Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Daniel Pflumm at 6817 Melrose

(link)

A picture has scale and resolution, a size. A logo has none; logos are "vector based," making them infinitely enlargeable, magnifiable, with no resolution loss, no file size gain. The logo exists at all sizes simultaneously because it is code.
Similarly, printed in the real the logo exists such that at any scale it speaks without information loss, i.e. the logo is a communicative binary, it is either recognized or not. A picture is "lossy" in the real world, it will magnify into pixels or become soft in the distance, it has an appropriate scale for viewing, similar to the real world. The logo functions without regard to scale by making legibility supersede sight, space, scale, all the tenants of sculpture.  Billboards attempt obsolescing space by, like turning sound into heat, turn scale into broadcast, converting space into a virtualization,  replaced with codes communicating, legibility tantamount to presence. You don't see the icon, it just unpacks it information in your head. "Mental buggery with the wet muscle of signification replacing the consensual."


See too: Amanda Ross-Ho at The Pit