 im/possible rainbows in: "CYCLOPS RETINA", London. /******📡 resolution update 📡 7.0 ******/ Its been a moment (18 months) since the last time I wrote,,, 👁️ but here I am! 👁️ * 12 months ago I quit my job. I am now 100% on a mission to produce what I want to see in this world. * On the 3rd of April I reached 40. Seeing time slip away towards this moment felt hard - like I was going through a process of mourning. But since the day I turned 40, I feel happy. Its been an interesting time. /********************************************/ :: THIS PATCH ::0000 REFRACTIONS IN LIGHT AND TIME During the summer of 2👁️22, I had a residency at NeMe within the framework of EMAP, to research cyclopes. Cyclopes are famous mythical creatures, known for their gargantuan physique and single round eye. However, beyond their most famous features and maybe the name born by the most famous Cyclops Polyphemus, little about them is known. In fact, Cyclopes seem shrouded in mystery, sparking general questions such as: Where can we find contemporary Cyclopes and how do Cyclopes perceive the world? Recently I learned that a certain Cyclops (going by the name Wodan) traded an eye, in exchange for the sense of future vision. Tired of a century of only looking towards the past, the Angel of History is now set to undertake a journey to learn from the cyclops future vision. An introductionary video about my research can be found here. Refractions in Light and Time is an ongoing work in progress. An iterative outcome will be on show at WRO Poland and will feature a font design by Taietzel Ticalos and a soundtrack by Debit. Refractions in Light and Time was co-funded by the European Union and the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture.
 Cyclops Retina install view during the impossible rainbow sequence, London. 0001 CYCLOPS RETINA In collaboration with Kimchi and Chips. Commissioned by The Beams for Thin Air in London, up until the 4th of June 2023! My research into cyclopes also resulted into a collaboration with Kimchi and Chips, which is propbably one of the most beautiful works I have ever been part of. The experience of the installation is aetherial and 100% to be seen in person, however, I did post a little documentary video to show what it looks like through the lens of an iphone (w/0 postprocessing). "In Cyclops Retina, Kimchi and Chips and Rosa Menkman combine their contrasting research into light as both a material and neurological phenomenon. The work can be seen as an experimental film in an experimental format, offsetting Kimchi and Chips’ Light Barrier drawing technique with a especially commissioned story written by Menkman, both exploring alternative modes of vision."
"DeCalibration Target" Berlin. 0010 i.R.D. DECALIBRATION TARGET I am very thankful to the transmediale festival and Stimuleringsfonds for supporting the i.R.D. (The institutions of Resolution Disputes) in making this permanent installation a reality. The Target comes with a DCT REPO, featuring a collection of information and work on the DCT algorithm. From the Transmediale website: "A blip, a glitch on a satellite photo, an error in the rendering of an image shot by a drone. What might seem a mistake is a freshly painted marker that sits on a rooftop in one of the most historic neighbourhoods of Berlin. Located at the riverside, near the remains of the Berlin wall, the target functions as an AR beacon. On activation offers access to a cache of research about the DCT algorithm and the JPEG compression. This 16 x 16m target can only be read from above, reminding us that resolution, and its recognition, determines what is seen, unseen or illegible. In Decalibration Target, Rosa Menkman explores what happens when something exists outside our dimensions or system units of scale, and asks what tools are needed to distinguish it from its environment. Commissioned for Out of Scale, the 2023 transmediale exhibition, the i.R.D. Decalibration Target can only be seen from above through satellite imagery or taken home as a flyer and postcard souvenir from transmediale warehouse."  Marker, flyer and postcard picturing the Target.  "Shredded Hologram Rose" 0011 LIVE PERFORMANCE OF THE SHREDDED HOLOGRAM ROSE The transmediale also invited me onto their stage, to perform "The Shredded Hologram Rose" Inspired by Fragments of a Hologram Rose, a 1977 science fiction short story by William Gibson, this lecture performance explores the violent stories of standardisation embedded in 3D composite objects. The performance takes place in a little "cube" (home pod) of a media archeologist a century of cycles from now. The paraphanelia on her walls and desk clearly show her investment into the stories of the Angel of History - now going by the name Iana? -, the now obsolete DCT algorithm and the i.R.D. DeCalibration Target. I rendered the performance into a video format especially for the NewArt.City Memory Card festival, which can watched back here Performing "Shredded Hologram Rose" during Transmediale. 
lM/POSSIBLE IMAGES READER" (2023) 0100 UPDATE: IM/POSSIBLE IMAGES Luzi Gross and I finally released the Im/Possible Images Reader. I initiated my - still in progress - research on Im/Possible Images during my residency at CERN with a single question: Imagine you could obtain an 'impossible' image of any object or phenomenon that you think is important, with no limits on spatial, temporal, energy, signal/noise or cost resolutions. What image would you create? (the answer can be a hypothetical image of course!) The reader represents a moment of reflection on the progress, shapes and forms my im/possible research has made and obtained. It constitutes of a collection of texts written by me, Luzi and our peers, and ranges from short stories, to image work, manuals, (technical) documentation and essays. Some of these materials were specifically commissioned for this reader, whereas others have been generously allowed to be reprinted. The organization of this publication is modular; the chapters can be read independently. Despite this, we chose the order in which we present them for a reason: to provide a consistently additive flow that builds outwards from the five axes of the exhibition. * The Blob has been installed in multiple countries China, Cyprus, UK, Germany and will soon have a new iteration at the science gallery in Melbourne. * My im/possible images research is levelling up with a visit at ARC (the Dark Matter research facility in Melbourne) and a residency at EPFL, Lausane where I will research impossible rainbows and unnamed colours.  The BLOB installed by Iris Long and @He_Zike for TEMPORAL STACK: THE DEEP SENSOR (2023). 0101 NOT.GLI.TC/H It had been 10 years since the 5th GLI.TC/H 2123 event in Birmingham took place. The GLI.TC/H/ BOTS felt it was time to consider this hiatus and see where the genre has gone and where GLI.TC/H should go. On April 1st, the community showed up for 14 talks, 8 performances, 5 installation pieces, 7 screenings and an openports gallery show. The livestream recording of the panel talks are available here  JPEG FROM A VERNACULAR OF FILE FORMATS, (2009 - 2010), 2023 REVISITATION WITH HIDDEN MESSAGE IN DCT. 0110 SOTHEBY'S: BEYOND BINARY AUCTION After Sotheby's used the image of the Angel of History as part of the promotional materials for their 30 piece -all male- glitch auction, it only took 'some' noise in the twitter hellscape for their auction to be put on hold. In response, Sotheby's enlisted Dina Chang and Dawnia Darkstone to curate more equitable. Sotheby's also asked me to write an essay to introduce the many layers of to glitch art and invited me to a panel discussion in their actual auction premises in New York. I am thankful to Dina to invite me into her curation and for the gesture of patronage by those bidding and collecting my work (going into this, I was afraid I might not even sell!) The auction house produced this special 1/1 print for the new auction, in which I embedded an in DCT encrypted message about value: "The true value of a work of art extends beyond its market, enwrapping both its cultural and historic significance." Auction houses have a responsibility beyond profit-making. By embracing a broader definition of value and ensuring equitable curation via a diverse roster of artists, auction houses can contribute to a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive market. 0111 LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
IANA at the BLOB 0111 LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE * From June - August I will be in Australia, visiting the ARC (Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics) and installing the BLOB at the Science Gallery in Melbourne for Dark Matters, I will also visit Hobart (Tasmania). * September - November I will have my EPFL residency, during which I will research impossible rainbows and unnamed colours. * I forgot.
|
/**************************************************************************************/
|
im/possible images opened on the 15th of July at the Lothringer Halle 13 in Munich and will be open for 2 more weeks. This weekend I will be in Munich to give a talk (if I ever get there, cause right now it looks like we are pretty stuck on this train).
im/possible images is conceptualized and curated by me, and produced by Luzi Gross, to whom I am very grateful for all her hard work and dedication. 💎 💎
🔹 My chipmunk-style video walkthrough click here.
🔹 Photos from the install here.
Background to the show
At the entrance of the Lothringer, a computer provides access to the digital version of the exhibition, titled: the BLOB of im/possibe images. The BLOB is home to a virtual collection of im/possible images that I sourced during my Arts at CERN/Collide-Barcelona residency, by asking every scientist the same question:
Imagine you could obtain an 'impossible' image of any object or phenomenon that you think is important, with no limits on spatial, temporal, energy, signal/noise or cost resolutions. What image would you create?
I developed the BLOB to function as a virtual home for my collection of im/possible images during the pandemic, when all galleries were closed. But now, at the Lothringer 13, the im/possible images exhibition has become a real space actualisation of the virtual BLOB.
The im/possible images exhibition uses the term ‘latent image space,’ as an expanded concept.
In analogue photography, the latent image space exists when photosensitive material has been exposed, but has not gone through the process of development (yet). It is the space that has been touched by light, but that is not showing trace evidence (in the form of an image) yet.
The im/possible images show uses the latent image term as a hypothetical space, that involves every imaginable and unimaginable image that could ever be rendered. A main premise of im/possible images is that once a render parameter is chosen, this parameter acts as a metaphoric cut through the space of the latent image, dividing it up into images that remain possible, and images that have become impossible. So effectively, every render setting realizes particular images, while it compromises others.
In the Lothringer these parameters or axes, are materialized as architectural elements that quite literally cut through the space while introducing five categories of im/possiblity.
From white to yellow, these axes are:
The axis of all possible images serves not really as an axis, but rather as an entrance into the hypothetical, latent image space of Lothringer 13 Halle, which contains all conceivable and inconceivable images.
work:
Fabian Heller, All possible images [True Color, Full HD], Print on PVC, 18x2 metres, 2021.
Sometimes the parameters by which the image was originally created are not supported by the image processing technology that is rendering it visible. This can happen when for instance the encoding system (the codec) has become unsupported or the amount of pixels of the image is higher than the resolution of the display or the computer can process.
When this happens, the technology or decoder can sometimes still try to ‘interpret’ the image data. As a result, the carrier that is used to translate the signal into an image, will influence and possibly deform the image that is finally on display.
This axis functions as an imaginary threshold that exists in the realms of render technologies, signalling that while some images are possible to render and others are not, there is also a liminal space, where the displayed image exists as an ambiguous interpretation.
works:
UCNV, Supercritical, Video installation, 2019.
Peter Edwards, Nova Drone, Interactive installation, 2012.
While some images may be presented as evidence, with ‘high acutance’ or as truthful, in reality the processes through which they may have been produced are inscribed with values, bias or even erroneous interpretations. Think for instance about the image of the shadow of a black hole, which was constituted from a trove of RAW scientific data, but then enhanced by artificial coloring. Or the basemap of planet Earth, that is used by Google maps, which exists devoid of clouds, while inhabited by inconsistent shadowing.
works:
Susan Schuppli, Can the sun lie? Video, 2014–2015
Sasha Engelmann & Sophie Dyer, Open Weather, Installation & Workshop, 2020-2021
Rosa Menkman, Whiteout, video (15 min.), 2020
Quote by Ingrid Burrington "forever noon on a cloudless day"
NASA basemap of Earth.
documentation:
Röntgen, Röntgen photo, print, 1896
NASA Voyager / Carl Sagan, Pale blue dot, 1990.
Medipix, spectroscopic X-ray.
With the introduction of simulation technologies, which today also include AI and Machine Learning Algorithms, the latent image space has expanded. Images are no longer just relying on the object that is captured, the capturing device and its modes of display but also on intelligent processes that now complicate every step of image processing.
As a result, images are no longer just used as evidence, or to illustrate and explain, but also to predict and explore previously inaccessible scenarios. Moreover, image processing technologies have expanded to spaces of production that were previously unthinkable and unknowable.
works:
Alan Warburton, RGB FAQ, Video essay (27:38 min), 2020
Memo Akten, Learning to See: Gloomy Sunday, HD Video (3:02 min), 2017
Rosa Menkman, Shredded Hologram Rose
0001 open-weather.community at the im/possible summer school
Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann are part of im/possible images with their Impossible Weather Station. An installation that is activated once a week, to tab into a NOAA satellite and read out a local weather report. During the im/possible summer school, the im/possible weather station had its first activation in the form of a workshop. The read out above was done by Anna Pasco, a participant of the workshop.
By Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann:
“The im/possibe weather station is a tactical space for producing counter- images of weather that demonstrate the impossibility of both contemporary weather forecasts and the optics of Google Earth. Once per week, the Impossible Weather Station is activated in order to capture a transmission from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite. For us, the process of capturing this image is more than technical: it involves attending to local meteorological conditions, centring the body in the technical system and sensing the satellite in visible, audible and electromagnetic registers.
Images of weather, from the daily weather radar to smartphone weather applications, present ‘snapshots’ of current weather conditions. These images suggest that weather is uniquely contemporary, it is happening right now. Yet, as Denise Ferreira da Silva reminds us, the very heat in the air is a transformation of the “extensive and intensive extraction of matter from the earth, in the form of fossil fuels, soil nutrients to feed crops and livestock, and the (human and more-than-human) work that sustains capital” over the last several centuries (2018: np). Images of weather are not images of the present; these images inscribe and make visible histories of coloniality, raciality and capitalism."
image "All Possible Landscapes" copyright Jens Schnitzler
0010 HFBK Digitale Grafik at the im/possible summer school
During the im/possible summer school, ten students from HFBK Hamburg took part in a special summer school program; a three-day production sprint in the style of a hackathon, during which they reflected on im/possible images. The image above is of the work All Possible Landscapes by Jens Schnitzler, which was directly inspired by the work All Possible Images by Fabian Heller.
The six student projects that resulted from the im/possible summer school can be found here.
/********************************************/
|
This Patch
0000 Opening of Im/Possible Images @Lothringer_13, Munich!
0001 The Shredded Hologram Rose @ Feral File
0010 Performative Lecture for COMPUTER GRRRLS
0011 NEW: AN ONLINE CALENDAR!
0100 Unfolding AI / Unfolding Models @MIT Center for Art
15. Juli – 19. September 2021. Imagine you could obtain an 'impossible' image, of any object or phenomenon that you think is important, with no limits to spatial, temporal, energy, signal/noise or cost resolutions, what image would you create? With: Memo Akten, Peter Edwards, Sasha Engelmann & Sophie Dyer, Fabian Heller, Rosa Menkman, Susan Schuppli, UCNV, Alan Warburton a.o. Images are pervasive; they are used to entertain, to guide, to serve as evidence or as tools for discovery. But they can also be invisible, made for machines and by machines in order to filter, track, classify, sort, or delete. As such, they constitute and influence the fabric of our everyday lives. Sometimes it is even said that one's life is now ruled by a regime of the optical. How are such regimes constructed? In order for an object or thing – light or other type of data – to enter the visible domain and to become an image, it needs to be resolved. It needs to pass through a process involving standards, rules and compromises. As a result, under the fold of our image processing technologies, there is a complex system that constitutes our images and the optical regime we abide by. Spanning from all possible images to invisible images, Im/Possible images brings together strategies and methods of making visible. It also explores the conditions of image making today: how do resolutions shape images and how does the process of resolving compromise its rendering? Can one listen to an image? When do aberrations and translations turn into ‘false’ representations? And how has the field of computer simulation expanded the rules and functioning of our imagery? Initiated by Rosa Menkman, Lothringer 13 Halle will host an im/possible summer school and become a space that sheds light on the realms of im/possible images. Through workshops and talks, international guests, local artists and researchers are invited to probe the experimental field of knowledge production with an emphasis on (digital) image infrastructures. |
.
0001 The Shredded Hologram Rose @ Feral File
From the shredded side of a Hologram, one can peek into the 3D objects’ Delta Axis. From this perspective, one can see the Holograms render objects, which form a repository of layered information about the Holograms provenance, metadata, and other information that the unscathed Hologram would never prevail.
Now available via the Feral File platform, which offers digital artwork for sale as Bitmark NFTs.
The rose will always be and remain freely available online, under a CC licence, like all my work.
But you can also Collect the rose, the NFT to end all NFTs.... ;)
The Bitmark Property System enables management of digital property rights, without using the Ethereum protocol. Because Bitmark is a smaller, more specialized blockchain, it requires exponentially smaller amounts of energy than Bitcoin or Ethereum.
I considered and reconsidered hashing a work on the blockchain and presenting it as commodity. It was a choice not easily made, which I think both the work itself and my remarks on crypto art published on the INC platform make clear.
0010 Performative Lecture for COMPUTER GRRRLS
01.07.2021 | 18:00 - 19:30
The long awaited publication Computer Grrrls is finally here!
For the book presentation, the editors invited me to present my essay in the form of a performative lecture.
To receive the login details for the event (platform: Zoom), please register via e-mail at event@hmkv.de
Edited by Inke Arns and Marie Lechner, the publication brings together 23 international artistic positions that negotiate the relationship between gender and technology in history and the present. Computer Grrrls explores the complex relationship between women and technology-from the first human computers to the current revival of techno-feminist movements. An illustrated timeline of over 200 entries documents these developments from the 18th century to the present. With contributions by Inke Arns, Claire L. Evans, Elisa Giardina Papa, Marie Lechner, Mimi Onuoha, Cornelia Sollfrank and me ☺
Design: The Laboratory of Manuel Bürger. Dortmund: Kettler, German, English, 17 x 24 cm, 200 pages, ISBN: 978-3-86206-907-1.
More information here
0011 NEW: AN ONLINE CALENDAR!
[imgs == new iteration of les inconnues for Rainbows End festival]
Finally I got myself a bit organised and am now keeping track of my activities here
0100 Unfolding AI / Unfolding Models @MIT Center for Art
My MIT Unfolding Intelligence Symposium video has been released online, watch it here
For the NCAD event with Joanna Zylinska and Rachel O'Dwyer, I recorded a somewhat overlapping, somewhat additive video lecture titled "Destitute Vision"
/********************************************/
/FEBRUARY_2021_Resolution Update 5.0 ***********/
2021.... Another year of PANDEMIA!
But the bullet has been fired, the contracts have been signed,
and as soon as this Pandemia finally allows me to move boxes,
I am moving back to the Netherlands,
and I will exchange this box of ZOOM to for another box of ZOOM.
This Patch
0000 The BLOB of Im/Possible Images
0001 Unfolding AI / Unfolding Models @MIT Center for Art
0010 VOF at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
0011 WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY?
0100 OPEN COIL
| 0000 HEK Commission: The BLOB of Im/Possible Images "Imagine you could obtain an 'impossible' image of any object or phenomenon that you think is important, with no limits on spatial, temporal, energy, signal/noise or cost resolutions. What image would you create? (the answer can be a hypothetical image of course!)" This was the question I asked every scientist I spoke to during my Arts at CERN/Collide Barcelona residency. Come and explore my collection of im/possible images in the BLOB! Or find the portal inside the BLOB to add your own impossible image... The BLOB was created as a commission for HEK. |
|
 0010 VERNACULAR OF FILE FORMATS AT STEDELIJK While installing the archive of a Vernacular of File Formats at the Stedelijk Museum Base exhibition, I was commissioned to make a video essay for Stedelijk Studies Issue #10: Imagining the Future of Digital Archives and Collections of stedelijk studies an digital magazine. The result, It Takes More than the Past to Understand and Build the Archive (2020), tells the story of A Vernacular of File Formats (2010). The work is an archive of an almost decade long research project into file formats, which are encoding systems that organize data according to a particular syntax.  0011 WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY? Winter semester 2020 at the KHK, as part of Resolution Studies, an ongoing research. Our (digital) cultures are becoming more and more complex. From deep fakes to the 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, future or digital culture; they vary as wide as the diversity of the perspectives of its users. As an artist, I feel I am responsible to train myself to not only critically engage with the new materialities of the digital, but also - and I believe that this is where the ‘new’ or at least 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. And what is the Contemporary if only a lens - what falls outside of this particular, often institutionalised take of our current times? I share the slides of the curriculum What is Contemporary? here.  0100 OPEN COIL AND 365 PERFECT Finally, it is a bit late since OPEN COIL has officially ended, but I do want to mention the fantastic OPEN COIL roaming scooter exhibition I was part during the final quarter of last year. The exhibition concept was by far one of my most favorite Corona solutions: in Berlin these days, many of the rentable scooters (which are generously spread standing and lying all over the sidewalks and bicycle lanes) come with a build in mobile phone charging spot. The OPEN COIL show used these mobile batteries on wheels and syphoned off a little energy; just enough to power up a local network, each hosting a work a single artists work. The OPEN COIL website map the locations of the modded scooters, making a "chase the gallery through the city" kind of scenario. My work was a gif of 365 Perfect Decalibration! |
/********************************************/
/JULY_2020_Resolution Update 4.0 ***********/
If you have no time to read this mail,
please consider to at least visit our Digital Crisis Survey and make an entry && share,
it would help us tremendously!
This Patch
0000 From a little hut in the forest, also known as the Skauhytt,
0001 Eyebeam Rapid Response residency with Sarah Grant >> HELP!!
0010 Solo Show at SJSU: Shadow Knowledge
0000 From a little hut in the forest, also known as the Skauhytt,
0001 Eyebeam Rapid Response residency with Sarah Grant >> HELP!!
0010 Solo Show at SJSU: Shadow Knowledge
In the morning the little birds sing. They start when it is cold and wet and half dark. At that time, they are the only ones making sounds. One little bird got in the habit of sitting right above the place where I lay my head when I sleep. She makes a lot of noise. During the afternoon it’s mostly storks and pigeons. They flap their wings while moving from tree to tree or twig to twig. For a while I thought they sounded like witches roaming around the forest. I did not understand I was hearing a rain of beechnuts falling from the tops of the trees all the way onto the forest floor. In the evening the crows bark their final song, while at night the cows next door make cosy eating sounds. |
|
|
|