Rosa Menkman

In this work specifically created for the Sotheby's auction, I combined two existing pieces: A Vernacular of File Formats (2010) and DCT (2015). I selected my JPEG portrait from A Vernacular of File Formats as the source image for this piece, onto which I embedded a secret message using DCT Encryption.

A Vernacular of File Formats explores the various compression algorithms used to save and read (encode and decode) image data. In this work, I compressed the same source image, a self-portrait, via different algorithms (BMP, JPEG, GIF, etc). As a result, I collected a set of different image data files that all render into identically looking images. I then introduced a same or similar error to each file: I 'glitched them'. A method that introduces the normally invisible compression language to crack onto the surface of the image.

In DCT I use the aesthetics of JPEG glitches - known as macroblocking - to write and mask secret messages onto the surface of the image. At the basis of the JPEG compression sits the DCT algorithm, consisting of 64 macroblocks that together form the core ingredients of any JPEG image. I abstracted these 64 different macroblocks and mapped them onto the most used glyphs (0-9, A-Z, etc). The resulting font, titled DCT, can be used to stenographically write a message onto the surface of the image, mimicking a glitch.

The encrypted message in this new work reads:

"The true value of a work of art extends beyond its market, enwrapping both its cultural and historic significance."

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and researcher. Her work focuses on noise artifacts that result from accidents in both analogue and digital media. These artifacts can offer precious insights into the otherwise obscure alchemy of standardisation and resolution setting. As a compendium to this research, she published the Glitch Moment/um (inc, 2011), a little book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts. Menkman developed and highlighted the politics of resolution setting further in a second book titled Beyond Resolution (i.R.D., 2020). In this book, she describes how the standardization of resolutions is a process that generally promotes efficiency, order and functionality in our

technologies. But how as a side effect, the setting of resolutions also compromises and obfuscates alternative possibilities.

In 2019 Menkman won the Collide, Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which inspired her recent research into what makes things im/possible, including im/possible images. In this new research

she aims to find new ways to understand, use and perceive through and with our technologies.