Treatise on the Compressed Image

The goal of this research paper is to understand digital compression; its definition; what it is technically and conceptually; its genealogy, where it comes from; its anatomy, the key features shared by compressed images; and its pragmatics, its effects in the world. This paper attempts to provide a conceptual outline for defining and understanding digital compression as both a state and process; a container that carries as well as marks information. If compression constantly redefines visual information as it enables data to travel through digital infrastructures, the key question of this inquiry then is – what is this redefinition? I will explain how the translating process of compression reduces information for the purpose of transmission and results in files that have suffered varying degrees of a perceivable loss of data, while at the same time gain varying amounts of artifacts. I will argue that what persists is trace, decay and the play between gain and loss which forms a poetics of compression that is a useful thought or form of art. The specific theories of Walter Benjamin, Hito Steyerl and David Joselit as well as a handful of transdisciplinary works are unpacked alongside my own work to determine the productive potential of such transitory images.

Tara Cook is a Melbourne based contemporary artist and PhD candidate the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She is interested in better understanding our relationship with technology through artistic research, curatorship and practice. Tara was the founder and Gallery Director of New Low, an Artist Run Initiative showing contemporary media work in Melbourne from 2011 to 2013. Tara has shown nationally and internationally over the past 5 years at such spaces at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, The Sydney Opera House, Carriageworks, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, The Arts Centre, The RMIT Design Hub, Blindside and Screen Space. Tara completed an Honours degree at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Tara has presented research at the 2013 International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Sydney as well as co-convening a panel at the 2013 Art Association of Australia and New Zealand “Interdisciplinary” Conference in Melbourne.