DCT:SYPHONING. The 1000000th (64th) Interval

Details

Artist: Rosa Menkman
Year: 2016-2017
Gallery: TRANSFER Gallery
Medium: Virtual Reality Application for Oculus Rift With 3-channel Video Installation & Single-channel Gameplay Video

Description

DCT:SYPHONING is a modern translation of the 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott roman "Flatland” and aims to shed a light on the complexity of digital image compression. Inspired by Syphon, an open source software by Tom Butterworth and Anton Marini, in DCT:SYPHONING, an anthropomorphized DCT (Senior) narrates its first SYPHON (data transfer) together with DCT Junior, and their interactions as they translate data from one image compression to a next (aka the “realms of complexity”).

As Senior introduces Junior to the different levels of image plane complexity, they move from the macroblocks (the realm in which they normally resonate), to dithered raters, lines and the more complex realms of wavelets and vectors. In the 3D interactive story, Junior does not only react to old compression technologies, but also the newer, more advanced ones which ‘scare' it, because of their 'illegibility'.

DCT:SYPHONING was first commissioned by the Photographers Gallery in London, for the show Power Point Polemics (2016). A 3-channel video installation was conceived for the 2016 Transfer Gallery's show "Transfer Download", first installed at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco and then in NYC at the Current Museum. The final form of DCT:SYPHONING is VR, debuted as part of DiMoDA’s Morphé Presence.