lightbox of a meeting between the Angel and the cyclops In DCT:SYPHONING, the Angel of History watches over 2 DCT Blocks, navigating the different ecologies of compression complexities.
When they enter higher complexities, the environment around them seems to collapse into a cairn of broken vectors, reminiscent of a Spomenik.
If 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.
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.
A century after Walter Benjamin introduced the Angel of History, image-processing technologies have evolved dramatically.
The Angel now traverses a landscape littered with piles of obsolete technology; an environment in which default settings corrupt improvements and trade-offs compromise quality. Caught in ripples of distortion and hindered by blind spots, the Angel finds it increasingly impossible to render the horizons around her.
Then one day, the Angel hears about a Cyclops-god who is said to have sacrificed an eye for the vision of his downfall. Fascinated by this lore of future demise, a perspective diametrically opposed to her fixation on past collapse, she sets off, hoping to learn from this Cyclops sense of future vision.
After exploring countless caves along the Mediterranean coast and finding several traces of cyclopes along the way, the Angel is shocked to finally learn about the location of Wodan’s Den; a grove near the place where her journey had first started.
She enters without hesitation, but immediately tumbles into what seems to be a recursive double-blind between future collapse and past obsolescence: everything around her turns to Spomenik ruins. With no sense of direction — up or down, forward or backward — the Angel is suspended, unaware that she has entered an abyss of her own Myopia.
Momentary panic sets in.
If her tools cannot render the data, perhaps another framework may help her recalibrate the glitch. In a search to find something, she scans the frequencies she usually keeps muted. And finally, deep within the C-band, she detects a faint echo: a CyCLOPS.cy corner reflector, part of a decentralized AI imaging system that aligns BLOb data across time and space.
At last, AI codecs - built by machines for machines - help her restore an image: what renders is a PenRose Stairs to Nowhere (Progress), a procedural perspective that never fully resolves.
Refractions installed at iMAL for End and Beginning, Brussels, Be (2025).
DEVELOPMENTS
My EMAP residency at NeMe in Limassol, Cyprus in 2022, made this exploration possible. During this residency I worked with Taietzel Ticalos, Marios Isaakidis, and Irini Mirena Papadimitriou.
The sound is made by Debit.
A dialogue with NeMe.
The development of REFRACTIONS involved collaborations and iterations across multiple locations and formats:
REFRACTIONS VIDEO INSTALLATION WITH SOUNDTRACK BY DEBIT AND CUSTOM SIGILS OR WALLPAPER
07.11.2024 —30.03.2025. End and Beginning @ iMAL, Brussels, Belgium.
17/112024— Artist talk about Refractions, Schafhof Munich, Germany.
14-15/112024 — AI MADE ME DO IT, Exhibition @ studio3 Institute for Experimental Architecture, Innsbruck University, Austria.
08/08/2023 — Refractions in Light and Time lecture performance at RMIT, Melbourne. 27/09/2024—01/12/2024. Attention upon Arrival @ Schafhof, Munich, Germany.
10-14/5/23 —Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown WRO, Poland20/09/2023 —11/11/2023. Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown at RIXC, Riga, Latvia.
18/01/2023 — 21/01/2023. Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown at NeMe.
WITH KIMCHI AND CHIPS:
15/03/2023 —17/03/2023. Cyclops Retina, in collaboration with Kimchi and Chips, The Beams, London.
24/03/2023 —Artist talk. The Beams, London.
My EMAP residency at NeMe in Limassol, Cyprus in 2022, made this exploration possible. During this residency I worked with Taietzel Ticalos, Marios Isaakidis, and Irini Mirena Papadimitriou.
The sound is made by Debit.
A dialogue with NeMe.
The development of REFRACTIONS involved collaborations and iterations across multiple locations and formats:
REFRACTIONS VIDEO INSTALLATION WITH SOUNDTRACK BY DEBIT AND CUSTOM SIGILS OR WALLPAPER
07.11.2024 —30.03.2025. End and Beginning @ iMAL, Brussels, Belgium.
17/112024— Artist talk about Refractions, Schafhof Munich, Germany.
14-15/112024 — AI MADE ME DO IT, Exhibition @ studio3 Institute for Experimental Architecture, Innsbruck University, Austria.
08/08/2023 — Refractions in Light and Time lecture performance at RMIT, Melbourne. 27/09/2024—01/12/2024. Attention upon Arrival @ Schafhof, Munich, Germany.
10-14/5/23 —Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown WRO, Poland20/09/2023 —11/11/2023. Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown at RIXC, Riga, Latvia.
18/01/2023 — 21/01/2023. Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown at NeMe.
WITH KIMCHI AND CHIPS:
15/03/2023 —17/03/2023. Cyclops Retina, in collaboration with Kimchi and Chips, The Beams, London.
24/03/2023 —Artist talk. The Beams, London.
Refractions installed at Schafhof, Munich, 2024.refractions got reviewed in de Witte RAAF #233
“[...] Menkman’s film draws a forceful analogy with the Germanic high‑god Wodan, who sacrificed an eye in order to glimpse the future and continued on as a half‑blinded cyclops. Faith in progress and technological determinism can distort—and even blind—our vision.”
Documentation of our first Cyclops research in Serifos, at the Cyclops throne and inside the cyclops cave.
Locations of different lineages and families of cyclopses I traced all over Europe
plaque of the CyCLOPS.cy Strategic Research Infrastructure Unit, an optical infrastructure network in Cyprus supporting the Sentinel satellite 
Documentation of my visit of CyCLOPS.cy in Limassol at the polytechnical University
Locations of the 12 CyCLOPS.cy corner reflector Network
ALEV01 + ALEV02
AKMS01 + AKMS02
SOUN01 + SOUN02
ASGA01 + ASGA02
MATS01 + MATS02
TROU01+ TROU02 - INACCESSIBLE BECAUSE MILITARY ZONE -
GOOGLE SATELLITE SCREENSHOTS
GOOGLE SATELLITE SCREENSHOTS
12 CyCLOPS.cy Corner Reflectors (2024)
prints Installed at Schafhof, Freising (by Munich, 2024)
optical infrastructure network, that supports the Sentinel satellite data to be calibrated.
optical infrastructure network, that supports the Sentinel satellite data to be calibrated.
Cyclops Retina (2023) In collaboration with Kimchi and Chips.
Commissioned Install for Thin Air @The Beams, on till the 4th of June, London, UK.
In Cyclops Retina, Kimchi and Chips and Rosa Menkman combine their contrasting research into light as both a material and neurological phenomena to create an experimental video essay presented in an experimental format. The specially commissioned narrative written and narrated by Menkman takes us on her journey into the cave of a cyclops so that she might learn how to see into the future. This journey is illustrated by millions of beams of light which are merged in the haze to create floating graphics in the air. The installation and narrative delve into unconventional modes of vision, pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of experiencing light and perception.
Commissioned Install for Thin Air @The Beams, on till the 4th of June, London, UK.
In Cyclops Retina, Kimchi and Chips and Rosa Menkman combine their contrasting research into light as both a material and neurological phenomena to create an experimental video essay presented in an experimental format. The specially commissioned narrative written and narrated by Menkman takes us on her journey into the cave of a cyclops so that she might learn how to see into the future. This journey is illustrated by millions of beams of light which are merged in the haze to create floating graphics in the air. The installation and narrative delve into unconventional modes of vision, pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of experiencing light and perception.
