ROSA MENKMAN
DCT:SYPHONING. The 1000000th (64th) Interval, 2016-2017
DAATA MIAMI BEACH
DECEMBER 1 –13, 2020

PRESS RELEASE
Presenting artist and professor Rosa Menkman's groundbreaking visual theorization of technological advancement

NEW YORK (November 2020)– For the second edition of Daata Fair, Kendra Jayne Patrick is thrilled to re-present Rosa Menkman’s groundbreaking visual theorization of a glitch, DCT:SYPHONING. The 1000000th (64th) Interval, 2016-2017.

2018 we showed this phenomenal work in the gallery’s first group exhibition - hosted by Bortolami gallery - where the gesture of magnification was up for consideration alongside works by Ivan Argoté & Kenya (Robinson).

With DCT:SYPHONING. The 1000000th (64th) Interval, 2016-2017, Rosa Menkman makes a modern translation of the 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott novella, "Flatland,” and explains some of the algorithms at work in digital image compression.

Inspired by Syphon, an open source software by Tom Butterworth and Anton Marini, in “DCT:SYPHONING,” an anthropomorphised 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 dither, lines, and the more complex realms of wavelets and vectors. Junior does not only react to old compressions technologies, but also the newer, more complex ones which ‘scare' Junior, because of their 'illegibility.'

Every image plane environment is made in a 3D Unity Level, and per level, artefacts from another realm of compression form the textural basis of the chapter.