The collection of "im/possible" images I gathered, reveal both the limitations and possibilities of human imagination and understanding. I compiled the collection into a virtual exhibition named the BLOB (Binary Large OBject) of im/possible images, commissioned by HEK, Basel, which offers an immersive environment for visitors to explore and reflect on the nature of imaging. The BLOB not only celebrates the potentialities of images but also emphasizes the constraints and compromises inherent in current image processing technologies.
The COVID pandemic brought an abrupt halt to my research. It cut the time of my residency short as I fled Barcelona just a few days before Spain went into a total lockdown. These rapidly unfolding events made it difficult to consolidate the research I had initiated. Only on the occasion of an online commission from the Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel (HEK) - in the frame of the HEK Net Works - during the Summer of 2021, did I find the push to revisit and process the contributions I had collected. I started by compiling all the im/possible images in a single document to create an initial categorization. And it was at this moment I first realized that the collection of im/possible images I had gathered was amazing in its own right.
My collection of images displayed the diverse limits of image processing technologies in existence. I learned that some images are currently impossible due to certain restraints (e.g. money or knowledge), while others will remain impossible due to the laws of physics and the universe itself. As such they will forever exist in the hypothetical realms of our imagination.
Using the virtual exhibition toolkit New Art City, I installed a selection of my collection of im/ possible images in a low poly rendition that I named the BLOB of im/possible images. In front of the BLOB (a Binary Large OBject), the visitor is welcomed by the Angel of History who points at the BLOB, urging visitors to enter it. A map reminiscing the realms of Compression Complexities is installed next to her, while behind her the Staircase to Nowhere spirals Northward.
The BLOB was built to give a metaphoric ‘shape’ to the space of all images, past and future. Different Axes of Affordance cut the BLOB. These parameters describe the mechanics that define what is resolved and as a result, what is compromised, or in other words, will not be rendered. While in reality, the space of all im/possible images is fragmented, organized by actions and affordances, stacked by the history of image processing technologies, and consolidated in resolutions, the BLOB offers a space where imaginary propositions are possible. In the BLOB visitors can look and think through images as fluid, released from the otherwise rigid settings, resolutions, affordances and compromises.
Visitors can enter the BLOB through a dark round portal, imaging a Shadow of Dark Matter. Upon entering, they are confronted with A Pale Blue Dot that shines from the depths of the universe, while on the right, The Quantum Vacuum at a Slice of Planck Constant Time flickers rapidly. Right next to it, an image of the insides of a proton shows 3 quarks, the tiniest known building blocks of the universe. Normally, these images are impossible, but the hypothetical realms of the BLOB offer pasture to these im/possible renders.
10/04/2026 – 30/08/2026 Unfinished Reality United Art Museum, Wuhan, China
27/09/2024 – 03/02/2025 Electric Op: Im/Possible BLOB, Buffalo AKG, USA
01/03/2024 – 04/05/2024 execute_photography / Photo 2024, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
01/12/2023 – Apparatus-less Experiment at the Chongqing Science and Technology Museum (重庆科技馆) China
28/04/2023 – Evolving kinetics Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen, Germany
29.04.2022 – 10/06/2022 Bibliotech Torque Editions at NEME, Cyprus
27/04/2022 – 13/05/2022 Bibliotech Torque Editions at exhibition research lab Liverpool, UK.
27/10/2021 - 07/11/2021 Temporal Stack: the Deep Sensor, Shang Space Exhibition Center, Guiyang, Guizhou, China
29/04/2021 – 27/06/2021 Spatial Affairs Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary
09/02/2021 – 09/03/2021 HeK Net Works for HEK Basel