Compression in the Digital Age
After I gained awareness in 2022 of Claude Mellan’s single spiraling line from his 1649 engraving The Sudarium of Saint Veronica, I was deeply inspired to discover if I was able to execute a self-portrait using this same spiraling line technique. This week I recently bought a relatively inexpensive scanner to better archive and digitize years of my hand drawn works on paper.
For all the photo dorks out there, this 11” drawing from 2022 was scanned at 2,400 dpi and is close to 13,000 pixels! This platform wouldn’t allow me to upload a JPEG that is roughly 135 MB, therefore the high definition scan below was digitally scaled down, and is now further squashed and compressed to align within the width of your smart phone screens and monitors. I’m happy with this drawing and thankful you are able to see it, but I suggest we put down our digital devices and sign offline as much as possible. The natural world is overflowing with a beauty that is an uncompressed fullness that shimmers at every changing moment.
Self Portrait (for Claude Mellan), Ink on Paper, 11" x 11", 2022
This morning at roughly 6AM I took several photos of the rising sun to welcome and appreciate the 2025 Summer Solstice. This experience was natural, uncompressed and felt without limits, as the shades and hues surrounding me danced and glimmered in this evolving light. My awareness was like a wide-angle lens and the horizon seemed to stretch towards infinity. The moment I snapped a few photos this unbounded sensory experience collapsed to a single point, and inside my digital camera the rising sun was transferred into a string of binary code. The natural expansion of physical space became completely flattened, compressed into a digital file without any real sheen or reflectivity.
