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34C3 preroll music
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Herald: Resolution is always a compromise[br]we have got used to. Why not talk about it
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again this is why the next talk is[br]entitled: "Institution for Resolution
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Disputes" and our speaker is Rosa Menkman[br]a Dutch artist, curator and researcher, and
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founder of IRD or "the Institute of[br]resolution dispute". A big applause for
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Rosa, please. And the stage is yours!
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applause
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Rosa Menkman: Thank you. Thank you for[br]being here on this like - very late part
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of the whole conference and I mean when I[br]was checking in everybody seemed so tired
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it was really funny to experience this[br]like latency in everybody. So I'm Rosa
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Menkman, I'm from the Netherlands[br]everybody speaks German to me here, it's
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really funny because my name sounds German[br]but actually when you say something in
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German I will speak back in English. But[br]please speak to me when you want to.
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In 2015, I'm gonna talk from 2015 onwards,[br]I was invited to be a research fellow in a
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big Institute in the Netherlands to do[br]research on resolutions and this was a
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huge honor for me and I dropped everything[br]in London where I used to live at the time
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and went and moved back to Amsterdam which[br]actually was not my favorite city in the
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world at all. So I went there and three[br]days before my, my contract started which
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we had already signed like a month back[br]and everything: I was fired because the
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head of the department had looked into my[br]accreditation and my PhD that I was doing
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at the time, had started somewhere else[br]and had not the right accreditations since
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I ported it from Cologne to London and so[br]I would have to revisit the whole
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institutional network and get my stuff[br]right in time to start. Now that was not
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possible. And so I was,... how do you say[br]that "properly for a live stream". I was
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like dropped the kitty dead. So I got[br]really,... how you say like - sad in
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Amsterdam. Alone, without a cause and kind[br]of angry with institutions and this is
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when at a certain time I got out of my[br]darkness and went to the Californian
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desert to live alone in the middle of[br]nowhere and this talk will be about two
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works that I made, or two institutions,[br]two exhibitions: one is the institution
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institutes - like a double or a plural -[br]for resolution disputes and then the
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second one which is kind of a more in-[br]depth research is behind white shadows.
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And I made these and the research kind of[br]started in the deserts where I was looking
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from my house into this little village.[br]You have to imagine the desert there's not
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a lot but straight from my patio I could[br]see this - this is from Google Street for
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you - so you can't really see it very well[br]but this is a Little Baghdad and Little
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Baghdad as a military place where people[br]bomb the hell out of at night so you wake
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up you hear and feel this infrasounds then[br]you know the military is having some fun
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or something like that.[br]So I was inspired by a research that was
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done in the zone by Trevor Paglen - Trevor[br]Peglon you all should know is a Hacker and
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artist - political artist and technologist[br]and he made a work called "symbology".
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That's a research on all the military[br]patches in the U.S.A. He went to Area 51,
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drove around it and interviewed people to[br]see what all those patches meant and he
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found out there is a secret language in[br]these patches and so while I was there and
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I could see and hear and feel all these[br]secret military operations I still had no
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idea what was happening so I was really[br]inspired by like not really understanding
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all the data, all the information, all the[br]feelings you have while you're sitting on
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your patio. And this with the symbology[br]research made me to create these two
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patches which are kind of like the keys to[br]two works of the institutions: "Institutions
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for Resolution Disputes" and "Behind the[br]White Shadows". One is the black on black
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patch which is an encrypted patch and the[br]second one is a white on white patch and
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it glows in the dark, because I like that.[br]With this started also because you know
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the Institute had dropped me but I still[br]wanted to do my research. I started to do
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it by myself and I started to call it[br]"Beyond Resolution" mostly because I was
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dropped from the school but also because[br]you know I wanted to understand what was
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happening between these things that I can[br]sense but that are not resolved for me to
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be read. So I started this "beyond[br]resolutions" the website and I research
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resolutions from vernacular, a habitual,[br]genealogical, a tactical and a skill
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perspective. So I think these are five[br]very interesting ways to break resolutions
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down and to understand that resolutions[br]are not always ways to "solve" an image, a
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text, whatever. But also a way to[br]compromise certain data and to not be able
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to understand it, to make things[br]unintelligible or to obfuscate or even cut
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out particular pieces of information. So[br]this was not the first time I had a fight
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with an institutional network. When I was[br]young already, I was really inspired by,
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you know like all kids actually, I was[br]inspired by the universe and specifically
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sound in space and I wanted to research[br]sound in space but my teacher told me it's
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not possible because there is no sound in[br]space. Only years later I found out that
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there is actually sound in space. You need[br]to just transcode it in the right way. You
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can transcode specific frequencies and[br]that's when I started to understand
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there's much more to data than just the[br]ways we normally show it, so I have
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started in my classes to explain to my[br]kids I've been teaching this year to
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colloquia here in Germany and also some in[br]other countries, just visiting
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lectureships there. I was starting to[br]teach about the rheology of data. A
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rheology is a term from physics and it[br]means kind of the fluidity of matter and
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the siphoning of data so here you see you[br]know just a normal spectrum that you can
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listen to but you also see a little[br]rainbow - very simplified rainbow - and I
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teach my kids in one of the first classes[br]that you can actually listen to rainbows
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if you just sonofy them and what that[br]means because there's a whole political
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field here in medicine and in big data[br]research sometimes so sonofing certain
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pieces of data gives us a completely new[br]insight. This year I had to teach a class
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of painters and they don't do computation[br]at all. They're actually scared of it: one
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of the kids told me a "but you know, you[br]make arts or you make artistic work with
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your computation, how do you find emotions[br]in that? How can you - I mean it's not
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possible computers are without analysis,[br]where is actually the emotion in paint? You
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know you put it in there". so I have all[br]these like very basic problems that I
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encounter when I teach these kids about[br]very complex ways of thinking about your
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data or complex or maybe so not complex[br]that it becomes complex for them like
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taking away all the institutional[br]frameworks and really going to the core
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and how can you translate them- So this is[br]a work by Beflix and I try to use it as an
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example of how data and painting can come[br]together this is a string of data that he
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painted on a piece of fabric, but then he[br]gives you the program that can be any
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object and you can wrap it around the[br]object and then it becomes a painting
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depending on the program that, you know,[br]shows that that piece of data. I think
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it's a very interesting way to connect the[br]materiality of paint and the materiality
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of data and to kind of bridge the gap and[br]I'm kind of explaining these things also
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because I think all of us are educators in[br]a certain way. Specifically if you're a
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hacker you're dealing a lot with opening[br]up information and trying to make it like
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understandable for other people or yeah[br]obfuscated then you have to understand how
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other people read it. So what I'm trying[br]to do is also give you some problems that
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I've been running into while I've been[br]teaching this whole year like crazy to
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make some side money since I have no more[br]money. Now you've been thinking probably
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like "What is this crazy presentation[br]she's giving with the clouds and weird
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slides?". It's part of a work that I've[br]made a few - wait I have to go to here -
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yeah it's a 3d work it was inspired by[br]work that was called "compressed process"
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it was a way to get my videos out of the[br]quadrilateral frame because one way that
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resolutions make us think about our media[br]is the way they are embedded so if I put
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my video for instance on Vimeo I know it's[br]a work of video that I can probably skip
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through. If I want to make a piece of[br]video arts and I want to really think
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about materiality of that piece of video[br]arts and then put it on Vimeo I kind of
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defeat this purpose, right? It becomes[br]this like really boring object that I mean
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if I watch a video art online which I[br]rarely do but if I do it I skip every 15
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seconds or maybe minutes. I mean if I look[br]through my own videos on Vimeo then I have
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hardly any full place. So I started to[br]feel really like this is defeating the
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purpose of my research. So starting to[br]make applications to put videos in: to
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make weird slideshow things and this is a[br]work that I released and I release it and
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got a really WIRED review by WIRED Germany[br]- thank you very much. and they said:
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"it's a flop as a video game: it's super[br]annoying" now I was just making a piece of
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video art in a 3d environment but what I[br]realized is that you can never escape your
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resolution. Video is what is in a flat[br]screen: the moment I put my videos in 3d
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as a texture that you can navigate: it[br]becomes a video game even if there's no
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goal but just to watch some silly stuff[br]float around: so you can never escape your
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resolutions every time you're[br]deconstructing a resolution, you're also
0:11:02.009,0:11:08.150
reconstructing a new resolution so you're[br]always building compromises and debuilding
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compromises. So that said, I was really[br]annoyed with the Institute that fired me
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and I started the "Institutions for[br]Resolution Disputes" and this was really
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to show them like "Look: I want to win[br]from you" - basically I don't know how to
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say this properly. I will skip a few[br]slides because I am going through time
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very fast. This is a resolution target:[br]I'm using this slide because this is
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actually an aerial photography target from[br]1951 for analog photography. It was used
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also in the Californian desert by the[br]American military I was living two hours
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drive away from this, so one day I drove[br]through the desert in my little car and
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almost got stuck but I survived and I saw[br]it and realized later that there is a work
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by Hito Steyerl inspired by this pattern.[br]And it's beautiful and all about
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resolutions and in this work she is[br]saying: "this is a resolution target. It
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measures the resolution of the world as a[br]picture, resolution determines visibility
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whatever is not captured by resolution is[br]invisible and what I'm trying to do is
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expand the visibility and make things[br]visible that are normally not visible". I
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gonna skip a few slides and go to a work[br]that I made when I was finally coming back
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from the desert and invited by Transfer[br]Gallery in New York to make a solo show
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about my anger. At that time I was[br]actually approached by the Museum of
0:12:54.980,0:12:59.279
Modern Art in Amsterdam to buy a big work[br]of mine "venacular file format" - it's a
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work that kind of deconstructs different[br]kinds of compression languages and shows
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what is the basis and the politics of[br]these compressions so I used the same
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image I put a similar glitch in it or[br]similar data abstraction and see what
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comes out and by this, these aesthetics[br]that come out on the surface, I try to
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explain how this compressions are built.[br]When the museum wanted to buy it they
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wanted to buy the research archive which[br]means 16 gigabytes of broken data
0:13:30.970,0:13:36.699
basically all put into folders of like[br]this is a JPEG when it's broken like this.
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So what do you do when you sell 16[br]gigabytes of broken data and how do you
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show it? I started to research what else[br]was happening in this work. I'm going to
0:13:50.639,0:13:58.999
boot up a new presentation because[br]unfortunately,... yeah I started to
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realize that my work actually has lived[br]beyond this particular research. This is
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also my face but I started to see it in[br]many places I started to see it on
0:14:11.050,0:14:17.480
teacups, I started to see it on sweaters,[br]a lot of glitch iPhone and Android apps
0:14:17.480,0:14:21.740
use it as their icon, I started to see[br]that people used my face and clicked on it
0:14:21.740,0:14:26.610
and then they were making a glitch. So[br]this work expanded from its research
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archive and the PDF that was constructed[br]out of it to something completely copied
0:14:32.689,0:14:39.430
without copyright and commodified and[br]strange for me. I lost my own face in a
0:14:39.430,0:14:44.450
way and then I started to realize that -[br]this is not - I'm not the only one that
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has lost their face so I did a little bit[br]of research and found for instance this
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work by James Bridle, who's been doing[br]research on the render ghosts. If you're
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walking through London and you see all[br]these billboards of new architectural
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constructions being built then you always[br]have these render ghosts put inside of
0:15:05.999,0:15:11.829
them. And he made a whole archive of[br]trying to understand who these people are.
0:15:11.829,0:15:17.800
This is his render research blog in which[br]he has a whole archive of different kinds
0:15:17.800,0:15:24.100
of people and when he finally researched[br]where these people came from he came to a
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kind of a company that sells render BOTS[br]or render images that were based in New
0:15:31.559,0:15:36.069
Mexico. And so he went to New Mexico to[br]see if you could find these people and to
0:15:36.069,0:15:42.589
ask did anybody ask you if they could use[br]your face. But he found nobody that looked
0:15:42.589,0:15:48.910
like these people of course - of course -[br]because... Finally he found somebody in a
0:15:48.910,0:15:53.040
bar that told them like look if you really[br]look close to these people they really
0:15:53.040,0:15:58.149
don't look like people in New Mexico these[br]are fancy people and most of them are -
0:15:58.149,0:16:02.750
maybe Asian - but definitely not very much[br]looking like the people that walk the
0:16:02.750,0:16:09.269
streets of New Mexico and finally he never[br]got the answer but he did realize that
0:16:09.269,0:16:14.069
these people were probably never asked to[br]be used. So this is one example of the
0:16:14.069,0:16:20.519
line in which I've seen this kind of co-[br]optation of or objectification of humans.
0:16:20.519,0:16:27.430
This is a research by Constant Dullart, he[br]presented it in the 32c3. It's called
0:16:27.430,0:16:33.509
"Jennifer in Paradise". It's part of "a[br]possibility of an army talk". If you ever
0:16:33.509,0:16:37.810
want to look it back it's a beautiful[br]talk. Here Constant found the photo of
0:16:37.810,0:16:44.119
Jennifer. Jennifer was the soon-to-be wife[br]of John Knoll the programmer of Photoshop
0:16:44.119,0:16:50.559
and John tried to test his Photoshop[br]software on an image and that image was
0:16:50.559,0:16:57.689
the image of his - not so very properly[br]dressed girlfriend Jennifer at the time
0:16:57.689,0:17:04.279
and one of the lines that I think are most[br]striking of this work is when he says "did
0:17:04.279,0:17:11.148
you ever ask permission to Jennifer? Do[br]you realize that you're objectifying your
0:17:11.148,0:17:17.160
own soon-to-be wife?". It's an open letter[br]to Jennifer but there are some remarks in
0:17:17.160,0:17:23.699
an other article in which he says these[br]things. So I realized I mean this
0:17:23.699,0:17:31.309
tradition but worse even.. switching again[br]because there's not I cannot port a lot of
0:17:31.309,0:17:37.820
slides in my strangely build software.[br]Part of a more longer tradition or a
0:17:37.820,0:17:44.350
longer tradition of Caucasian test carts[br]while I was using my face as a test card
0:17:44.350,0:17:50.620
for glitch so how do images fall apart -[br]there's actually a long tradition of the
0:17:50.620,0:17:56.710
use of the white face or the white model[br]in photography and other image processing
0:17:56.710,0:18:05.360
technologies. So here are some "normal"[br]test images these are very pretty ladies.
0:18:05.360,0:18:12.880
Here is an image of Teddy. Her name is[br]Teddy Smith she was the Playboy centerfold
0:18:12.880,0:18:23.039
of the 1960s and she was used for a paper[br]on theatre. Here is Lena.jpg. Lena was a
0:18:23.039,0:18:33.669
Playboy centerfold of 1973 and when in[br]1972 and then in 1973 Nasarah Met a
0:18:33.669,0:18:38.380
researcher originally from Bangalore tried[br]to write about a new compression standard
0:18:38.380,0:18:46.010
using DCT - discrete cosine transform -[br]which became later the basis of JPEG he
0:18:46.010,0:18:50.860
was not really met with a lot of[br]enthusiasm. However when he finally did
0:18:50.860,0:18:56.830
publish his paper on DCT. California[br]picked up really fast and in one of the
0:18:56.830,0:19:06.789
labs a few guys found an image to test his[br]premise of the DCTs and this was Lena. And
0:19:06.789,0:19:12.039
Lena was the basis of the compressions[br]that we still use most often in art. If
0:19:12.039,0:19:16.399
you walk through for instance the kebab or[br]whatever and you see these big photos of
0:19:16.399,0:19:21.600
kebabs on on the front of the for instance[br]if you go to Sonnalae you will see a kebab
0:19:21.600,0:19:27.200
printed out really big and you serious[br]like kind of blocky kebab parts that is a
0:19:27.200,0:19:35.330
block that has been tested on Lena but[br]only tested on Lena.So the people in this
0:19:35.330,0:19:42.160
particular research place they were using[br]an image of the 1972 centerfolds scanned
0:19:42.160,0:19:48.080
it in with their own Moorhead scanner.[br]They had a self-built circuit bent
0:19:48.080,0:19:51.789
Moorhead scanner with three channels a[br]red, green and blue, but one of the
0:19:51.789,0:19:57.990
channels or one of the that the scanning[br]mechanisms was a little bit slower. So
0:19:57.990,0:20:01.690
they lost one line - she got a little bit[br]thinner even in the photo so she looked a
0:20:01.690,0:20:11.081
little bit better and they used only this[br]photo it's 512 by 512 pixels. So from a
0:20:11.081,0:20:15.960
media archaeological perspective this is a[br]very strange object but also if you think
0:20:15.960,0:20:22.920
about politics they use just this image as[br]a one-size-fits-all, but compression in our
0:20:22.920,0:20:28.120
daily lives is not one-size-fits-all. It's[br]not "physics it's just physics" we're
0:20:28.120,0:20:33.330
using different objects to compress our[br]images with. So what would it mean if we
0:20:33.330,0:20:39.679
now use still the Lena compression when[br]it's just another kind of image is there
0:20:39.679,0:20:45.740
maybe a racist undertone in this kind of[br]compression? There was a lot of research
0:20:45.740,0:20:53.500
and a lot of like kind of like.. not anger,[br]but, like, criticism from mostly the female
0:20:53.500,0:21:00.830
community. Finally this is not the end of[br]the Caucasian test card, we still have
0:21:00.830,0:21:11.860
this kind of usage of white images in all[br]our technologies for instance in the HP
0:21:11.860,0:21:19.279
webcams a few years ago. They were only[br]tested on white people and once they went
0:21:19.279,0:21:27.230
to sales, to retail they would not track any[br]black images and any black faces because
0:21:27.230,0:21:32.250
they were never tested on this. There was[br]also the Nikon Coolpix Camera that always
0:21:32.250,0:21:39.210
would ask Asian features: "Are you maybe[br]closing your eyes?". So they were never
0:21:39.210,0:21:45.730
tested on any but Caucasian faces so this[br]whole history of using a Caucasian test
0:21:45.730,0:21:50.580
object is still apparent in everyday[br]technologies. And it's really problematic
0:21:50.580,0:21:55.910
and I realized that I kind of -[br]unknowingly - kind of was playing a role
0:21:55.910,0:22:00.690
in this by also using my own face and[br]letting this be the face for
0:22:00.690,0:22:10.279
deconstructing facial or vernacular file[br]formats the compression of images. So by
0:22:10.279,0:22:16.000
behind the white shadows I showed my[br]research archive I also showed the
0:22:16.000,0:22:24.059
research archive of other image,... images[br]that used by Caucasian females. And I
0:22:24.059,0:22:33.010
finally showed the work that I made for[br]the whole... I said when I do a lot of
0:22:33.010,0:22:40.000
research on compressions I realised that[br]when I try to explain it often when I
0:22:40.000,0:22:44.429
really got into the mathematics I lose my[br]students completely. So I was starting to
0:22:44.429,0:22:49.950
try to build kind of works that would not[br]just be mathematical but try to get the
0:22:49.950,0:22:55.789
emotions that the painters wanted in my[br]work back and so I started to kind of
0:22:55.789,0:23:02.430
anthropomorphize my object. So for[br]instance JPEGs are built out of blocks. I
0:23:02.430,0:23:06.870
started to really make works in which the[br]blocks works talking about the experience
0:23:06.870,0:23:16.151
of compressing a particular image. One of[br]the works was DCT siphoning. I will play
0:23:16.151,0:23:27.320
it in the background really quickly - if[br]it wants to. Yeah, there it is: So that
0:23:27.320,0:23:30.450
doesn't really want to play but that[br]doesn't it's because it's also playing on
0:23:30.450,0:23:36.380
my own screen. Anyway: In DCT siphoning[br]there is two blocks it's inspired by the
0:23:36.380,0:23:45.510
Roman flatland by James Abbott. And in[br]flatland there's an object in a flatland
0:23:45.510,0:23:50.639
that has to learn about different[br]complexities of space, Euclidean space. In
0:23:50.639,0:23:55.860
this particular inspiration I'm taking two[br]blocks that have to learn about different
0:23:55.860,0:24:00.789
complexities of compression so they go[br]from the dots to pixels to the lines which
0:24:00.789,0:24:05.929
are for instance the basis of GIFs to the[br]blocks their own space for JPEGs to
0:24:05.929,0:24:13.269
wavelets and to vector objects or even[br]lidar technologies. And they experience it
0:24:13.269,0:24:20.179
how humans would experience it. The little[br]one sometimes gets really scared, while
0:24:20.179,0:24:25.440
the big one kind of knows what to expect[br]and tries to hold him by the hand and
0:24:25.440,0:24:29.280
tries to explain like look you don't have[br]to be scared here: It's just lines, it's
0:24:29.280,0:24:35.750
just vectors etc. So it's kind of like,[br]how humans experience things that they
0:24:35.750,0:24:42.220
cannot read that are a eligible to them[br]and how when we see something that we
0:24:42.220,0:24:50.260
cannot understand, often just dismiss it[br]and don't want to read it and I find this
0:24:50.260,0:25:02.480
really important. And I think also just[br]to... to try to explain that when you
0:25:02.480,0:25:06.680
dismiss stuff, you're dismissing actually[br]a piece of information. It might be really
0:25:06.680,0:25:11.620
important and it might be eligible, I[br]cannot just show the kids that I'm
0:25:11.620,0:25:15.230
teaching like "Look, there is something[br]you just don't understand it" so what I'm
0:25:15.230,0:25:20.549
trying to do is build these works to show[br]how they are acting towards their
0:25:20.549,0:25:24.049
compressions and there are digital[br]technologies and explain them like "Look,
0:25:24.049,0:25:33.279
you're acting just like this little block[br]that runs away from the compression". So
0:25:33.279,0:25:39.870
what I wanted to close with is the[br]conclusion of the two exhibitions: The
0:25:39.870,0:25:45.609
"Institutions of Resolution Disputes" and[br]"Behind White Shadows" and that's the
0:25:45.609,0:25:50.970
question: every time we're using[br]technologies they're following particular
0:25:50.970,0:25:58.769
resolutions - resolution sets through[br]standards for instance by the ISO or other
0:25:58.769,0:26:05.890
standardizing institutions. We have to[br]always ask who set these standards, who
0:26:05.890,0:26:11.440
made these resolutions and what are they[br]compromising. Because if we're not asking
0:26:11.440,0:26:16.370
what are they compromising we might become[br]blind to other options. For instance,
0:26:16.370,0:26:21.260
video is not just the quadrilateral[br]object, right? if video would be something
0:26:21.260,0:26:25.960
more than just what's happening within[br]this quadrilateral frame, this window,
0:26:25.960,0:26:29.679
then I would have different, I could make[br]different shapes of video. I could put
0:26:29.679,0:26:33.590
them on top of each other I could make[br]collage of videos that would have
0:26:33.590,0:26:37.350
different timelines and different[br]soundtracks and I could really play with
0:26:37.350,0:26:43.250
what video also is. Because in the end[br]video is just a moving story that can have
0:26:43.250,0:26:47.860
different levels. But because of computer[br]technologies and other technologies before
0:26:47.860,0:26:52.710
it, we've become stuck in the resolution of[br]video and we've compromised the other
0:26:52.710,0:26:59.610
options and these compromises are not just[br]in fun: They are in actual real-life -
0:26:59.610,0:27:04.320
realities that give problems to us or that[br]make problems for other people. And that's
0:27:04.320,0:27:09.860
why we need to ask, always: who is setting[br]the accordances of our resolutions and
0:27:09.860,0:27:18.121
what is being compromised. Who is casting[br]the shadows behind our technologies. And
0:27:18.121,0:27:22.529
so I wanted to close with a quote by[br]Hannah Arendt which is "Define and create
0:27:22.529,0:27:27.909
the future - do not be defined just by[br]your past" and I think we should also use
0:27:27.909,0:27:32.769
our technologies these ways. We can still[br]define and create our futures we can
0:27:32.769,0:27:40.600
create our own PowerPoints in weird 3d[br]technologies and we can make videos that
0:27:40.600,0:27:46.389
are not quadrilateral and then get burned[br]by like WIRED's reviews or whatever.
0:27:46.389,0:27:50.850
That's okay. You know it's actually fun to[br]get an angry review because people are
0:27:50.850,0:27:58.620
just really boring. So the work these[br]designing is downloadable from my
0:27:58.620,0:28:06.460
websites. The paper "behind white shadows"[br]also and I would like to end here and
0:28:06.460,0:28:10.299
maybe take a question if there is a[br]question. Thank you.
0:28:10.299,0:28:19.659
Applause[br]Herald: We have about two minutes for
0:28:19.659,0:28:27.630
questions. There are four microphones two[br]on this side two on this side and yeah
0:28:27.630,0:28:33.289
microphone 2 - please ask your question.[br]Mic2: Thanks for a great talk. It's great
0:28:33.289,0:28:37.059
to see a concept like discrete cosine[br]transformation and run length encoding
0:28:37.059,0:28:43.179
being a present in art work and also I[br]found out many years ago that in the JPEG
0:28:43.179,0:28:49.419
standards there's an optional way of[br]compressing JPEGs instead of Huffman encoding
0:28:49.419,0:28:53.399
you can use rhythmic encoding and it's[br]never enabled by any browser so those
0:28:53.399,0:28:59.049
JPEGs are never used that are should be[br]mostly smaller and use more... less
0:28:59.049,0:29:03.860
bandwidth. Have you seen any people that[br]actually would like to introduce a
0:29:03.860,0:29:09.530
rhythmic encoding or other compression[br]standards or variants of it. Just to well
0:29:09.530,0:29:13.070
use more computing power and save[br]bandwidth?
0:29:13.070,0:29:19.289
Rosa: I think one of my favorite artists[br]working with JPEG is Ted Davis. He's based
0:29:19.289,0:29:25.690
out of Basel and he's been doing really[br]breaking the JPEG compression down really
0:29:25.690,0:29:29.970
from like the basics and then you can[br]really write into the JPEG compression.
0:29:29.970,0:29:38.340
But I don't think he tackled even a[br]rhythmic encoding. Yeah actually I did, I
0:29:38.340,0:29:43.700
didn't show this but in the end I wanted[br]to and I will show it to you because
0:29:43.700,0:29:50.139
you're asking about JPEGs. This is a work[br]that I made when I was actually fired by
0:29:50.139,0:30:02.159
the Institutes and it uses the DCTs and[br]when I was fired they made it cryptography
0:30:02.159,0:30:07.759
Design Awards and I thought now you fired[br]me I will make a game with you. I would
0:30:07.759,0:30:12.620
send you some cryptography. So I made my[br]own kind of like encryption which is of
0:30:12.620,0:30:17.279
course I mean even cryptography design[br]seems like really silly so I thought okay
0:30:17.279,0:30:22.780
I will do something really silly I use the[br]DCT that you're asking about. DCT it is
0:30:22.780,0:30:31.380
discrete cosine transform consists of 64[br]macro blocks. I mapped every macro block to
0:30:31.380,0:30:36.750
every glyph of the alphabet so the 64 most[br]used characters and then I wrote them a
0:30:36.750,0:30:42.090
message a really angry message actually[br]one of the institutions is completely
0:30:42.090,0:30:46.580
against them is one of the five[br]institutions of the exhibition. And guess
0:30:46.580,0:30:52.909
who won that competition. I don't think I[br]ever read it because they're too lame to
0:30:52.909,0:30:57.149
read the shit. But I think they did[br]something nice back. "Nice" means that I
0:30:57.149,0:31:01.610
got one tenth of the money they were[br]supposed to pay me in this silly computer
0:31:01.610,0:31:09.279
here but I feel like in a way I fucked up.[br]I said it anyway. So I won a little bit
0:31:09.279,0:31:15.669
that day but just 1/10 of what I lost.[br]Thank you.
0:31:15.669,0:31:21.429
Applause[br]Herald: Is there another question from the
0:31:21.429,0:31:27.019
internet, signal angel? No. Then I I would[br]like to have the opportunity to ask a
0:31:27.019,0:31:33.600
question myself because I did work in[br]super resolution microscopy. Did you ever
0:31:33.600,0:31:39.600
look into super resolving biological[br]structures I've seen some Moire patterns
0:31:39.600,0:31:44.500
in your work, in your presentation right[br]now did you ever touch that or what did
0:31:44.500,0:31:49.409
you do with Moire patterns?[br]Rosa: Moire patterns? Yes oh yeah okay so
0:31:49.409,0:31:54.360
for me I was talking a little bit about[br]the nicology of compression complexities.
0:31:54.360,0:31:59.830
So really going from the line to the dots[br]to the lines to the blocks to the wavelets
0:31:59.830,0:32:05.129
to the... you know like very complex, I[br]would say also zip files are part of that
0:32:05.129,0:32:09.919
complexity like when everything just gets[br]chaotic when we as humans don't have
0:32:09.919,0:32:18.809
Euclidean space necessary to compare to it[br]then it becomes really messy. But anyway,
0:32:18.809,0:32:26.130
they go through line environments and in[br]this line environment the little one gets
0:32:26.130,0:32:29.860
really excited because he can play through[br]the Moire patterns and actually he's
0:32:29.860,0:32:35.570
having a little romantic moment with one[br]of the Moire which is also a joke because
0:32:35.570,0:32:41.250
you know a lot of people only like to like[br]things they understand already. They, I
0:32:41.250,0:32:44.240
mean the exercise is always in[br]understanding something that is more
0:32:44.240,0:32:48.230
complex but that's what most people are[br]scared of. So it's easy to fall in love
0:32:48.230,0:32:53.590
with a line if you're a block it's hard to[br]fall in love with the wavelet right. So I
0:32:53.590,0:32:58.790
mean but anyway that's not really your[br]question you're asking about Moire in
0:32:58.790,0:33:04.419
biology and I've never worked with Moire[br]in biology. Was that an answer?
0:33:04.419,0:33:11.149
Herald: Yeah, yeah thanks! Ok any question[br]left? I think we are out of time. Yes a
0:33:11.149,0:33:15.657
big round of applause for our speaker Rosa[br]Menkman.
0:33:15.657,0:33:19.303
Applause
0:33:19.303,0:33:31.190
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