collapse of PAL
////////////////////////////
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).

Live performance in Brasil with Defi, Optical Machines and B. Fleischmann, commissioned by David Quiles Guilló / Nova Rojo

The Collapse of PAL (rendered version, 2010)

0000 — HOROLOGY: PROGRESS THROUGH OBSOLESCENCE

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

During the performance, she expresses a desire to restore what has been broken, yet remains a passive observer, rationalizing the end of PAL, stating: it is just not good enough.

New to the realms of digital image processing, she doesn’t realize that digital resolution will never become a final standard. Instead, resolutions function as ongoing processes, characterized by endless bends and breaks of mutable data.

As the Angel mourns the violent collapse of a signal, invisible traces of PAL linger, haunting the supposedly ‘better’ digital systems.

A Vernacular of File Formats (2010)
curated and acquired with the help of Ward Janssen by the Stedelijk Museum and MOTI in 2016. Installation for Stedelijk BASE collection commissioned by Karen Archey.
PDF available here

0001 — BENDS AND BREAKS REVEALING MATERIAL EVIDENCE

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

UnResolved is inspired by
Beflix 29 PARALLEL STRIPES

Unwillingly pulled along the Hologram PenRose-Stairs to Nowhere, or what engineers call “Progress,“ the Angel is forced to migrate into the realms of digital image processing.

Upset by the loss of analog connection, her initial actions are disruptive.
In Acousmatic Videoscapes, she rebelliously manipulates the layers of digital image processing, triggering artifacts like feedback, compression and glitches. But over time, these ruptures seem to reveal something more than distortion. To her surprise, the breaks expose operations that normally remain invisible, hidden within black-boxed technology.

Intrigued, the Angel examines the newly revealed qualities.
A key insight comes from Un/Resolved, an 84.48 meter-long data file organised as a bitmap, encoded pixel by pixel. The file demonstrates that digital resolution is no longer just vertically encoded (like the analog signal PAL). Instead, the long, unwrapped line of data reveals that digital image resolution also uses horizontal quantization (and possibly other, meta-axes). Moreover, its final rendering depends on how hardware reads, displays and possibly changes or otherwise distorts the data.

An insight from which the Angel concludes that neither a resolved image nor its resolution is predetermined or static. Instead, they are procedurally shaped by the technological apparatus, the imaging pipeline, which encompasses stages such as production, dissemination, display and reception. As a result, a digital image is never truly fixed or static; but rather relies on constant reinterpretation at every step of the image processing pipeline and beyond.

Armed with this new understanding of resolution, the Angel starts to experiment, probing different elements of the rendering pipeline. In A Vernacular of File Formats, she playfully highlights the materiality that defines digital images, by transcoding a self-portrait into various common compression formats (GIF, BMP, JPEG, etc.). When she glitches these visually identical images, they reveal the unique structures inherent to each compression method, exposing the otherwise hidden language on the surface of the image.

As if on Glitch Safari, the Angel starts to enjoy recognizing the traces of their specific bends and breaks. She documents and describes their protocols and outlines how compressions can influence visual representation.

Radio Dada
Music by Extraboy. Nov 23, 2008.

To Smell and Taste Black Matter (1)
Music by Extraboy. Feb 15, 2009.

65 76 65 72 79 74 68 69 6e 67 20 69 73 20 (...)
Sound by Rosa. Apr 17, 2010.

Washmountain. Music by Extraboy
Sep 6, 2009.

Acousmatic Videoscapes (2008 - )

DCT:SYPHONING. The 64th interval (2015 - .. )
///////////////////////////
a first iteration was conceived
for a commission by the photographers gallery (2016)

It was then exhibited at the Schafhof in Munich December 2015.

During my
Oregon Story Board residency 2016 - 2017
and finished during my time at Schloss Solitude
it released as VR as part of DiMoDA 2.0, (2016) by Alfredo Salazar-Caro and William Robertson

DCT:SYPHONING. The 64th interval (2015)

On one such trips, she observes a senior Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT, a key algorithm in JPEG compression, that converts 8x8 blocks of pixel intensities 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 Ecology of Compression Complexity to a next realm. At first, they transcode simple artifacts such as pixels, scanlines and macroblocks. However, as they navigate into more complex realms, such as wavelets and vectors, they reach the limits of their own complexity and ultimately trigger a kernel panic.

From a PenRose Stairs to Nowhere (Progress), just one level of complexity beyond them, the Angel wishes to intervene, proposing a forked solution. She commits: It’s all information! Unlike data, information spans multiple dimensions. It renders via various stacks and not just North!

But the DCTs reached stack overflow and have already syphoned back to simpler rendering complexities. The Angel concludes: Progress (the PenRose Stairs to Nowhere) has become the DCTs Paradox - efforts to optimize, clarify and upgrade will always introduce or perpetuate new biases and limitations.

Refusing to let her new found insights go to waste, the Angel develops a fork (modification) of the
DCT algorithm by mapping each of its 64 distinct blocks to the most frequently used characters of the Roman alphabet. This method allows her to steganographically encode messages as DCT errors, perhaps transforming DCTs’ limitation into a new form of communication and possibly remediating a future syphon.

To the Angel, this DCT encryption method is more than just a poetic, steganographic tool; the fork provides radical access to the inner workings of a JPEG, enabling precise manipulations within the Huffman table. This process 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.

JPEG FROM A VERNACULAR OF FILE FORMATS, (2009 - 2010), 2023 REVISITATION WITH HIDDEN MESSAGE IN DCT
///////////////////////////
a software that lets you write in error.
The first iteration was build by Ted Davis,
a second by Erik Axel Eggelink.

365 Perfect De/Calibration Army (2019 - ... )

0010 - GENEALOGIES OF COMPROMISE

The encounter with the DCTs has shifted the Angels interest from critical material research and the ecologies of compression complexities, to mapping genealogies of resolution. In one such exploration, she extrapolates how historical standards, like color calibration test cards, have shaped what can (and cannot) be captured and rendered.

When she organizes a Pique-Nique Pour les Inconnues, a conference call for all forgotten and unknown faces (shadows) featured on color calibration test cards, she realizes she is joined by a group of predominantly Caucasian women. Together, they uncover that the use of Caucasian faces for color calibration has established parameters that influence visual representation, often failing to accurately capture and depict the diversity of skin tones. The Angel and the ladies of color calibration reflect on how these biased legacy standards have narrowed the range of image capture and render. Quickly, their gathering evolves into a desktop tele-choral of solidarity, during which the group performs Paul McCartney's “We All Stand Together,” rallying against oppressive standards.

Led by the Angel of History, the ladies of color calibration form a tactical presence known as the i.R.D. (institutions of Resolution Disputes) and its De/Calibration Army. As soldiers, they use 365 Perfect beautification software to camouflage themselves; deleting blemishes, enlarging their eyes and whitening their skin through countless iterations, until they themselves become ‘deep fried’ (excessively filtered to the point of distortion). 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.

Behind White Shadows && Pique Nique Pour les Inconnues (2017 - 2020)

////////////////////////////
is a research project undertaken during my 2019 JMAF residency in Tokyo, Japan.

WHITEOUT (2019 - 2020) //////////////////////////// created after joining the Armada de Chile on a research trip to Antarctica organised by Nicolas Spencer for Polar

it was also inspired by research done for Axis with Mario de Vega and my time at ARTS COLLIDE Barcelona CERN

WHITEOUT (2020)

SCOPE: EXPANDING SELECTIVE CAPTURE

i.R.D. (2015)

Driven by a wish for true color reference, the Angel builds a Rainbow Generator, to Refract a Spectrum of Lost and Un/Named Colours. However, when finally deployed, the Generator fails to produce nature’s original glitch; the continuous gradient of the rainbow.
Instead, it renders a banded, unnatural almost cartoon-like rainbow.

After countless hours of discouraging research into the cause of this truncation, she finally identifies the problem: the light source in the Generator adheres to an optimization paradigm. Cycles ago, energy-efficient systems replaced the broadcasting of light across the entire spectrum of visible light, rendering full-spectrum light sources obsolete.

While to the eye, the light in the Rainbow Generator may appear as smooth white light, in reality, it is a spectral simulation. The light in the Generator only emits a narrow band of frequencies required to stimulate the three types of photoreceptor cones in the eye, responsible for detecting short, medium and long wavelengths. This selective emission technology efficiently supports the perception of color and white light, while bypassing large bands of the actual spectrum.

Ironically, though not functioning exactly as intended, the Generator proves to be a tool that illuminates and exposes forgotten frequencies, revealing the interplay between the limits of perception, and invisible quantization of technology.

The Angel, now painfully aware that even the latest technology (from software to filter) may be rooted in fundamentally imperfect and even flawed protocols, seeks a way to regain insight and control over the frequencies around her.

In an act of desperation, she considers modifying her body to overcome her perceptual limitations. Maybe all she needs is a different type of eye: a sensor that is larger, slower, or more sensitive to other frequencies of light. When she finally mounts an antenna in one of her eye sockets, she gains access to an expanded visual ecology.

But the modification leads her into a Whiteout: without the tools to decode her new visual input, she is oversaturated with noises devoid of resolution.

Spectrum of Lost and Unnamed Colours Sound by Debit (2024)

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

A Spectrum of Lost and Unnamed Colours(2023 - 2024)

////////////////////////////
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

Curator & head of program: Giulia Bini
Master support: Lotte Menkman

De/Calibration Target (2023)
curated by Nora O’ Murchú
produced by Transmediale with financial support from Stimuleringsfonds

TRADE-OFFS AT SCALE

The Angel finds herself in a wilderness of distortion, at a total loss of direction, struggling to render anything.

But at the edge of a wilderness of im/possible render vectors, she recognizes a particular grove apparently known as ”Wodan’s Trees” - forking quite differently from its surroundings. It is easy to see why the grove is named after Wodan (Odin), the cyclops God of Knowledge, who sacrificed an eye in exchange for the sense of future vision. Even though the branches of the grove continue to grow, they display only an Obsolete Gamut at Zenith, indicating the end of their cycle and foreboding impending failure.

Fascinated by this lore of future failure, a perspective diametrically opposed to her own fixation on past collapse, the Angel enters the grove, hoping to learn from Wodan’s sense of foresight. But the moment she enters, she is caught in a Myopic double blind between future ruins and past obsolescence. Unaware that she has actually stumbled onto the tipping points of Progress, she lacks a sense of direction, up or down, forward or backwards.

Obsolete Gamut at Zenith (2024)
////////////////////////////
commissioned by Alain Bieber and acquired by Künstpalast Düsseldorf

Myopia (2015)
////////////////////////////
Size Matters. SIZE IN PHOTOGRAPHY
February 1, 2024 – May 20, 2024, KunstPalast, DE.
Myopia was first installed at TRANSFER GALLERY in 2015

REFRACTIONS (2022 - 2024)
A research project done in the framework of my European Media Art Platform
residency at NeMe, Limassol, Cyprus. (2022) with support from Taietzel Ticalos, Marios Isaakidis

0011 — CRISIS OF THE IMAGE

SPOMENIK 2017.
////////////////////////////4x4 meters projection mapped wooden installation.
As installed and produced by TRANSFER Gallery New York, for Behind White Shadows, on the surface: DCT SYPHONING.

A giant cairn of glitch, a monument commemorating no specific moment or entity is recalibrated into the PenRose- Staircase to Nowhere.

Struck by the beam of darkness that comes from her own time*, the Angel floats through unrendered space,

with no sense of day or night,
no axis of rotation,
no North or South...

...Progress, once symbolized by the Hologram PenRose-Stairs to Nowhere, has transformed into scaffolding; exoskeletons rendering monumental cairns of nonsensical vectors. Now, nothing makes sense and nothing looks familiar to her.
The Angel is caught in a kernel panic of her own making.

But armed with the memory of how additive complexity drove the DCTs into a kernel panic, the Angel knows not to search for her “North.” Instead, following DCTs Paradox, she revisits the stacked steps of production, dissemination, display and reception, deducing that in this context, either her dataset is flawed or her tools can simply lack the protocol to resolve the data.

At a loss, the Angel reflects on what looks like a SPOMENIK glitch, a monument for collapse that somehow seems to embody the very essence of the Hologram Penrose Stairs to Nowhere. She approaches it cautiously, tracing the dynamic edges of its vectors, layered in thick deposits of poor-resolution sediment. One of its shredded sides reveals a viewport, offering a glimpse onto its repository of render objects. Adopting the role of a media archaeologist from the future, she attempts to reconstruct the Spomenik glitch, but its synthetic data follows machine-defined standards, producing nothing but a blue haze of noise. The Angel realizes that the cairn of glitch is a collection of procedural images for which she is neither the intended user nor a possible interlocutor.

But ...If her tools cannot render this part of the Hologram Penrose Stairs to Nowhere, perhaps another framework can help her re/calibrate?

In a last-ditch effort, she scans frequencies she naturally keeps muted.
Deep within a C-band frequency, she detects a faint echo: a CyCLOPS.cy corner reflector, part of a geospatial monitoring system designed to track surface deformation over time. A system that uses satellite radar signals to infer tiny shifts in distance at scales too slow and vast to perceive with the eye.

She bounces her fragmented dataset through the CyCLOPS network. The system, relying on precise geospatial algorithms, seems to compare its phase differences and then align the disjointed vectors. Slowly, the misalignments dissolve, and her perspective renders clearly, revealing vectors that were once im/possible …

Her task is clear: to study and document resolutions, in order to trace compromise and the introduction of impossibility into image renders.

If a myth is like an algorithm; a tool shaped by a specific time and place,
then, recursively, an algorithm, iteratively updated and deployed in procedural contexts, will eventually develop into myth.

*Georgio Agamben on what is the contemporary, in: What Is an Apparatus? (2006)

XILITLA
Music Tonylight (2013)
////////////////////////////
was developed during my 2013 EMARE residency at CANTE, Centro de las Artes San Luis Potosi, 2012. Xilitla was curated and acquired by Ward Janssen for MOTI (NL) in 2014

Shredded Hologram Pen/Rose (2021)
////////////////////////////
Curated by Rick Silva for Feral File

CyCLOPS Retina
in collaboration with Kimchi and Chips (2023) ////////////////////////////
commissioned Install for Thin Air @The Beams, 2023)

BLOb of Im/Possible Images (2021)
with support from Luzi Gross

ATLAS FOR DESTITUTE VISION

The Angel adopts her new found role as Media Archaeologist from the Future, collecting various axes that constitute the image render pipeline. She hopes these fragments may provide a way to start her collection of compromised, unsupported, unknown or forgotten image renders:

a scanline, an outline, a separator, a progress bar, a ruler, a threshold, ...a mesh, a spline, an axis, a matrix, a block, a wavelet, a vector, ...a timeline, a sequence, ...a connector, a link, ...a render element, metadata, ...feedback, recursion, a loop, ...a generator, a discriminator...

From these, the Angel assembles a Binary Large Object or BLOb: an uncommitted shape textured with shifting moiré patterns. The BLOb figures an environment freed from protocol, functioning as a fluid, ever-growing archive for all im/possible image pipelines; an adaptive space that defies rigid image standards.

As she faces the BLOb, the Angel considers all the ways she has experienced loss of vision. Resolutions do not only consolidate how we use our technologies, they also dictate constraints on how we cannot or choose not to use them. As a result, resolutions shape how we render images, while foreclosing alternative methods of imaging. These insights prompt her to compile an Atlas for Destitute Vision, a collection of key observations for Resolution Studies, an investigation into the role of compromise, or how technology defines what remains (forever) unrendered and unseen, in short: the Destitute of Vision.

CHAPTERS AND MAPS IN THE ATLAS FOR DESTITUTE VISION:
With illustrations from the BLOb

RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0000 : HOROLOGY
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0001 : MATERIALITY
    * Vernacular of File Formats
    * Ecology of Compression Complexities (by a BLOb)
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0010 : GENEALOGY
  1. A GENEALOGY OF THE COLOUR TEST CARD
    * Lexicon of Glitch Affect
  2. A GENEALOGY OF MACROBLOCK / FROM ARTIFACT TO A/EFFECT.
    * De/Calibration Army
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0011 : SCOPE (OR HOW HABIT DELINEATES IM/POSSIBILITY AND IN/VISIBILITY)
    * Spectrum of Lost and Un/Named colours
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0100 : SCALE (SCALING AS VIOLENCE)
  * FF D8 De/Calibration Target as a repository for a genealogy of macroblocking artifacts
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0101 : CRISIS (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

im/possible images (2019 - 2021)
////////////////////////////
is a research project in the framework of my Arts at CERN COLLIDE Barcelona award.
curated by Monica Bello

PHASE 0000: OBSOLESCENCE OF ANALOG IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES

PHASE 0001: TRANSITION FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL: THE CRISIS OF FIDELITY

A second crisis of the image arrives during the emergence of digital image processing, when analog, continuous signals are replaced with discrete data. Digitization introduces artifacts like clipping, truncation and quantization, calling into question authenticity and integrity, challenging the overall reliability of the signal. This finally leading to a crisis of fidelity. Mechanisms such as filtering and algorithmic bias dictate what data is rendered, determining what can or cannot be rendered, resulting in what image is seen, disseminated (or left unseen).

PHASE 0010: THE PLATFORMED IMAGE

With the emergence of internet platforms, the crisis of the networked image arrives. When uploading an image to a platformed ecology like Facebook, the user grants the platform permission to alter it. Subsequently a complex and opaque set of protocols handles and transforms the image in minor (and sometimes more consequential) ways. The user typically has little control over these transformations.

Upload
The uploading process may initiate with cropping and stripping the image of its EXIF metadata, while adding new metadata such as time of upload and other details.
The platform may use AI to automate image enhancements; adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. Color profile conversion (typically sRGB) is used to maintain color accuracy.
The uploaded image is also subjected to AI content analysis, such as image recognition, to support or automate metadata tagging and the adding of accessibility elements ( such as descriptive metadata or alt text) and facial recognition as well as checks to confirm that the image does not violate the Terms of Service (ToS), resulting in content moderation and censorship.

Writing to server
A basic recompression then converts the file to a format such as WebP, or more recently, AVIF, which support progressive image rendering (loading the image in multiple stages while gradually increasing image quality). Alternatively, animated GIFs are converted into the MP4 format.
The platform itself often saves multiple versions and resolutions of each image, for the acceleration of delivery when the image is requested.

Content delivery
On the delivery side, strategic interface elements such as quick-loading thumbnails, responsive image delivery (choosing most appropriate size and resolution based on the device requesting the image), lazy loading (improving page load times by reducing initial data usage by reducing initial data usage by only loading images when they are about to enter the viewport; the visible area of a web page in the browser window) and adaptive bitrate streaming optimize content for varying network conditions.
With the help of edge computing and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), platforms can cache and retrieve images from servers in geographic proximity to the user, reducing latency and improving load times.

These transformations - cropping, recompression, metadata stripping, color profile change, format conversion, AI-driven organisation and moderation, and content delivery optimizations - are all developed to strengthen the platforms performance. Moreover, through iterative up and downloads, the image gradually degrades into a 'poor image’, riddled with trace evidence of documenting its movements through the network.
At stake are the image's authorship, authenticity, control, and legibility, alongside its accuracy, representation, truthfulness, accessibility, and privacy.

PHASE 0011: THE NO LONGER STATIC IMAGE

Recent transformations in the image render pipeline extend beyond artificial augmentations like “super-resolution;” the process of adding patterns and details to the image that do not have a real-world reference.

While the hyperimage may originate from the real word, it is expanded by synthetic (computer generated) render layers that transform it into a dynamic, modular object. As such, the hyperimage does away with the notion of a static image. Instead, the image becomes a procedural construct.

Taking the process of Edge computing one step further, some layers may even be rendered separately; remotely, fragmenting the image as a distributed, evolving, on demand or progressively, decentralized networked process consisting of assets that can be partially (re)rendered, with some parts at clients end. Moreover, synthetic images are increasingly rendered by machines for machines, particularly in the realm of computer vision. In contrast to Visual Effects (VFX) and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI), which usually enhance images for human perception, these synthetic images prioritize machine interpretation over human perception, blurring notions of fidelity, value, and legibility even further.

Computer vision and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) use synthesized datasets to train on. A process that redefines the traditional scope of capture (which used to be constrained by spectral, spatial, or temporal parameters) introducing synthetic datasets as a new parameter of scope. A process of recursive synthesis that ultimately leads to ‘limitless’ quantitative (but not qualitative) resolution: synthetic resolution is optimized for efficiency and automation, while alienating the human viewer as it transforms visual information into constructs that no longer resemble a traditional image.

Traditionally, the term resolution, when used in relation to the image, describes a qualitative and quantitative measure of clarity and detail. However, with the introduction of networked and synthetic images, the image itself has transformed into a procedural, data-driven infrastructure. Via continuous process of recalibration, adaptation and compromise at scale, in all levels of the imaging pipeline (capture, render, dissemination, reception) the process of resolving takes dominance over a final or fixed image. As a result, resolution is no longer a static, quantifiable measure but a dynamic, responsive process that governs the fidelity, legibility and meaning of what may become obsolete: the image, as it makes space for dynamic synthesis.

WORKING AXIOMS FOR A MEDIA ARCHEOLOgIST FRom ThE FutuRE

(these are a work in progress)

- Digital images are never static (previously, because of modes of display. Today because of their essence as synthetic dataset )
- In obsolescence lies value / productivity
- Resolutions are fluid - to believe in an ‘original’ means to misconstrue the digital image pipeline
- While we are conditioned to only think about the rendered image, the process of resolving the image means to compromise (latent image)
- Obsolescence is a recurring event in the cycle of the upgrade. What once was an upgrade, will become obsolete (so too the JPEG)

Initially, the introduction of JPEG compression sparked concerns about reduced image fidelity. Over time, however, JPEG gained a particular cultural significance, especially in aesthetics such as vaporwave, where its artifacts are celebrated. With the rise of synthetic image processing (including GAN-generated images), we are moving toward a world where many images shared online don’t stem from lens-based media. The source of a given image is no longer obvious—real-life photography or algorithmic creation. Because of this uncertainty, JPEG compression is taking on fresh relevance. The artifacts it produces might soon be recognized as historical markers of a period characterized by lens-based capture, leaving behind visible traces from an older phase of image processing.

Working points

- Error always reveals something about the technology
- Copy data before you transcode - every movement leaves trace evidence
- When you change scale or scope, you change the meaning of the image
- Truncation is not just happening in compression but also in setting; it is part of the entire processing pipeline

(to consider: time, space, finance, rule, expectation,dis/ believe, noise, lofi resolution, synthesis … )

I believe in a Copy <it> Right ethic:

“First, it’s okay to copy! Believe in the process of copying as much as you can; with all your heart is a good place to start – get into it as straight and honestly as possible. Copying is as good (I think better from this vector-view) as any other way of getting ‚’there.’ ” – NOTES ON THE AESTHETICS OF ‘copying-an-Image Processor’ – Phil Morton (1973)

This means that copying as a creative, exploratory, and educational act is free and encouraged, provided proper accreditation is given. However, when copying transforms into commodification and profit is anticipated, explicit permission must be sought, and compensation may be requested.

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and researcher of resolutions. Her work focuses on noise artifacts resulting from accidents in both analog and digital media.

The journey of her 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 her explorations of image processing technologies. As the machines upgrade, the Angel finds herself caught in the ripple of their distortions, unable to render the world around her.

What follows is Destitute Vision, a journey through the realms of digital image processing, traversing spaces that are not fully rendered. At the end of her travels, the Angel embraces her role as Media Archaeologist from the future, compiling her insights on image processing as Resolution Studies.

Complementing her practice, Rosa published Glitch Moment/um (INC, 2011), a book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts. She further explored the politics of image processing in Beyond Resolution (i.R.D., 2020). In this book, Rosa describes how the standardization of resolutions promotes efficiency, order, and functionality, but also involves compromises, resulting in the obfuscation of alternative ways of rendering.

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From 2110 - 2112 the GLI.TC/H Bots facilitated a festival/gathering in Chicago, Amsterdam and Birmingham, shoutouts to Nick Briz, Jon Satrom and William Robertson and Antonio Roberts!

In 2019, Rosa won the Collide Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which inspired her recent research into im/possible images, consolidated in the im/possible images reader (published by the i.R.D. & Lothringer, with support from V2, 2022).

From 2018 to 2020, Rosa worked as Substitute Professor of Neue Medien & Visuelle Kommunikation at the Kunsthochschule Kassel.
Since 2023, she has been running the Im/Possible Lab at HEAD Geneve. Class materials can be found here; please copy <it> right!

Recent work can be found in this pdf portfolio.

This website was made possible with the financial support from the Stimuleringsfonds.nl (2018)

I am grateful to have received a basis stipend from the Mondriaan Fund 2018-2021 and just recently: 2023 - 2026!