Compression Loss

Compression Loss. A process by which a digital file looses some computational information each time it is copied, as well as a method of rationalisation in which the whole is seemingly understood by its deconstruction into smaller, separate parts — a process which does not account for accumulative significance.

3D models provided by musea’s digitised collections and depicting mythological objects and figures associated with technological mastery, knowledge or wonderment are re-introduced into the physical world through traditional casting methods.

The objects – an ancient Ming vase; Thoth, the ur-god of magic; the Aztec deity Xipe, the god of polarity, Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth and Antonio Canova’s Venus – are reproduced in individual slices of normed thickness. They are then re-assembled by re-appropriating logically and mathematically derived sequences or according to prescribed variations such as doubling or compression. Each iteration then has an identity that cannot be confused with its original. Yet, intrinsically linked to their source, each iteration alludes to the coalescence of seemingly irreconcilable opposites: authenticity and artifice, model and copy, the virtual and the real, the logical application of science and the shifting nature of mythology and belief.

‘Compression Loss’, OMR, 2017