Memory Compression

Resolution: 512×512 pixels
Duration: 5-10 minutes
Compression Codec: H.264, H.265, Cinepak, Theora
Video Format: MP4/H.264
Audio Format: AAC
Software: Python, FFMPEG

How do the digital technologies integral to capturing and revisiting our experiences subtly filter and reshape memory itself?

The Memory Compression series explores this question through meditative screen-based works.

Each presents a field of slowly shifting colour, yet the surface is alive with a visible, evolving texture – a shifting mosaic revealing the underlying grid of digital compression.

In each work, these visual artifacts emerge because the artist deliberately puts the every day technology of digital video compression – such as the H.264 algorithm – under extreme stress by challenging it to compress smooth 48-bit (16-bit per channel) colour gradients.

This intervention makes visible the inherent ‘noise’ and texture that these systems typically strive to hide, bringing the technology’s own materiality dramatically to the surface.

A unique soundtrack accompanies each visual piece, born from the artist’s real-time improvisation while witnessing the evolving compression artifacts. This sonic layer actively engages with the stark digital textures – humanising them, adding emotional depth, and celebrating their emergent visual character. The audio thus centers these technological ‘imprints,’ inviting a deeper sensory engagement with the usually little-seen process.

These visible textures are therefore the material ‘imprint’ of the digital process, the visual trace left as the technology negotiates extreme constraints. The artworks underscore the non-neutrality of such processes: they fundamentally transform the information they convey.

Original subtlety is lost, replaced by a starkly different aesthetic dictated by the inherent logic of the compression – revealing the ‘ghosts’ of the operation itself.

Leveraging an intimate familiarity with these digital tools, the series intends to render visible these normally hidden operations. It functions as a critical prompt towards greater awareness of the complex, non-neutral systems underpinning our daily digital encounters.

Furthermore, the deliberate slowness of each piece, unfolding over five to ten minutes, cultivates sustained attention. This durational engagement, guided by the responsive audio, offers a counterpoint to the accelerated pace of digital media. It fosters a meditative viewing state, affording time to contemplate the evolving technological ‘imprint’ on screen.

Ultimately, the Memory Compression series prompts reflection on the unseen technological frameworks mediating our perception – frameworks that potentially alter how we record, remember, and re-experience our own lives through sight and sound.

See the full collection on objkt.com:

https://objkt.com/collections/KT1QZiWbDvRNZpS2RzkYKfQ9WWUctWVywgk9?sort=timestamp:asc