1 00:00:00,105 --> 00:00:15,035 *34C3 preroll music* 2 00:00:15,035 --> 00:00:20,410 Herald: Resolution is always a compromise we have got used to. Why not talk about it 3 00:00:20,410 --> 00:00:25,480 again this is why the next talk is entitled: "Institution for Resolution 4 00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:35,480 Disputes" and our speaker is Rosa Menkman a Dutch artist, curator and researcher, and 5 00:00:35,480 --> 00:00:42,860 founder of IRD or "the Institute of resolution dispute". A big applause for 6 00:00:42,860 --> 00:00:45,965 Rosa, please. And the stage is yours! 7 00:00:45,965 --> 00:00:48,310 *applause* 8 00:00:48,310 --> 00:00:53,790 Rosa Menkman: Thank you. Thank you for being here on this like - very late part 9 00:00:53,790 --> 00:00:59,430 of the whole conference and I mean when I was checking in everybody seemed so tired 10 00:00:59,430 --> 00:01:04,680 it was really funny to experience this like latency in everybody. So I'm Rosa 11 00:01:04,680 --> 00:01:08,900 Menkman, I'm from the Netherlands everybody speaks German to me here, it's 12 00:01:08,900 --> 00:01:13,100 really funny because my name sounds German but actually when you say something in 13 00:01:13,100 --> 00:01:19,087 German I will speak back in English. But please speak to me when you want to. 14 00:01:19,087 --> 00:01:26,540 In 2015, I'm gonna talk from 2015 onwards, I was invited to be a research fellow in a 15 00:01:26,540 --> 00:01:31,049 big Institute in the Netherlands to do research on resolutions and this was a 16 00:01:31,049 --> 00:01:36,320 huge honor for me and I dropped everything in London where I used to live at the time 17 00:01:36,320 --> 00:01:40,820 and went and moved back to Amsterdam which actually was not my favorite city in the 18 00:01:40,820 --> 00:01:47,260 world at all. So I went there and three days before my, my contract started which 19 00:01:47,260 --> 00:01:53,290 we had already signed like a month back and everything: I was fired because the 20 00:01:53,290 --> 00:01:58,900 head of the department had looked into my accreditation and my PhD that I was doing 21 00:01:58,900 --> 00:02:02,910 at the time, had started somewhere else and had not the right accreditations since 22 00:02:02,910 --> 00:02:08,729 I ported it from Cologne to London and so I would have to revisit the whole 23 00:02:08,729 --> 00:02:14,030 institutional network and get my stuff right in time to start. Now that was not 24 00:02:14,030 --> 00:02:19,780 possible. And so I was,... how do you say that "properly for a live stream". I was 25 00:02:19,780 --> 00:02:27,480 like dropped the kitty dead. So I got really,... how you say like - sad in 26 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:34,930 Amsterdam. Alone, without a cause and kind of angry with institutions and this is 27 00:02:34,930 --> 00:02:40,950 when at a certain time I got out of my darkness and went to the Californian 28 00:02:40,950 --> 00:02:46,130 desert to live alone in the middle of nowhere and this talk will be about two 29 00:02:46,130 --> 00:02:52,599 works that I made, or two institutions, two exhibitions: one is the institution 30 00:02:52,599 --> 00:02:58,200 institutes - like a double or a plural - for resolution disputes and then the 31 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:03,170 second one which is kind of a more in- depth research is behind white shadows. 32 00:03:03,170 --> 00:03:10,190 And I made these and the research kind of started in the deserts where I was looking 33 00:03:10,190 --> 00:03:14,580 from my house into this little village. You have to imagine the desert there's not 34 00:03:14,580 --> 00:03:19,440 a lot but straight from my patio I could see this - this is from Google Street for 35 00:03:19,440 --> 00:03:23,709 you - so you can't really see it very well but this is a Little Baghdad and Little 36 00:03:23,709 --> 00:03:29,050 Baghdad as a military place where people bomb the hell out of at night so you wake 37 00:03:29,050 --> 00:03:34,459 up you hear and feel this infrasounds then you know the military is having some fun 38 00:03:34,459 --> 00:03:41,380 or something like that. So I was inspired by a research that was 39 00:03:41,380 --> 00:03:48,140 done in the zone by Trevor Paglen - Trevor Peglon you all should know is a Hacker and 40 00:03:48,140 --> 00:03:55,920 artist - political artist and technologist and he made a work called "symbology". 41 00:03:55,920 --> 00:04:01,140 That's a research on all the military patches in the U.S.A. He went to Area 51, 42 00:04:01,140 --> 00:04:06,780 drove around it and interviewed people to see what all those patches meant and he 43 00:04:06,780 --> 00:04:11,629 found out there is a secret language in these patches and so while I was there and 44 00:04:11,629 --> 00:04:18,579 I could see and hear and feel all these secret military operations I still had no 45 00:04:18,579 --> 00:04:25,490 idea what was happening so I was really inspired by like not really understanding 46 00:04:25,490 --> 00:04:29,439 all the data, all the information, all the feelings you have while you're sitting on 47 00:04:29,439 --> 00:04:33,680 your patio. And this with the symbology research made me to create these two 48 00:04:33,680 --> 00:04:38,539 patches which are kind of like the keys to two works of the institutions: "Institutions 49 00:04:38,539 --> 00:04:43,949 for Resolution Disputes" and "Behind the White Shadows". One is the black on black 50 00:04:43,949 --> 00:04:50,259 patch which is an encrypted patch and the second one is a white on white patch and 51 00:04:50,259 --> 00:04:58,509 it glows in the dark, because I like that. With this started also because you know 52 00:04:58,509 --> 00:05:02,669 the Institute had dropped me but I still wanted to do my research. I started to do 53 00:05:02,669 --> 00:05:07,839 it by myself and I started to call it "Beyond Resolution" mostly because I was 54 00:05:07,839 --> 00:05:12,240 dropped from the school but also because you know I wanted to understand what was 55 00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:16,680 happening between these things that I can sense but that are not resolved for me to 56 00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:21,710 be read. So I started this "beyond resolutions" the website and I research 57 00:05:21,710 --> 00:05:27,319 resolutions from vernacular, a habitual, genealogical, a tactical and a skill 58 00:05:27,319 --> 00:05:31,770 perspective. So I think these are five very interesting ways to break resolutions 59 00:05:31,770 --> 00:05:38,589 down and to understand that resolutions are not always ways to "solve" an image, a 60 00:05:38,589 --> 00:05:44,099 text, whatever. But also a way to compromise certain data and to not be able 61 00:05:44,099 --> 00:05:49,649 to understand it, to make things unintelligible or to obfuscate or even cut 62 00:05:49,649 --> 00:05:56,110 out particular pieces of information. So this was not the first time I had a fight 63 00:05:56,110 --> 00:06:02,280 with an institutional network. When I was young already, I was really inspired by, 64 00:06:02,280 --> 00:06:07,020 you know like all kids actually, I was inspired by the universe and specifically 65 00:06:07,020 --> 00:06:11,680 sound in space and I wanted to research sound in space but my teacher told me it's 66 00:06:11,680 --> 00:06:16,379 not possible because there is no sound in space. Only years later I found out that 67 00:06:16,379 --> 00:06:20,550 there is actually sound in space. You need to just transcode it in the right way. You 68 00:06:20,550 --> 00:06:24,449 can transcode specific frequencies and that's when I started to understand 69 00:06:24,449 --> 00:06:28,901 there's much more to data than just the ways we normally show it, so I have 70 00:06:28,901 --> 00:06:33,469 started in my classes to explain to my kids I've been teaching this year to 71 00:06:33,469 --> 00:06:38,509 colloquia here in Germany and also some in other countries, just visiting 72 00:06:38,509 --> 00:06:43,219 lectureships there. I was starting to teach about the rheology of data. A 73 00:06:43,219 --> 00:06:51,249 rheology is a term from physics and it means kind of the fluidity of matter and 74 00:06:51,249 --> 00:06:56,699 the siphoning of data so here you see you know just a normal spectrum that you can 75 00:06:56,699 --> 00:07:00,840 listen to but you also see a little rainbow - very simplified rainbow - and I 76 00:07:00,840 --> 00:07:05,419 teach my kids in one of the first classes that you can actually listen to rainbows 77 00:07:05,419 --> 00:07:09,360 if you just sonofy them and what that means because there's a whole political 78 00:07:09,360 --> 00:07:16,860 field here in medicine and in big data research sometimes so sonofing certain 79 00:07:16,860 --> 00:07:22,759 pieces of data gives us a completely new insight. This year I had to teach a class 80 00:07:22,759 --> 00:07:28,401 of painters and they don't do computation at all. They're actually scared of it: one 81 00:07:28,401 --> 00:07:33,129 of the kids told me a "but you know, you make arts or you make artistic work with 82 00:07:33,129 --> 00:07:38,379 your computation, how do you find emotions in that? How can you - I mean it's not 83 00:07:38,379 --> 00:07:44,569 possible computers are without analysis, where is actually the emotion in paint? You 84 00:07:44,569 --> 00:07:48,290 know you put it in there". so I have all these like very basic problems that I 85 00:07:48,290 --> 00:07:52,180 encounter when I teach these kids about very complex ways of thinking about your 86 00:07:52,180 --> 00:07:57,809 data or complex or maybe so not complex that it becomes complex for them like 87 00:07:57,809 --> 00:08:01,800 taking away all the institutional frameworks and really going to the core 88 00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:08,300 and how can you translate them- So this is a work by Beflix and I try to use it as an 89 00:08:08,300 --> 00:08:13,650 example of how data and painting can come together this is a string of data that he 90 00:08:13,650 --> 00:08:18,989 painted on a piece of fabric, but then he gives you the program that can be any 91 00:08:18,989 --> 00:08:22,899 object and you can wrap it around the object and then it becomes a painting 92 00:08:22,899 --> 00:08:27,649 depending on the program that, you know, shows that that piece of data. I think 93 00:08:27,649 --> 00:08:33,179 it's a very interesting way to connect the materiality of paint and the materiality 94 00:08:33,179 --> 00:08:37,500 of data and to kind of bridge the gap and I'm kind of explaining these things also 95 00:08:37,500 --> 00:08:42,370 because I think all of us are educators in a certain way. Specifically if you're a 96 00:08:42,370 --> 00:08:45,879 hacker you're dealing a lot with opening up information and trying to make it like 97 00:08:45,879 --> 00:08:51,850 understandable for other people or yeah obfuscated then you have to understand how 98 00:08:51,850 --> 00:08:58,019 other people read it. So what I'm trying to do is also give you some problems that 99 00:08:58,019 --> 00:09:02,709 I've been running into while I've been teaching this whole year like crazy to 100 00:09:02,709 --> 00:09:06,760 make some side money since I have no more money. Now you've been thinking probably 101 00:09:06,760 --> 00:09:11,550 like "What is this crazy presentation she's giving with the clouds and weird 102 00:09:11,550 --> 00:09:19,319 slides?". It's part of a work that I've made a few - wait I have to go to here - 103 00:09:19,319 --> 00:09:24,850 yeah it's a 3d work it was inspired by work that was called "compressed process" 104 00:09:24,850 --> 00:09:29,990 it was a way to get my videos out of the quadrilateral frame because one way that 105 00:09:29,990 --> 00:09:35,150 resolutions make us think about our media is the way they are embedded so if I put 106 00:09:35,150 --> 00:09:39,899 my video for instance on Vimeo I know it's a work of video that I can probably skip 107 00:09:39,899 --> 00:09:44,791 through. If I want to make a piece of video arts and I want to really think 108 00:09:44,791 --> 00:09:51,240 about materiality of that piece of video arts and then put it on Vimeo I kind of 109 00:09:51,240 --> 00:09:55,980 defeat this purpose, right? It becomes this like really boring object that I mean 110 00:09:55,980 --> 00:10:03,170 if I watch a video art online which I rarely do but if I do it I skip every 15 111 00:10:03,170 --> 00:10:08,639 seconds or maybe minutes. I mean if I look through my own videos on Vimeo then I have 112 00:10:08,639 --> 00:10:12,190 hardly any full place. So I started to feel really like this is defeating the 113 00:10:12,190 --> 00:10:16,689 purpose of my research. So starting to make applications to put videos in: to 114 00:10:16,689 --> 00:10:23,779 make weird slideshow things and this is a work that I released and I release it and 115 00:10:23,779 --> 00:10:29,690 got a really WIRED review by WIRED Germany - thank you very much. and they said: 116 00:10:29,690 --> 00:10:34,959 "it's a flop as a video game: it's super annoying" now I was just making a piece of 117 00:10:34,959 --> 00:10:40,519 video art in a 3d environment but what I realized is that you can never escape your 118 00:10:40,519 --> 00:10:47,089 resolution. Video is what is in a flat screen: the moment I put my videos in 3d 119 00:10:47,089 --> 00:10:51,839 as a texture that you can navigate: it becomes a video game even if there's no 120 00:10:51,839 --> 00:10:57,519 goal but just to watch some silly stuff float around: so you can never escape your 121 00:10:57,519 --> 00:11:02,009 resolutions every time you're deconstructing a resolution, you're also 122 00:11:02,009 --> 00:11:08,150 reconstructing a new resolution so you're always building compromises and debuilding 123 00:11:08,150 --> 00:11:15,850 compromises. So that said, I was really annoyed with the Institute that fired me 124 00:11:15,850 --> 00:11:20,519 and I started the "Institutions for Resolution Disputes" and this was really 125 00:11:20,519 --> 00:11:26,689 to show them like "Look: I want to win from you" - basically I don't know how to 126 00:11:26,689 --> 00:11:31,820 say this properly. I will skip a few slides because I am going through time 127 00:11:31,820 --> 00:11:38,879 very fast. This is a resolution target: I'm using this slide because this is 128 00:11:38,879 --> 00:11:45,320 actually an aerial photography target from 1951 for analog photography. It was used 129 00:11:45,320 --> 00:11:53,699 also in the Californian desert by the American military I was living two hours 130 00:11:53,699 --> 00:11:58,230 drive away from this, so one day I drove through the desert in my little car and 131 00:11:58,230 --> 00:12:03,720 almost got stuck but I survived and I saw it and realized later that there is a work 132 00:12:03,720 --> 00:12:07,410 by Hito Steyerl inspired by this pattern. And it's beautiful and all about 133 00:12:07,410 --> 00:12:12,390 resolutions and in this work she is saying: "this is a resolution target. It 134 00:12:12,390 --> 00:12:17,620 measures the resolution of the world as a picture, resolution determines visibility 135 00:12:17,620 --> 00:12:24,970 whatever is not captured by resolution is invisible and what I'm trying to do is 136 00:12:24,970 --> 00:12:31,120 expand the visibility and make things visible that are normally not visible". I 137 00:12:31,120 --> 00:12:39,330 gonna skip a few slides and go to a work that I made when I was finally coming back 138 00:12:39,330 --> 00:12:43,639 from the desert and invited by Transfer Gallery in New York to make a solo show 139 00:12:43,639 --> 00:12:54,980 about my anger. At that time I was actually approached by the Museum of 140 00:12:54,980 --> 00:12:59,279 Modern Art in Amsterdam to buy a big work of mine "venacular file format" - it's a 141 00:12:59,279 --> 00:13:06,189 work that kind of deconstructs different kinds of compression languages and shows 142 00:13:06,189 --> 00:13:10,199 what is the basis and the politics of these compressions so I used the same 143 00:13:10,199 --> 00:13:15,339 image I put a similar glitch in it or similar data abstraction and see what 144 00:13:15,339 --> 00:13:19,810 comes out and by this, these aesthetics that come out on the surface, I try to 145 00:13:19,810 --> 00:13:24,380 explain how this compressions are built. When the museum wanted to buy it they 146 00:13:24,380 --> 00:13:30,970 wanted to buy the research archive which means 16 gigabytes of broken data 147 00:13:30,970 --> 00:13:36,699 basically all put into folders of like this is a JPEG when it's broken like this. 148 00:13:36,699 --> 00:13:42,779 So what do you do when you sell 16 gigabytes of broken data and how do you 149 00:13:42,779 --> 00:13:50,639 show it? I started to research what else was happening in this work. I'm going to 150 00:13:50,639 --> 00:13:58,999 boot up a new presentation because unfortunately,... yeah I started to 151 00:13:58,999 --> 00:14:05,970 realize that my work actually has lived beyond this particular research. This is 152 00:14:05,970 --> 00:14:11,050 also my face but I started to see it in many places I started to see it on 153 00:14:11,050 --> 00:14:17,480 teacups, I started to see it on sweaters, a lot of glitch iPhone and Android apps 154 00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:21,740 use it as their icon, I started to see that people used my face and clicked on it 155 00:14:21,740 --> 00:14:26,610 and then they were making a glitch. So this work expanded from its research 156 00:14:26,610 --> 00:14:32,689 archive and the PDF that was constructed out of it to something completely copied 157 00:14:32,689 --> 00:14:39,430 without copyright and commodified and strange for me. I lost my own face in a 158 00:14:39,430 --> 00:14:44,450 way and then I started to realize that - this is not - I'm not the only one that 159 00:14:44,450 --> 00:14:51,980 has lost their face so I did a little bit of research and found for instance this 160 00:14:51,980 --> 00:14:55,680 work by James Bridle, who's been doing research on the render ghosts. If you're 161 00:14:55,680 --> 00:15:01,389 walking through London and you see all these billboards of new architectural 162 00:15:01,389 --> 00:15:05,999 constructions being built then you always have these render ghosts put inside of 163 00:15:05,999 --> 00:15:11,829 them. And he made a whole archive of trying to understand who these people are. 164 00:15:11,829 --> 00:15:17,800 This is his render research blog in which he has a whole archive of different kinds 165 00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:24,100 of people and when he finally researched where these people came from he came to a 166 00:15:24,100 --> 00:15:31,559 kind of a company that sells render BOTS or render images that were based in New 167 00:15:31,559 --> 00:15:36,069 Mexico. And so he went to New Mexico to see if you could find these people and to 168 00:15:36,069 --> 00:15:42,589 ask did anybody ask you if they could use your face. But he found nobody that looked 169 00:15:42,589 --> 00:15:48,910 like these people of course - of course - because... Finally he found somebody in a 170 00:15:48,910 --> 00:15:53,040 bar that told them like look if you really look close to these people they really 171 00:15:53,040 --> 00:15:58,149 don't look like people in New Mexico these are fancy people and most of them are - 172 00:15:58,149 --> 00:16:02,750 maybe Asian - but definitely not very much looking like the people that walk the 173 00:16:02,750 --> 00:16:09,269 streets of New Mexico and finally he never got the answer but he did realize that 174 00:16:09,269 --> 00:16:14,069 these people were probably never asked to be used. So this is one example of the 175 00:16:14,069 --> 00:16:20,519 line in which I've seen this kind of co- optation of or objectification of humans. 176 00:16:20,519 --> 00:16:27,430 This is a research by Constant Dullart, he presented it in the 32c3. It's called 177 00:16:27,430 --> 00:16:33,509 "Jennifer in Paradise". It's part of "a possibility of an army talk". If you ever 178 00:16:33,509 --> 00:16:37,810 want to look it back it's a beautiful talk. Here Constant found the photo of 179 00:16:37,810 --> 00:16:44,119 Jennifer. Jennifer was the soon-to-be wife of John Knoll the programmer of Photoshop 180 00:16:44,119 --> 00:16:50,559 and John tried to test his Photoshop software on an image and that image was 181 00:16:50,559 --> 00:16:57,689 the image of his - not so very properly dressed girlfriend Jennifer at the time 182 00:16:57,689 --> 00:17:04,279 and one of the lines that I think are most striking of this work is when he says "did 183 00:17:04,279 --> 00:17:11,148 you ever ask permission to Jennifer? Do you realize that you're objectifying your 184 00:17:11,148 --> 00:17:17,160 own soon-to-be wife?". It's an open letter to Jennifer but there are some remarks in 185 00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:23,699 an other article in which he says these things. So I realized I mean this 186 00:17:23,699 --> 00:17:31,309 tradition but worse even.. switching again because there's not I cannot port a lot of 187 00:17:31,309 --> 00:17:37,820 slides in my strangely build software. Part of a more longer tradition or a 188 00:17:37,820 --> 00:17:44,350 longer tradition of Caucasian test carts while I was using my face as a test card 189 00:17:44,350 --> 00:17:50,620 for glitch so how do images fall apart - there's actually a long tradition of the 190 00:17:50,620 --> 00:17:56,710 use of the white face or the white model in photography and other image processing 191 00:17:56,710 --> 00:18:05,360 technologies. So here are some "normal" test images these are very pretty ladies. 192 00:18:05,360 --> 00:18:12,880 Here is an image of Teddy. Her name is Teddy Smith she was the Playboy centerfold 193 00:18:12,880 --> 00:18:23,039 of the 1960s and she was used for a paper on theatre. Here is Lena.jpg. Lena was a 194 00:18:23,039 --> 00:18:33,669 Playboy centerfold of 1973 and when in 1972 and then in 1973 Nasarah Met a 195 00:18:33,669 --> 00:18:38,380 researcher originally from Bangalore tried to write about a new compression standard 196 00:18:38,380 --> 00:18:46,010 using DCT - discrete cosine transform - which became later the basis of JPEG he 197 00:18:46,010 --> 00:18:50,860 was not really met with a lot of enthusiasm. However when he finally did 198 00:18:50,860 --> 00:18:56,830 publish his paper on DCT. California picked up really fast and in one of the 199 00:18:56,830 --> 00:19:06,789 labs a few guys found an image to test his premise of the DCTs and this was Lena. And 200 00:19:06,789 --> 00:19:12,039 Lena was the basis of the compressions that we still use most often in art. If 201 00:19:12,039 --> 00:19:16,399 you walk through for instance the kebab or whatever and you see these big photos of 202 00:19:16,399 --> 00:19:21,600 kebabs on on the front of the for instance if you go to Sonnalae you will see a kebab 203 00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:27,200 printed out really big and you serious like kind of blocky kebab parts that is a 204 00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:35,330 block that has been tested on Lena but only tested on Lena.So the people in this 205 00:19:35,330 --> 00:19:42,160 particular research place they were using an image of the 1972 centerfolds scanned 206 00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:48,080 it in with their own Moorhead scanner. They had a self-built circuit bent 207 00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:51,789 Moorhead scanner with three channels a red, green and blue, but one of the 208 00:19:51,789 --> 00:19:57,990 channels or one of the that the scanning mechanisms was a little bit slower. So 209 00:19:57,990 --> 00:20:01,690 they lost one line - she got a little bit thinner even in the photo so she looked a 210 00:20:01,690 --> 00:20:11,081 little bit better and they used only this photo it's 512 by 512 pixels. So from a 211 00:20:11,081 --> 00:20:15,960 media archaeological perspective this is a very strange object but also if you think 212 00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:22,920 about politics they use just this image as a one-size-fits-all, but compression in our 213 00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:28,120 daily lives is not one-size-fits-all. It's not "physics it's just physics" we're 214 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:33,330 using different objects to compress our images with. So what would it mean if we 215 00:20:33,330 --> 00:20:39,679 now use still the Lena compression when it's just another kind of image is there 216 00:20:39,679 --> 00:20:45,740 maybe a racist undertone in this kind of compression? There was a lot of research 217 00:20:45,740 --> 00:20:53,500 and a lot of like kind of like.. not anger, but, like, criticism from mostly the female 218 00:20:53,500 --> 00:21:00,830 community. Finally this is not the end of the Caucasian test card, we still have 219 00:21:00,830 --> 00:21:11,860 this kind of usage of white images in all our technologies for instance in the HP 220 00:21:11,860 --> 00:21:19,279 webcams a few years ago. They were only tested on white people and once they went 221 00:21:19,279 --> 00:21:27,230 to sales, to retail they would not track any black images and any black faces because 222 00:21:27,230 --> 00:21:32,250 they were never tested on this. There was also the Nikon Coolpix Camera that always 223 00:21:32,250 --> 00:21:39,210 would ask Asian features: "Are you maybe closing your eyes?". So they were never 224 00:21:39,210 --> 00:21:45,730 tested on any but Caucasian faces so this whole history of using a Caucasian test 225 00:21:45,730 --> 00:21:50,580 object is still apparent in everyday technologies. And it's really problematic 226 00:21:50,580 --> 00:21:55,910 and I realized that I kind of - unknowingly - kind of was playing a role 227 00:21:55,910 --> 00:22:00,690 in this by also using my own face and letting this be the face for 228 00:22:00,690 --> 00:22:10,279 deconstructing facial or vernacular file formats the compression of images. So by 229 00:22:10,279 --> 00:22:16,000 behind the white shadows I showed my research archive I also showed the 230 00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:24,059 research archive of other image,... images that used by Caucasian females. And I 231 00:22:24,059 --> 00:22:33,010 finally showed the work that I made for the whole... I said when I do a lot of 232 00:22:33,010 --> 00:22:40,000 research on compressions I realised that when I try to explain it often when I 233 00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:44,429 really got into the mathematics I lose my students completely. So I was starting to 234 00:22:44,429 --> 00:22:49,950 try to build kind of works that would not just be mathematical but try to get the 235 00:22:49,950 --> 00:22:55,789 emotions that the painters wanted in my work back and so I started to kind of 236 00:22:55,789 --> 00:23:02,430 anthropomorphize my object. So for instance JPEGs are built out of blocks. I 237 00:23:02,430 --> 00:23:06,870 started to really make works in which the blocks works talking about the experience 238 00:23:06,870 --> 00:23:16,151 of compressing a particular image. One of the works was DCT siphoning. I will play 239 00:23:16,151 --> 00:23:27,320 it in the background really quickly - if it wants to. Yeah, there it is: So that 240 00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:30,450 doesn't really want to play but that doesn't it's because it's also playing on 241 00:23:30,450 --> 00:23:36,380 my own screen. Anyway: In DCT siphoning there is two blocks it's inspired by the 242 00:23:36,380 --> 00:23:45,510 Roman flatland by James Abbott. And in flatland there's an object in a flatland 243 00:23:45,510 --> 00:23:50,639 that has to learn about different complexities of space, Euclidean space. In 244 00:23:50,639 --> 00:23:55,860 this particular inspiration I'm taking two blocks that have to learn about different 245 00:23:55,860 --> 00:24:00,789 complexities of compression so they go from the dots to pixels to the lines which 246 00:24:00,789 --> 00:24:05,929 are for instance the basis of GIFs to the blocks their own space for JPEGs to 247 00:24:05,929 --> 00:24:13,269 wavelets and to vector objects or even lidar technologies. And they experience it 248 00:24:13,269 --> 00:24:20,179 how humans would experience it. The little one sometimes gets really scared, while 249 00:24:20,179 --> 00:24:25,440 the big one kind of knows what to expect and tries to hold him by the hand and 250 00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,280 tries to explain like look you don't have to be scared here: It's just lines, it's 251 00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:35,750 just vectors etc. So it's kind of like, how humans experience things that they 252 00:24:35,750 --> 00:24:42,220 cannot read that are a eligible to them and how when we see something that we 253 00:24:42,220 --> 00:24:50,260 cannot understand, often just dismiss it and don't want to read it and I find this 254 00:24:50,260 --> 00:25:02,480 really important. And I think also just to... to try to explain that when you 255 00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:06,680 dismiss stuff, you're dismissing actually a piece of information. It might be really 256 00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:11,620 important and it might be eligible, I cannot just show the kids that I'm 257 00:25:11,620 --> 00:25:15,230 teaching like "Look, there is something you just don't understand it" so what I'm 258 00:25:15,230 --> 00:25:20,549 trying to do is build these works to show how they are acting towards their 259 00:25:20,549 --> 00:25:24,049 compressions and there are digital technologies and explain them like "Look, 260 00:25:24,049 --> 00:25:33,279 you're acting just like this little block that runs away from the compression". So 261 00:25:33,279 --> 00:25:39,870 what I wanted to close with is the conclusion of the two exhibitions: The 262 00:25:39,870 --> 00:25:45,609 "Institutions of Resolution Disputes" and "Behind White Shadows" and that's the 263 00:25:45,609 --> 00:25:50,970 question: every time we're using technologies they're following particular 264 00:25:50,970 --> 00:25:58,769 resolutions - resolution sets through standards for instance by the ISO or other 265 00:25:58,769 --> 00:26:05,890 standardizing institutions. We have to always ask who set these standards, who 266 00:26:05,890 --> 00:26:11,440 made these resolutions and what are they compromising. Because if we're not asking 267 00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:16,370 what are they compromising we might become blind to other options. For instance, 268 00:26:16,370 --> 00:26:21,260 video is not just the quadrilateral object, right? if video would be something 269 00:26:21,260 --> 00:26:25,960 more than just what's happening within this quadrilateral frame, this window, 270 00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:29,679 then I would have different, I could make different shapes of video. I could put 271 00:26:29,679 --> 00:26:33,590 them on top of each other I could make collage of videos that would have 272 00:26:33,590 --> 00:26:37,350 different timelines and different soundtracks and I could really play with 273 00:26:37,350 --> 00:26:43,250 what video also is. Because in the end video is just a moving story that can have 274 00:26:43,250 --> 00:26:47,860 different levels. But because of computer technologies and other technologies before 275 00:26:47,860 --> 00:26:52,710 it, we've become stuck in the resolution of video and we've compromised the other 276 00:26:52,710 --> 00:26:59,610 options and these compromises are not just in fun: They are in actual real-life - 277 00:26:59,610 --> 00:27:04,320 realities that give problems to us or that make problems for other people. And that's 278 00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:09,860 why we need to ask, always: who is setting the accordances of our resolutions and 279 00:27:09,860 --> 00:27:18,121 what is being compromised. Who is casting the shadows behind our technologies. And 280 00:27:18,121 --> 00:27:22,529 so I wanted to close with a quote by Hannah Arendt which is "Define and create 281 00:27:22,529 --> 00:27:27,909 the future - do not be defined just by your past" and I think we should also use 282 00:27:27,909 --> 00:27:32,769 our technologies these ways. We can still define and create our futures we can 283 00:27:32,769 --> 00:27:40,600 create our own PowerPoints in weird 3d technologies and we can make videos that 284 00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:46,389 are not quadrilateral and then get burned by like WIRED's reviews or whatever. 285 00:27:46,389 --> 00:27:50,850 That's okay. You know it's actually fun to get an angry review because people are 286 00:27:50,850 --> 00:27:58,620 just really boring. So the work these designing is downloadable from my 287 00:27:58,620 --> 00:28:06,460 websites. The paper "behind white shadows" also and I would like to end here and 288 00:28:06,460 --> 00:28:10,299 maybe take a question if there is a question. Thank you. 289 00:28:10,299 --> 00:28:19,659 *Applause* Herald: We have about two minutes for 290 00:28:19,659 --> 00:28:27,630 questions. There are four microphones two on this side two on this side and yeah 291 00:28:27,630 --> 00:28:33,289 microphone 2 - please ask your question. Mic2: Thanks for a great talk. It's great 292 00:28:33,289 --> 00:28:37,059 to see a concept like discrete cosine transformation and run length encoding 293 00:28:37,059 --> 00:28:43,179 being a present in art work and also I found out many years ago that in the JPEG 294 00:28:43,179 --> 00:28:49,419 standards there's an optional way of compressing JPEGs instead of Huffman encoding 295 00:28:49,419 --> 00:28:53,399 you can use rhythmic encoding and it's never enabled by any browser so those 296 00:28:53,399 --> 00:28:59,049 JPEGs are never used that are should be mostly smaller and use more... less 297 00:28:59,049 --> 00:29:03,860 bandwidth. Have you seen any people that actually would like to introduce a 298 00:29:03,860 --> 00:29:09,530 rhythmic encoding or other compression standards or variants of it. Just to well 299 00:29:09,530 --> 00:29:13,070 use more computing power and save bandwidth? 300 00:29:13,070 --> 00:29:19,289 Rosa: I think one of my favorite artists working with JPEG is Ted Davis. He's based 301 00:29:19,289 --> 00:29:25,690 out of Basel and he's been doing really breaking the JPEG compression down really 302 00:29:25,690 --> 00:29:29,970 from like the basics and then you can really write into the JPEG compression. 303 00:29:29,970 --> 00:29:38,340 But I don't think he tackled even a rhythmic encoding. Yeah actually I did, I 304 00:29:38,340 --> 00:29:43,700 didn't show this but in the end I wanted to and I will show it to you because 305 00:29:43,700 --> 00:29:50,139 you're asking about JPEGs. This is a work that I made when I was actually fired by 306 00:29:50,139 --> 00:30:02,159 the Institutes and it uses the DCTs and when I was fired they made it cryptography 307 00:30:02,159 --> 00:30:07,759 Design Awards and I thought now you fired me I will make a game with you. I would 308 00:30:07,759 --> 00:30:12,620 send you some cryptography. So I made my own kind of like encryption which is of 309 00:30:12,620 --> 00:30:17,279 course I mean even cryptography design seems like really silly so I thought okay 310 00:30:17,279 --> 00:30:22,780 I will do something really silly I use the DCT that you're asking about. DCT it is 311 00:30:22,780 --> 00:30:31,380 discrete cosine transform consists of 64 macro blocks. I mapped every macro block to 312 00:30:31,380 --> 00:30:36,750 every glyph of the alphabet so the 64 most used characters and then I wrote them a 313 00:30:36,750 --> 00:30:42,090 message a really angry message actually one of the institutions is completely 314 00:30:42,090 --> 00:30:46,580 against them is one of the five institutions of the exhibition. And guess 315 00:30:46,580 --> 00:30:52,909 who won that competition. I don't think I ever read it because they're too lame to 316 00:30:52,909 --> 00:30:57,149 read the shit. But I think they did something nice back. "Nice" means that I 317 00:30:57,149 --> 00:31:01,610 got one tenth of the money they were supposed to pay me in this silly computer 318 00:31:01,610 --> 00:31:09,279 here but I feel like in a way I fucked up. I said it anyway. So I won a little bit 319 00:31:09,279 --> 00:31:15,669 that day but just 1/10 of what I lost. Thank you. 320 00:31:15,669 --> 00:31:21,429 *Applause* Herald: Is there another question from the 321 00:31:21,429 --> 00:31:27,019 internet, signal angel? No. Then I I would like to have the opportunity to ask a 322 00:31:27,019 --> 00:31:33,600 question myself because I did work in super resolution microscopy. Did you ever 323 00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:39,600 look into super resolving biological structures I've seen some Moire patterns 324 00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:44,500 in your work, in your presentation right now did you ever touch that or what did 325 00:31:44,500 --> 00:31:49,409 you do with Moire patterns? Rosa: Moire patterns? Yes oh yeah okay so 326 00:31:49,409 --> 00:31:54,360 for me I was talking a little bit about the nicology of compression complexities. 327 00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:59,830 So really going from the line to the dots to the lines to the blocks to the wavelets 328 00:31:59,830 --> 00:32:05,129 to the... you know like very complex, I would say also zip files are part of that 329 00:32:05,129 --> 00:32:09,919 complexity like when everything just gets chaotic when we as humans don't have 330 00:32:09,919 --> 00:32:18,809 Euclidean space necessary to compare to it then it becomes really messy. But anyway, 331 00:32:18,809 --> 00:32:26,130 they go through line environments and in this line environment the little one gets 332 00:32:26,130 --> 00:32:29,860 really excited because he can play through the Moire patterns and actually he's 333 00:32:29,860 --> 00:32:35,570 having a little romantic moment with one of the Moire which is also a joke because 334 00:32:35,570 --> 00:32:41,250 you know a lot of people only like to like things they understand already. They, I 335 00:32:41,250 --> 00:32:44,240 mean the exercise is always in understanding something that is more 336 00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:48,230 complex but that's what most people are scared of. So it's easy to fall in love 337 00:32:48,230 --> 00:32:53,590 with a line if you're a block it's hard to fall in love with the wavelet right. So I 338 00:32:53,590 --> 00:32:58,790 mean but anyway that's not really your question you're asking about Moire in 339 00:32:58,790 --> 00:33:04,419 biology and I've never worked with Moire in biology. Was that an answer? 340 00:33:04,419 --> 00:33:11,149 Herald: Yeah, yeah thanks! Ok any question left? I think we are out of time. Yes a 341 00:33:11,149 --> 00:33:15,657 big round of applause for our speaker Rosa Menkman. 342 00:33:15,657 --> 00:33:19,303 *Applause* 343 00:33:19,303 --> 00:33:31,190 *34C3 postroll music* 344 00:33:31,190 --> 00:33:40,000 subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2020. Join, and help us!