Publications:  
︎ IM/POSSIBLE IMAGES READER (i.R.D.: 2022) HQ // LQ
︎ Beyond Resolution (i.R.D.: 2020)
︎ Glitch Moment/um (INC: 2011)
︎ Vernacular of File Formats (2010)
MORE PUBLICATIONS HERE



The Angel of History functions as a foundational framework for my research.
The story of her journey through the realms of digital image compression can be read in Destitute Vision.
As a Media Archeologist from the future, she initiates Resolution Studies.


RESOLUTION STUDIES

Resolutions do not only consolidate the ways by which we use our technologies, but also how we do not use them (an effect that is often overlooked).  
The standardization of resolutions is a process that generally imposes efficiency, order and functionality on our technologies. It doesn’t only involve the creation of protocols and solutions, but the obfuscation of compromises and black-boxing of alternative possibilities, which are as a result in danger of staying forever unseen or forgotten.

A resolution is the result of a consolidation of (or the forging of a function between) technological materialities. Resolutions involve standards, interfaces and protocols (Galloways’ standards encapsulated inside standard encapsulations) and their pre-designed affordances. The cost of media resolutions is that we have gradually become unaware of the choices and compromises they represent. Resolution studies is a theory about the setting of standards and the studies of compromised, other (speculative) possibilities. Resolution studies occupies a space connected to protocol, the interface effect, materiality, habit and genealogical media theory.
Why Study Resolutions?  
Our (digital) cultures are becoming more and more complex. From deep fakes to post-uncanny or neo-crapstraction - it is hard to stay on top of the dialogue and keep a grip on the new problems or to even find ‘the contemporary discourse’. Is there still a dialogue? What is really happening now?

There is of course not one ‘now’ in a landscape that has as many fractures as it has participants. And there is also not one truth, past, or future to our digital cultures; they vary as much as the diversity of the perspectives of its users.

Resolutions exist on all levels of the engineering process, and involve procedural trade-offs. As a result, the more complex a technology is, the more compromises its renderings involve. However, these actors and their inherent affordances and complexities are increasingly positioned beyond the fold of everyday settings and outside the afforded options of the interface. This is how resolutions do not just function as an interface effect but also as a hyperopic lens, obfuscating some of the most immediate stakes and possible alternative resolutions of media. Unknowingly, both user and audience suffer from technological hyperopia; a condition of ‘farsightedness’ that does not allow them to see what processes they are taking part in, or that they trigger while clacking on the a keyboard underneath their hands. Rather, they just focus on a final ends to a means.

As an artist, I am responsible to not only critically engage with the new materialities of the digital, but also - and I believe that this is where the ‘new’ (of new media - if you still want to use that term) or the contemporary comes in - to develop a certain fluid literacy of these constantly developing and mutating material languages that impose constraints and qualities on the technologies we work with. To truly engage with digital culture means to be able to formulate or take a critical point of view, involving analysis and active change through building (speculative) alternatives. A process that requires both literacy and training, which is not readily available or accessible for everyone.

Through this research, which is both practice based and theoretical, I wish to uncover these speculative, anti-utopic, lost and unseen or simply "too good to be implemented" resolutions -- to produce new ways to perceive through and use our technologies. To shed a light on the shadow side of resolutions. Whatever is not captured within the framework of our resolutions remains invisible - but these alternatives solutions may still be lingering the realm of alternative possibilities, waiting to be implemented.

Finally, I believe that working as an artist is as much about creating and developing modes of thinking as it is about nurturing and sharing that knowledge acquired through this practice. Let me put extra emphasis on the importance of sharing: all art I create is available online, even after it has been acquired by a third party. Besides, I share the curriculums I develop, presentations and papers I write here. COPY <IT> RIGHT!  


I started working on course “RESOLUTION STUDIES” during my two years position as substitute Professor Neue Medien in Kassel.
These are the chapters I have developped since: 

RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0000 : HOROLOGY
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0001 : MATERIALITY  
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0010 : GENEALOGY 
        1. A GENEALOGY OF THE COLOUR TEST CARD
        2. A GENEALOGY OF MACROBLOCK / FROM ARTIFACT TO A/EFFECT.
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0011 : SCALE (SCALING AS VIOLENCE)   
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0100 : SCOPE (OR HOW HABIT DELINEATES IM/POSSIBILITY AND IN/VISIBILITY)
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0101 : CRISIS (THE ADDITIVE CRISIS OF THE IMAGE) 
        1. TRANSITION FROM ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL
        2. PLATFORMED IMAGE
        3. CRISIS OF THE SYNTHETIC IMAGE
RESOLUTION DISPUTE 0000 : ATLAS



And what follows are also some slightly less related siminars:

Summer Semester 2019 KHK ‘Beyond Resolution’ slides.
Alternative formats: Manifestos
Emojis - one day workshop
Timetravelling - one day workshop
Posthuman Glossary - one day workshop
Monopolized services (Included an Amazon Fullfilment centre visit with class)
Lets talk about money! (This block started with a fantastic presentation by the Queen of Cups “3D financial domination, online sex work and crypto currencies”)

Winter Semester 2019 KHK ‘Beyond Resolution’ slides.
Genre vs Memes
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic/K
Virtual Materials with Topicbird / Digital light 
Whiteout
Light Sculptures
Impossible images

Workshops and guest lectures
Hydra workshop with Olivia Jack
Workshop digital shaders with Topicbird
🔮 ⭕ Magic Circle with Claudia Hart and Alfredo Salazar Caro
Slime Mold synthesizer Workshop with Sarah Grant
. 


Summer Semester 2020: What is Contemporary?
11 week long seminar on the contemporary, poked and prodded through different topics of interest, using contemporary warfare and new media technologies as red thread.

Summer Semester 2022
Sonification_&_databending workshop
About the rheology of data 
What (not) to do with data? 
Flags are now celebrated in our user names, we hoist them as our PFPs and we promote them in our banners. Lets talk about Flags!

2. Winter Semester 2018/2019 KHK ‘Beyond Resolution’ slides.


Screenology Seminar 
Includes a presentation first given during Dutch Film Festival Utrecht.
A three week seminar on the screen as display, introducing a short history of the GUI and the interface effect.
The Sci-Fi screen in Hollywood movies and contemporary methods of decollage.
The third week focuses on screenshots and the Desktop Documentary genre. 

Tactical Media Seminar
The seminar starts with introducing some of the precursors / roots of tactical media and then moves on to introduce key players within the Tactical Media movement of the 90s. Finally it introduces some works of former tactical media artists and artworks made inspired by the Tactical Media movement and some critique on its revival in 2017. 
What could Tactical Media be in 2019, in an age of platformization and when tactical interventions on the turf of the provider are almost impossible?

Becoming Fog Seminar
An introduction to spam is followed by a description of the shifts in the advertisement industry (from billboards / banners to targeted advertising). This is followed by an introduction to the ghosts of the internet - the first friends, bots and other virtual assistants that are net-bound. The block ends by introducing several privacy practices or ‘becoming fog’.  

3. Summer Semester 2019 KHK ‘Beyond Resolution’ slides.



 Alternative formats: Manifestos
From the extinvion rebellion to Xenofeminism, Occupy Wallstreet to Black Lives Matter or Glitch to #Additivism - all these movements have used manifestos to announce themselves to the world. The manifesto genre is by definition timely and politically focused. It criticizes a present state of affairs but also announces its passing, proclaiming the advent of a new movement or even of a new era. Manifestos are often a call for a new vision, approach, program, or genre: they are the site of political, cultural and social experimentation in our contemporary world.
Manifestos exist to challenge and provoke - to enhance conscious self-expression and empowerment. But how to write a contemporary manifesto in 2019?
How to combine a call for action with ciritical digital design to fundamentally expand the character and scope of the genre itself?
AR, VR and ‘empathy’. A presentation for Impakt, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Impakt asked me to give a short presentation on AR, VR and empathy. VR - or ‘the empathy machine’ - has often been used to tell the story of young refugee girls. Can VR also provoke empathy without the exploitation of minor immigrant girls? And what is so good about empathy - what do we win with empathy if we do not have compassion, sympathy, morality or other forms of ethics at play? How easily do we cross the line from emphaty to commiserate disaster tourism?
And what is the relation between AR and VR? Maybe a use of the world ‘reality’ a misnomer for what better could be understood as chimera?
Emojis - one day workshop 
The earliest known mobile phone in Japan to include a set of emoji was released by J-Phone on November 1, 1997. The set of 90 emoji included many that would later be added to the Unicode Standard, such as Pile of Poo 💩, but as the phone was very expensive they were not widely used at the time. In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita created the first widely-used set of emoji which was implemented on NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile Internet platform.
Today, anyone can submit a proposal for an emoji character, but the implementation of new emoji is regulated by the Unicode Consortium. Yet every year 70 new emojis are chosen and implemented. How?: the voting members of the Unicode Constortium (Silicon Valley _ White Male Conservatives _ ) pay good �💵💴💶💰💷$ to have a vote.
As a result, certain emojis are missing, while other emojis are the linchpin of controversy.

Timetravelling - one day workshop
With the advent of the digital, time is no longer what it used to be. Instances can be jumped, repeated or stamped: the digital has introduced a new experience of time. But before making such a statement, we first need to discuss the dimension of time.
According to Hillel Schwartz, first there was Aeon time. Aeon time is universally ongoing and impersonal time. As an eternal flux and flow it is always ‘just there’. Schwartz connects aeon time to background noise, the noise that has been there since the Big Bang, the noise that will always exist and is usually suppressed but remains part of any system.
Secondly, Schwartz explains, there is Kronos, from which the term ‘chronology’ stems. Kronos refers to linear, one directional time, business time or incremental, daily routine time. Schwartz connects Kronos to repetitive noise, such as the noise of a dripping faucet. It is sickeningly rhythmic and does not move backwards.
Finally there is Kairos, which is best described as the time of opportunity. This time is dangerous and thrilling, however it can also present itself subtly. Schwarz connects Kairos to the noise of revolution. It is the shriek of invention. The time when someone urges you to seize the moment.
But Schwartz is of course not the only one outlining a general definition of time. Many men have attempted to describe time before him, and many have after... Here Schwartz is merely a starting point to discuss and travel time. 
What can be images of time? And what other radical ideas of time are there? 

Posthuman Glossary - one day workshop
Posthuman Critical theory is a convergence of posthumanism and post anthropocentrism.
In humanism the 'man' from the West sets the standards to measure all things. PCT rejects any nostalgia for humanism or the 'enlightened man of reason'.
PCT also rejects to see the world as a hierarchy of species and human exceptionalism - as is celebrated in anthropocentrism. As a result, PCT pratices a ‘dis-identification of the familiar’.
Posthuman Critical Theory believes that:
  • subjectivity does not make the ‘anthropos’. 
  • we need to create a sustainable notion of vitalist materialism - the belief that matter itself has vitality and is alive, no matter how lifeless it may appear to be. In doing so, objects and things are described as having agency (Jane Bennett / D&G). 
  • we need to enlarge the scope of ethical accountability.
In short: Posthuman Critical Theory creates assemblages of human and non-human actors by combining feminist theory and Deleuze and Guattari's new materialist philosophy. Urgency is found in the Anthroposcene condition, which changes environmental, social economical, affective and psychical conditions and the violent and inhumane power relations that result from technological advances and a growing economic and social inequalities.
Critical (in Crtitical theory) refers to both being critical and creative. Critical is as a way to create cartographies of power, to account for and learn to relinquish unearned privileges and implicit power privileges. The creative side enlists the resources of the imagination and a new alliance of critique. Politically speaking, posthuman critical theory is a practical philospohy that aims at composing a 'missing people', to refashion and reshape the human to include all kinds of bodies (immigrant, of color, female, crip)

Monopolized services (Included an Amazon Fullfilment centre visit with class)
Monopolies and patents shape the (media) industry by strategies such as standardization, undercutting and prohibition. We talk about a few of these stories and about recent strategies of for instance Amazon, that by means of vertical and horizontal intergration has managed to cut out and bypass whole tiers in the chains of production and distribution. In doing so, the concept of ‘carriage’ - to carry over a particular product, service or provide a platform for a certain producer, has gotten renewed importance. 

Lets talk about money! (This block started with a fantastic presentation by the Queen of Cups “3D financial domination, online sex work and crypto currencies”)
 Money is nothing. Even so, it can move everything. But how can nothing move everything? ...Its because the concept of money is made of agreements, of solidarity, of trust. Not just moral or political trust, but agreements that resonate in a sort of ‘condition’. (- paraphased from the K foundation burned a million quid)
Money is often described in terms of time, freedom, or as an object rooted in the colonialist, modernist, or imperial projects of standardization.
But when do we actually learn to talk about money? Did someone teach you how money works, what are the rules of who gets to own, earn or safe money and how and what are the histories and ‘logics’ of inflation and value? 
In fact, money is quite a fictual construct that is only worth something in ‘the right’ context or space - in the ‘condition’ that ascribes its worth. In this condition - or rather at the fringes of this space, the value of money also gives rise to alternative spaces, such as tax havens, Extrastates or bodies of de-regulated flows of capital.


4. Winter Semester 2019 KHK ‘Beyond Resolution’ slides.


Genre vs Memes

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic/K

Virtual Materials with Topicbird / Digital light 

Whiteout

Light Sculptures

Impossible images

Workshops and guest lectures 
Hydra workshop with Olivia Jack

Workshop digital shaders with Topicbird

🔮 ⭕ Magic Circle with Claudia Hart and Alfredo Salazar Caro

 Slime Mold synthesizer Workshop with Sarah Grant

Other or older presentations: 


Creating Critical Environments (Gray Area Festival, San Francisco, USA: 2019) 

AR, VR and ‘empathy’. A presentation for Impakt, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Impakt asked me to give a short presentation on AR, VR and empathy. VR - or ‘the empathy machine’ - has often been used to tell the story of young refugee girls. Can VR also provoke empathy without the exploitation of minor immigrant girls? And what is so good about empathy - what do we win with empathy if we do not practice compassion, sympathy, morality or other forms of ethical consideration? How easily do we cross the line from emphaty to commiserate disaster tourism?
And what is the relation between AR and VR?
Maybe the use of the world ‘reality’ a misnomer for what better could be understood as chimera or virtual imagination?

Tokyo Threading. ( Sony Centre, Tokyo for Media Festival, Japan: 2019)
It matters what threads are used to construct a garment: using a thread that is stronger than the material that is sewn (the fabric) can end up causing rips in the material.
During my time in Japan I had many  encounters with Japanese digital artists who taught me about the importance of how to thread message and material together in very considerate, new ways of presenting.

Dispute Resolutions (34C3, Leipzig, Germany: 2018)
An introduction of my journey into resolution studies, as presented at #34C3

Behind White Shadows: Lenna JPEG, Jennifer in Paradise, The Angel of History. (Elevate festival, Graz, Austria: 2016)
While digital photography seems to reduce the effort of taking an image of the face, such as a selfie or a portrait, to a straightforward act of clicking, these photos, stored and created inside (digital) imaging technologies do not just take and save an image of the face. In reality, a large set of biased - gendered and even racist - protocols intervene in the processes of saving the face to memory. As a result, what gets resolved, and what gets lost during the process of resolving the image is often unclear.
In this presentation, I follow the stories of 3 protagonists of color test cards: Lenna, Jennifer and the Angel of History. 

Vernacular of File Formats and Extra Files (Steim, Amsterdam, Netherlands: 2011) 
A file format is an encoding system that organises data according to a particular syntax. These organisations are commonly referred to as compression algorithms. The choice of an image compression depends on its foreseen mode and place of usage: for instance, is the file meant to be printed or redistributed digitally, what kind of accuracy will be necessary and what software or hardware will render the image? In A Vernacular of File Formats, I subsequently compressed the source image via different compression languages and subsequently implementing a same (or similar) error into each file, to let the otherwise invisible compression language presents itself onto the surface of the image.

Order and progress (São Paulo, Brasil: 2010) 
Wrapping up my residency at the Museum of Image and souns in Sao Paolo, where I made Monglot and prepared for my solo show at Fabio Paris Gallery, in Brescia, titled after this presentation. 

Rosa Menkman at Gene Siskel (Chicago, USA: 2010) 
Alternatief gebruik van digitale idiomen (Amsterdam, Netherlands: 2010)
Glitch Studies Manifesto (Video Vortex, Brussels, Belgium: 2009) 
The exploitation of noise artifacts to create critical media aesthetics (ISEA, Belfast, Ireland: 2009)
Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right (HAIP festival, Ljubljana Slovenia: 2008)