Deadpan Aesthetics, Lossy Compression, Post-it-Notes
Conrado Velasco
Issue 53 Winter 2007
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This series of photographs, constructed with humble Post-it-notes, is a translation of five images by photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Scans of images by the Bechers were laid out on a grid and rendered on a studio wall with Post-it-notes with each piece of paper standing in for a pixel. In creating and using files such as jpeg files, a process called lossy compression takes place where compressing data and then decompressing it retrieves data that may well be different from the original, but is close enough to be useful in some way. Repeatedly compressing and decompressing the file will cause it to progressively suffer generation loss. This process has a levelling-off effect on images destined for the computer screen. Taken to its logical conclusion a Post-it-note could be used to create the same approximation at the original image.
