The Image Compressed

Symposium:

• ISEA2015: 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Interacting with Visual Art and Graphic Design

• The Image Compressed

• Tara Elizabeth Cook

• (Short paper)

  In this presentation I attend to the compressed image in relation to contemporary discussions on digital aesthetics. If compression constantly redefines visual information as it enables data to travel through digital infrastructures, the key question then is- what is this redefinition? I examine the way data compression translates information in an act of productive reduction that obscures, marks and folds the image. It draws from David Joselit’s After Art and Hito Steyerl’s In defense of the poor image to argue, not for its possible mass dissemination and representation, but for the ontological potentials and dangers of the image itself. Alongside this discussion images and video of my practice are presented. Compression and loss are incorporated as an artistic strategy in my practice whereby hybrid digitally and physically compressed works form encounters with trace, difference and loss.

• Full text (PDF) p. 710-713

Category:

• Paper