Portfolio

1. Maria-Rosa Menkman (03/04/1983, Arnhem,Netherlands)Artist, writer, curator andresearcher. Date of birth: 3 April 1983Email: rmenkman@gmail.com Website:beyondresolution.info For videoportfolio click here
Portfolio Rosa Menkman December 2016
Resume Maria-Rosa Menkman (03/04/1983, Arnhem, Netherlands)
Artist, curator and researcher.
Date of birth: 3 April 1983
Email: rmenkman@gmail.com
beyondresolution.info ||| Video Portfolio
I am a Dutch artist, curator and researcher, focusing on the noise artifacts that result from accidents in
both analogue and digital media (such as glitch, encoding and feedback artifacts). I believe that these
artifacts can facilitate an important insight into the otherwise obscure alchemy of standardization via
resolutions. This process of imposing efficiency, order and functionality does not just involve the
creation of protocols and solutions, but also entails black-boxed, obfuscated compromises and
alternative possibilities that are in fact in danger of staying forever unseen and even forgotten.
Consider for instance video; a medium that generally consists of a sequence of quadrilateral images,
positioned along a linear time-line. What would happen to video if it would break outside of this four
cornered resolution? What would happen not only to our experience of video but also the medium itself
if it was possible to have 3 or 5 or 193 corners per video?
In the technological domain, a ‘resolution’ generally simply refers to a determination of functional
settings. And a resolution is indeed an agreed upon settlement (solution), however, a resolution also
involves a space of compromise between different actors (objects, materialities, and protocols) in
dispute over norms (frame rate, number of pixels etc.).
I intend to uncover and elucidate the ways through which resolutions constantly inform both machine
vision and human ways of perception. I do this by anthropomorphising digital artifacts, to give them a
voice and narrate the resolutions they adhere too. Moreover, where possible, I create constructions
beyond resolution; frameworks outside of the general rules of capital, to make space for new
opportunities, magic and imagination.
To illustrate my practice I made a Video Portfolio.
I also collected the works that I find most illustrative to my practice in this pdf: a “Vernacular of File
Formats" (2010), “Acousmatic Videoscapes” (2007), the “Collapse of PAL” (2010), “Xilitla” (2012-2013)
the iRD (2015—) and DCT:SYPHONING. The 64th interval (2016).
Since 2015 I work as a curator at Sonic Acts. I have also been a co-facilitator of 5 GLI.TC/H festivals
(2010-2112). Besides that, I am a certified captain at the institutions for Resolution Disputes.

2. Rosa Menkman, The Glitch Moment(um). Network Notebooks 04, Institute of Network Cultures,
Amsterdam, 2011. ISBN: 978-90-816021-6-7.
Download link
In 2010 and 2011 I released two little books. The Glitch Moment(um), which I authored and GLI.TC/H
20111 (which I co-edited). The Glitch Moment(um) is still taught in different curricula all over the
world. Parts of it have been to Italian, Polish and Japanese.
“In this book, Rosa Menkman brings in early information theorists not usually encountered in glitch’s
theoretical foundations to refine a signal and informational vocabulary appropriate to glitch’s
technological moment(um) and orientations. The book makes sense of recent glitch art and culture:
technically, culturally, critically, aesthetically and finally as a genre.
The glitch takes on a different form in relation to noise, failure or the accident. It transitions between
artifact and filter; between radical breakages and commodification processes. Menkman shows how we
need to be clearer about the relationship between the technical and cultural dimensions of glitch
culture. Honing in on the specificities of glitch artifacts within this broader perspective makes it
possible to think through some of the more interesting implications of glitched media experience.
Using a critical media aesthetic orientation, Menkman addresses the ongoing definitional tensions,
paradoxes, and debates that any notion of glitch art as a genre must negotiate, rather than elude.”
GLI.TC/H READER[ROR] 20111 editors: Nick Briz, Evan Meaney, Rosa Menkman, William Robertson,
Jon Satrom, Jessica Westbrook. Publisher: Unsorted Books, Japan. GLITCH@GLI.TC ISBN:
978-4-9905200-1-411-11-11 / ? User Agreement: GLI.TC/H READER[ROR] 20111 is distributed under
the "CopyRight" license
Book published in tandem with GLI.TC/H festival in Chicago.

3. Rosa Menkman, A Vernacular of File Formats, 2010.
Direct Print on Dibond, 40cm x 30cm – 9pcs. Edition of 3 +1AP (2010 – 2011). Sold out.
Digital Archive (Edition 5+1AP) in collection of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Above: Vernacular of File Formats during Solo show “Order and Progress” at Gallery Fabio Paris
Vernacular of File Formats & Extrafiles during Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht Film theatre de Kikker.
Below: Vernacular of File Formats at MOTI.
‘Vernacular File Formats: A Guide to Databend Compression Design’ by Rosa Menkman
From the Transfer Gallery website: “Menkman’s seminal series of corrupted self portraits that visualize
the language of file formats which influence our media on a day to day basis.”
A file format is an encoding system that organises data according to a particular syntax. These
organisations are commonly referred to as compression algorithms. The choice of an image compression
depends on its foreseen mode and place of usage. Depending on this, the compression should will be
chosen depending on accuracy necessary and what software or hardware will have to render the
image?

4. In some cases the maker choses not to use any encoding at all but instead, to store the data as a
(minimally structured) dump. Images developed for professional use for instance, will be shot and
stored via the RAW image file format. A RAW image file contains minimally processed data, which
normally comes straight from the image sensor (for instance a CCD chip), in order to avoid any
impurities (artifacts) that might be involved with image mediation, transcoding or compression.
By compressing the source image via a different compression language and subsequently
implementing a same (or similar) error into each file, the otherwise invisible compression language
presents itself on the surface of the image.
Documentation
Pages 17-25 of the Glitch Moment(um) explain the work from a theoretical background.
Menkman, Rosa. The glitch moment (um). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011.
Domenico Quaranta writes about the Vernacular in Life and death of the image.
A shot from a Vernacular of File Formats has also become the subject of a 30 page discussion in
Vendela Grundell ‘Flow and Friction’, published a 30 pages description on the work in her 2016 phd
thesis published by Art & Theory Publishing Stockholm (ISBN 978-91-7649-412-7).
The Vernacular of File Formats was translated in Polish by Piotr Puldzian Płucienniczak, Aleksandra
Pieńkosz, Tomasz Sulej.
A more exhaustive list of other scholarly articles on the work can be found here
The Vernacular has had quite some different physical forms. Both as installation by me and as
appropriated or even pirated work by others. A photo set of A Vernacular of File Formats in
appropirated forms here.
From A Vernacular of File Formats I later developed Monglot with Johan Larsby. The Vernacular also
served as inspiration for Extrafile by Kim Asendorf and some other live VJ tools and a video by Nick Briz.
Ongoing research on the Vernacular has been undertaken through the Vernacular of Glitch Affect.

5. Rosa Menkman, the Collapse of PAL, 2011.
Video, Duration 8:33 – Edition of 3 +1AP (2010-2012). Available: 2.
On November 1, 2009, Denmark switched its television broadcast technologies from Phase Alternate
Line (PAL) signal, to its successor, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB). With this switch, PAL became
obsolete. Its transmission was suspended and its technologies were no longer supported; PAL became
part of the “zombie media. ”1
Jussi Parikka, “Media Archaeology of Signals (Transmediale 2011),” Cartographies of Media Archaeology, February1
7, 2011, http://mediacartographies.blogspot.com/2011/02/media-archaeology-of-signals.html

6. Early in 2010, tv-tv, a non-commercial, artist-run television station broadcasting from Copenhagen,
chose this “golden spike”—the switch from PAL to DVB—as a motive for commissioning SOUND &
TELEVISION, a “transmission art project exploring the performativity of television in light of the
challenges brought about by a converging mediascape.” The project consisted of seven live television
performances. One of these, done by me, was The Collapse of PAL and honed in on the switch from2
PAL to DVB, narrated from the perspective of the Angel of History:3
Plot: Collapse of PAL tells the story of the PAL (Phase Alternate Line) signal and its termination. This
death sentence, although executed in silence, was a brutally violent act that left PAL disregarded and
obsolete. While it might be argued that the PAL signal is dead, it still exists as a trace left upon the new,
‘better’ digital technologies. PAL can, even though the technology is terminated, be found here as a
historical form that newer technologies build upon, inherit or have appropriated from. Besides this, the
Angel also realizes that the new DVB signal that has been chosen over PAL is different, but at the same
time also inherently flawed.
Most important features:
This is the rendered version of a live av-performance first done on national Danish television and
subsequently performed at oa. Transmediale (Germany) and Nova festival (Brasil), ao.
The last Collapse performance took place during the Last Event at NIMK (closing, 19 oct 2012)
The Collape of PAL is part of the Rhizome Artbase and has an Artsy link
Go here for a rendered video
the Collapse of PAL was reviewed by Sean Cubitt for Millennium Film Journal in Angelic Ecologies
Cubitt, Sean. Millennium Film Journal 58 (Fall 2013): 46-51.
A list of other scholarly articles on the work can be found here
In 2017 Transmediale Berlin published a piece on the Collapse of PAL in their anthology on 30 years of
digital art at Transmediale.
The curators of SOUND & TELEVISION were Kristoffer Gansing and Linda Hilfling. An archived version of the2
project website, including descriptions, can be found at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160331131714/http://tv-tv.dk/soundandtelevision/#
A render of The Collapse of PAL can be found on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/121992013

7. Rosa Menkman, Xilitla, 2012-2014.
Image shows MOTI install with custom head controller. A 3D Video environment that can be installed
or used as performance tool or video interface, to present video work outside of the cliches that
conventional platforms and softwares impose – Edition of 3 +1AP (2012-2014).
Official Page // Transfer Page
Xilitla is a little village in the Huasteca region of Mexico. Here, in the early 1940s, Sir Edward James – a
poet known for his patronage of the surrealist art movement – started the construction of his own
idyllic, surrealist pool garden, Las Pozas, in which he deconstructed the many forms and styles of
functional architecture. In the hands of Rosa Menkman, ‘Xilitla’ has been transformed into a
hallucinatory, futuristic 3D architectural environment consisting of moving images, laced with polygons
and dysfunctional objects. Inside this algorthimic piece, a Janushead is used to navigate Menkman’s
digital dreamscape. Taking advantage of the tensions between gameplay and audiovisual art, this
aesthetic experiment opens up a new, eerie poetic and fantasmatic universe.
‘Xilitla’ exists as a free downloadable application, released in 2013 by the artist. An enhanced and
expanded edition with three audiovisual video pieces documenting Menkman performing the gameplay
was acquired by the Museum of the Image in the Netherlands (MOTI) in 2014, where it has been on
display ever since. Its exhibition at Moving Image Art Fair makes available the remaining two editions of
the enhanced collectors edition (‘Xilitla’ 2014, Edition of 3 +1 AP) packaged for appreciation on a
dedicated MAC mini configured to run the piece, accompanied by the three gameplay videos and a
certificate signed by the artist.
Xilitla has been acquired by the permanent collection of MOTI (Breda) and has been on display during
the Istanbul moving image fair in 2015. It has been acquired by MOTI Museum of the Image in 2015.

8. Rosa Menkman, Lunar Storm, 2014.
1:2.39, 35mm on celluloid. Commissioned by Sonic Acts as part of the Vertical Cinema program.
Vertical Cinema involved the building of a special celluloid projector that could project vertically.
See for more information: verticalcinema.org
Description:
“The surface of the Moon seems static. Though it orbits the Earth every 27.3 days, with areas of it
becoming invisible during this rotation, it is always (visibly or invisibly) above us, reassuringly familiar.
The Moon is the best known celestial body in the sky and the only one besides the Earth that humans
have ever set foot on.
The Seas of the Moon (Lunar Maria), consisting not of water but of volcanic dust and impact craters,
appear motionless to the naked eye. Here, volcanic dust forms a thick blanket of less reflective,
disintegrated micro particles. But on rare occasions, beyond the gorges of these Lunar Maria, and only
when the lunar terminator passes (the division between the dark and the light side of the moon) a
mysterious glow appears. This obscure phenomenon, also known as lunar horizon glow, is hardly ever
seen from Earth.
Beyond the gorges of the Lunar Maria, the Moon is covered with lunar dust, a remnant of lunar rock.
Pummelled by meteors and bombarded by interstellar, charged atomic particles, the molecules of
these shattered rocks contain dangling bonds and unsatisfied electric connections. At dawn, when the
first sunlight is about to illuminate the Moon, the energy inherent to solar ultraviolet and X-ray
radiation bumps electrons out of the unstable lunar dust; the opposite process occurs at dusk (lunar
sunset). These electrostatic changes cause lunar storms directly on the lunar terminator that levitate
lunar dust into the otherwise static exosphere of the Moon and result in ‘glowing dust fountains’.”
Vertical Cinema is a Sonic Acts production in collaboration with Kontraste Festival, Austrian Film
Museum, Filmtechniek BV, Paradiso Amsterdam, European Space Agency, Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
More about Lunar Storm can be read in the Vertical Cinema publication
Lunar Storm as part of Vertical Cinema has travelled all around the world, screening in 14 events. A full
list of screenings can be found here

9. Rosa Menkman, institutions for Resolution Disputes, 2015 -
A solo show and official opening of the institutions at Transfer Gallery in NY. Official page.
The 2015 iRD install consisted of 5 works.
More: Transfer Website // Text // Documentation
Reviews: Furtherfield // Postmatter // Creators Project
image documentation
A resolution determines what is run, read and seen, and what is not.
A show in which I set out to illustrate 3 main compression complexities (lines, blocks and wavelets).
A resolution is not a neutral facility but carries historical, economical and political ideologies. The cost
of all of these media protocols is that we have gradually become unaware of the choices and
compromises they represent. We are collectively suffering from technological hyperopia where these
qualities have moved beyond a fold of perspective. Myopia brings back into focus the quality of being
short-sighted.
The day before the iRD closed its doors, visitors were invited to bring an Exacto Knife, to cut their own
resolution of ‘Myopia’, and mount them on any institution of choice (book, computer or other rigid
surface). Because Myopia is sticky.

10. 1. Rosa Menkman, institutions of Resolution Disputes, 2015.
20” Acrylics; 5 institutions of the iRD, written in DCT – Edition of 1AP (2015).
The JPEG compression involves 6 subsequent steps. These steps have been abundantly documented
elsewhere.
During the most important step of the JPEG algorithm, the compression employs a mathematical
technique known as Discreet Cosine Transform, to compress the amount of image data needed to
transport, store, and present the image. DCT consists of a finite set of patterns, called macroblocks,
that can could also be described as a set of 64 glyphs, which, through the addition of ‘intonation’, by
luma- and chroma-values, make up the JPEG image. If an image is compressed correctly, its
macroblocks become ‘invisible’. The incidental trace of the macroblocks is generally ignored as artifact,
impurity of the image or error. Keeping this in mind, I developed DCT.
DCT uses the aesthetics of JPEG macroblocks to mask its secret message as error. Because the legibility
of an encrypted message does not just depend on the complexity of the encryption algorithm, but also
on the placement of the data of the message. The encrypted message, hidden on the surface of the
image is only legible by the ones in the know; anyone else will ignore it like dust on celluloid.
An image set about the development of DCT.
DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) has been around since 1973, but only became widely implemented in
1992, when the JPEG image compression technology started using it as a core component. I have given
a series of talks in which I explain the importance of DCT in connection to racism and copyright - two
subjects important in JPEG compression politics. DCT compression was tried, tested and optimised on
the skin of a naked, white lady). While the DCT algorithm lies at the basis of the omnipresent image
compression algorithm JPEG, knowledge of how the algorithm works, is uncommon and even fewer
people are aware of the history and circumstances that lead to the development of the popular
algorithm.

11. 2. Rosa Menkman, iRD patch (2015).
Black on black embroidered logo [iRD], Encryption key to the institutions – Edition of 250 (2015).
RLE 010 0000 - 101 1111 σ ≠ 1984.
Inspired by Trevor Paglens research on military patches I released the key to deciphering DCT via this
crypto language and patch, that people in the know of the importance of compression politics could
acquire. In total 400 patches have been distributed, and are still being worn all over the world.
3. Tacit:Blue (2015)
2 min. single channel video Between a Masonic pigpen and DCT
hardware used: nova drone by Casper Electronics w/ custom patching
4. ‘Beyond Resolution’ (2015)
Video soon to be released! 15:30 min AV live performance registration that took place at Static Gallery,
Liverpool, January 2015, Featuring video images by Alexandra Gorczynski and sounds from
Professional Grin by Knalpot. Sound mastering by Sandor Caron.
Environmental Sound: Beyond Resolution sound ||| remix by Ryan Maguire, moDernisT
5. Rosa Menkman, Myopia, 2015.
Wall vinyl installation. 12 x 4 meters, and extruding vectors.
Myopia zooms into the JPG2000 wavelet compression artefacts, created by introducing a line of ‘other
language’ into the JPEG2000 file data.

12. Rosa Menkman, DCT Series.
After the release of the iRD, MOTI commissioned me to bring DCT to the Crypto Challenge, which
resulted in the work DCT:Legibility. The DCT language later won shared first price at the Crypto
challenge in 2015.
DCT : SYPHONING. The 1000000th interval, 2016.
A story that has had different material executions. DCT : SYPHONING was first conceived as Powerpoint
(commissioned by the Photographers Gallery), to an exhibition concept brought Schafhof in Munchen,
a 6:23’ min 3 channel 16x9 video installation produced by Transfer Gallery and finally a VR piece for
DiMoDA (the Digital Museum for Digital Art). https://vimeo.com/176773197/ || Documentation can be
found here
DCT:SYPHONING is inspired by the 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott roman Flatland.
In DCT:SYPHONING, DCT narrates how DCT Junior runs a first Syphon on its 64th interval; a
transcoding trip through the different ecologies of image field complexity. Together, they Syphon from
the macroblocks (the realm in which they normally resonate), to dither, lines and the more complex
realms of wavelets and vectors. In In DCT:SYPHONING, DCT Senior logs how junior reacts to old
compressions technologies, but also the newer, more complex compressions which ‘scare' him because
they are not legible to him.

13. DCT: SYPHONING as 6:23’ min 3 channel 16x9 video installation produced by Transfer Gallery
Every image plane environment is made in a 3D environment and per environment artefacts from
another realm of compression form the textural basis of the chapter.
DCT:SYPHONING was commissioned by the Photographers Gallery in London for the show Power Point
Polemics. It was also on display during the double solo show Glitch in Schafhof, Oberbayern, Germany,
Transfer Download in San Francisco, Supernova / Denver digerati Festival and in DiMoDA Superchief
Gallery in Brooklyn New York.
Its final version will be released in February 2017 as part of DiMoDA Morphe presence exhibit.
Documentation can be found here