Beyond Resolution

5. Dezember 2025, ab 17.20 Uhr KAPU, Kapuzinerstr. 36, 4020 Linz

Die Abteilung Interface Cultures lädt, im Rahmen des Saint Interface Day, zum Gastvortrag von Rosa Menkman.

Resolution is often misunderstood as a simple number; a quantitative or qualitative metric. But resolution is not a fixed technical specification. Resolution is a relational, procedural condition shaped by protocols, standards, infrastructures, and interpretive regimes.
Moreover, perceived quality of the image is relational too; it is shaped by how an image is captured, processed, circulated, and displayed. Acutance (edge contrast), for example, can enhance the perceptual clarity, even when no new detail is resolved. Distinctions within image quality, such as between acutance and resolvable detail (e.g., pixel count), reveal that sharpness itself is a constructed perceptual effect. Even an image with high spatial resolution may appear low quality on a screen with poor acutance, or after platform compression and algorithmic distortion.

Resolution is a procedural, context-dependent construct that emerges from the consolidation of multiple material systems. It is shaped not only at the point of capture, but also by the algorithms that compress, the platforms that render, and the interpretive frameworks in which images are received—ranging from sensor design to platform interface, and from standardized protocols to habituated use.
To study resolution means to study the biases embedded in standards: choices shaped by political, financial, and ideological pressures that determine not only what is rendered but what is excluded or forgotten. Standardized resolutions enforce order and efficiency, but they also obscure compromise and erase alternatives.

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and researcher. Her work focuses on noise artifacts that result from accidents in both analogue and digital media. These artifacts can offer precious insights into the otherwise obscure alchemy of standardisation and resolution setting. As a compendium to this research, she published the Glitch Moment/um (inc, 2011), a little book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts. Menkman developed and highlighted the politics of resolution setting further in a second book titled Beyond Resolution (i.R.D., 2020). In this book, she describes how the standardization of resolutions is a process that generally promotes efficiency, order and functionality in our technologies. But how as a side effect, the setting of resolutions also compromises and obfuscates alternative possibilities. In 2019 Menkman won the Collide, Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which inspired her recent research into what makes things im/possible, including im/possible images. In this new research she aims to find new ways to understand, use and perceive through and with our technologies.

Um 18.25 Uhr hält Vladan Joler eine weitere Keynote ab:  “Map as an Interface”

‘Sankt Interface’ is an artistic project organized by Interface Cultures, which also serves as the annual celebration of the department. 
Sankt Interface 2025