Im/Possible Rainbows and Unnamed colours
Place holder project. Image Rosa Menkman
Im/Possible Rainbows and Unnamed colours
Is Golden Hour just one band of a planetary-scale rainbow happening at dusk and dawn?
Do rainbows exist beyond the visible frequency bands of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum?
As part of her EPFL residency, Menkman aims to explore the possibility of capturing alternative and impossible rainbows, ranging from those that exist beyond humanly visible light, to those that refract in unnatural shapes and organizations. In addition, Menkman will dive into the realm of unnamed colors that exist beyond the visible frequencies that the human eye can see, such as those present in X-RAY frequencies or FM radio. Although these frequencies lack a particular color name, they are specific demarcations to sensation. Through these explorations, Menkman seeks to expand the limits of human perception and unlock new possibilities for understanding color and light.
- Collaborations: EPFL Center for Imaging and the broad EPFL scientific community.
Rosa Menkman
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 the use of and interaction with our technologies.