lossless

a_gold_standard

2008-10-06T16:13:58-04:00

Film is a good example of a mechanically reproducible art in which every copy is an original. This subject has been well covered by Walter Benjamin and others. I introduce it only to elaborate a fine point about the inequality of reproductions. The Wizard of Oz has been re-released numerous times in different media (3-strip technicolor on nitrate stock, re-released in 1949 (probably with a acetate base “safety film”), released in widescreen on acetate stock in 1955, adapted for television in …

about_mpeg

2008-10-06T10:51:51-04:00

All of the work in the lossless series is derived from compressed media found either on Digital Video Disks (DVDs) or on the Internet. As of this writing, the overwhelming majority of this media is prepared using some version of MPEG compression. MPEG is an acronym for the Moving Pictures Expert Group, an international, non-governmental organization tasked with the specification of standards for the encoding of media.

amherst_announcement_poster

2008-10-09T10:34:44-04:00

[Amherst announcement] Thanks, Blanca!

catalog_cover

2008-10-09T10:34:08-04:00

[catalog cover prototype]

chat1

2008-11-17T19:09:17-04:00

Jabber IM with John Hulsey 11/17/08 9:42 AM the first question of several techie questions that i have is how frequently do you come across one of the l-frames/keyframes in an MPEG2 type compression? (ie are you removing more frames than you're leaving in, or the reverse?)

chat2

2008-11-18T10:34:21-04:00

Jabber IM with J.P. Sniadecki & John Hulsey Jabber IM with JP Sniadecki 11/17/08 4:08 PM the conversation you had with him looks great, and very technical, and i will have to read it carefully after i say goodbye to my friends

compression_as_phenomenology

2008-11-16T14:40:53-04:00

Digital media has been forced by the constraints of media and hardware into new representational strategies. Example: a 100 minute Hollywood film is composed of 144,000 discrete 35 mm frames plus two or more tracks of audio track. Scanning these frames at “2k” (which is on the low end of a scan meant for standard definition) results in something like 1.7 terabytes of data (assuming 12 megabytes of data per uncompressed frame). The best lossless techniques reduces that number to about 400 digital…

contributors

2008-10-09T10:14:57-04:00

note to contributors: please use this format to let us know who you are. please refer to the syntax page to learn more about the formatting tags used in this wiki. amherst college Blanca Myers boston college harvard university lossless collaborators rebecca_baron Rebecca Baron is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. Her work has screened widely in international film festivals and media venues including International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, the Viennale and the Wh…

coverage

2008-10-22T17:59:30-04:00

Harvard 10 april 2008 Filmmaker literally deconstructs classic, avant-garde movies Harvard Gazette article text Diagonal Thoughts Lossless Stoffel Debuysere ... Baron and Goodwin’s Lossless project consists of a series of works that looks at the dematerialization of film into bits, exposing the residual effects of the process that makes file sharing possible. They used several methods to alter these works, either interrupting the data streaming by removing basic information holding togeth…

current_state_of_projection

2008-10-06T13:39:56-04:00

The pieces in the lossless series were designed to be projected . We have shown the series on MiniDV, Digital Betacam, HDCAM, and MPEG-4 media and projected the work in a wide variety of venues. Generally we have found the quality of the image to be gated more by the projector than by the media. Never mind that HDCAM has 400% more resolution than MiniDV and Digital Betacam, we saw equal or superior image quality from the projector at the HFA (showing MiniDV) compared to every other media/venue c…

difference_is_a_two-way_street

2008-10-06T15:23:41-04:00

How exactly do you capture the difference between different media? When we first started thinking about showing the difference between film and digital video disks we assumed that the image on a 35mm film print would be far superior to that on a DVD. But we were wrong--the DVD frames were crisper, showed a wider color space and range than the film.

discussion_blanca_meyers

2008-11-21T19:35:19-04:00

discussion with blanca myers, amherst college Bearing in mind the distinct aesthetic quality, viewing experience, and physical properties of the VHS tape, how do you interpret the significance or role the VHS tape plays in digitization, remediation, cinema, and DV?

economic_issues

2008-10-07T20:58:33-04:00

There are economic issues! this is a link

encouraging_artifacts

2008-10-08T10:35:07-04:00

Content is inseparable from its medium. The Most of the time we choose to focus our attention on the content over medium. The noise and other artifacts are generally not interesting in themselves. If you want to help a new medium achieve independence, it helps to pay attention to its specifics. Artists spend time understanding the peculiarities of media, its texture, history, prejudices, etc. Mastery of a medium amounts to understanding what it can do and what others have done with it.

gallery_plan

2008-11-16T12:01:42-04:00

The gallery plan for Lossless at Harvard has a specific architecture, guiding viewers to interact with the pieces and to think about their relationships as different media types. In addition, it provokes thought about the diversity of screened environments for moving image works in gallery situations.

harvard_gazette_article_text

2008-10-07T23:48:21-04:00

Filmmaker literally deconstructs classic, avant-garde movies Radcliffe fellow explores art of unseen By Colleen Walsh Harvard News Office [A group of works created by Rebecca Baron (right), collaborator Doug Goodwin (left), and sound designer Ernst Karel explores the art that lies behind what the naked eye can’t quite capture. Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News]

jp_sniadecki_and_john_hulsey

2008-11-18T20:58:13-04:00

Ok, let's have a chat about lossless! After registering and loggin-in to the wiki you'll have a link below called Discussion. You know what to do. This is best for non-synchronous chats. If you want to go interactive we can use skype and I'll paste the session on this page. Sound good?

links_to_related_work

2008-10-06T17:22:16-04:00

Thomas Draschan Preserving Cultural Traditions in a Period of Instability is a computer generated video based on artefacts occurring during compression procedures. a short hypnotic and monotonous soundloop underlines the structural character of the video footage. a commentary by stan brakhage on the rise of digital technologies and new media forms the second sound layer.

lossless_series

2008-10-06T13:51:07-04:00

Lossless 1 2007 16mm film loop 00:02 Lossless 2 2008 digital video 03:00 Lossless 3 2008 digital video 10:00 Lossless 4 2008 digital video 14:00 Lossless 5 2008 digital video 03:00

lossy_compression

2008-11-16T14:43:15-04:00

A lossy compression method is one 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. Lossy compression is most commonly used to compress multimedia data (audio, video, still images), especially in applications such as streaming media and internet telephony. By contrast, lossless compression is required for text and data files, such as bank records, text articles, etc.

notes_on_preparing_the_media

2008-10-20T02:16:03-04:00

lossless 1 We rented a 35mm print of the Wizard of Oz We scanned 48 frames just before Dorothy is returned to Kansas. lossless 2 lossless 3 We enlarged the vistavision to 1280×720 square pix image sequences and gathered them into QT Pro to output the full-frame 720p image. We're satisfied with the final result out of both VisualHub and MPEGStreamclip. Need to compare the two media in the gallery for a final evaluation.

personnel

2009-02-22T15:00:37-04:00

Melissa Davenport [Melissa Davenport] Melissa Davenport Events & Publications Manager 617.495.5666 davenpor@fas.harvard.edu Ed Lloyd Exhibitions Manager 617.496.6612 elloyd@fas.harvard.edu Eric Riha construction Brian Bresnahan construction

presentations

2008-10-09T11:16:50-04:00

MassArt film society 30 april 2008 Nothing That Is Not There And The Nothing That Is curated by Rebecca Meyers THE EXQUISITE HOUR by Phil Solomon 1995, 16mm, 8 min. THE SNOWMAN by Phil Solomon 1989/1994, 16mm, 14 min. LOSSLESS #3 and LOSSLESS #4 by Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin 2008, video,

presskit

2010-02-15T15:37:43-04:00

In Baron and Goodwin’s Lossless series the “materiality” of the digital becomes the source-code for experimental execution. The artists’ renditions of appropriated films are certainly not “lossless” (i.e. a copy of the original in which nothing is lost), but rather gainful: through various techniques of digital disruption – compression, file-sharing, the removal of essential digital information – the artists reveal the gain of a “new” media, full of material forms ripe for aesthetic sleuthing.…

reviews

2008-10-12T17:50:06-04:00

Harvard Crimson Lossless Blurs Lines Between Old, New Published On 10/9/2008 7:39:38 PM By MADELEINE M. SCHWARTZ Crimson Staff Writer Dorothy’s red heels click incessantly on the screen. They close and open again and again but Dorothy doesn’t budge. But these heels are not going to bring anybody back to Oz—they’re stuck in a continuous loop. No, you’re not witnessing the result of a bad download; you’re watching “Lossless #1,” the first piece in the fall exhibition Lossless at the Carpente…

run_length_encoding

2008-11-16T14:31:11-04:00

Run Length Encoding or RLE describes a bitmapped image as sequences of repeated bit patterns. Consider this example: [Run Length Encoding example] This picture may be described as strings of colored blocks. Knowing that we scan left to right top to bottom the pattern may be used to reconstruct the image from instructions. Thi sis why we talk about the media beingperformed by the presentation hardware. The picture no longer exists as an image that may be observed. It has been reduced to a descr…

screenings

2009-03-17T18:50:42-04:00

LA Filmforum Do You See What I See? New Works from Adele Horne, Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin Egyptian Theater in Hollywood , Sunday March 15, 2009, 7:00 pm Filmforum is delighted to welcome back some of our good friends with new films. We last hosted Adele Horne with her documentary The Tailenders, which went on to win an Independent Spirit Award. Her new short works investigate realms of vision and interpretation of visual phenomena in delightful ways.

sebastian_gutierrez

2008-10-24T01:25:27-04:00

Hi Rebecca, Douglas, I meet Doug at Rachel Stevens, non-linear story tell class at Hunter, and I am awfully fascinated with the process and aesthetics of the projects oug showed us in class. I showed Doug my web page and we discussed for a couple of minutes some similar aspects of our work, but other students wanted to talk to you and well we had Rachel's class going, but I would of liked to talk more. I will also love to meet Rebecca and have a chat with both of y…

start

2008-11-22T16:05:28-04:00

This is a living document, and you are invited to make contributions. The document will be gathered together and published as a catalog at the end of December, 2008. You must register and login to edit this document. Please include more information about yourself on the contributors page.

thanks_to

2008-10-07T23:50:15-04:00

Judy Vishniac Barbara Grosz Lucien Taylor Marge Garber Melissa Davenport Ed Lloyd Eric Brian David Rodowick Lelia Amalfitano Dale Hudson Jen Mergel Rebecca Meyers Hayden Guest David Pendleton Andréa Picard Steve Anker CalArts faculty development grant

why_mpeg

2008-10-06T11:09:07-04:00

Each standard has a specific texture which we have foregrounded in the lossless series. Normally we are asked to look past the compression artifacts to see only the media. We identify the artifacts through this procedure, but only in a negative way: like fog on a lens.