2. On Distillation
Distilation By Retort
2022
Rights Thresholds 51: Heat
The rendering of images, like the rendering of fats, emanates heat. As a by-product of data traversing along wires and chips laced with precious metals, heat secretes until, with a puff of exhaust, an image appears.
The printing of images, like the rendering of images, emanates heat. The ink printed on this page is an image of an object. It is an image that has been produced by the translation of points on a 3-D model into raster data that appears to the eyes as pixels, converted from ones and zeros to the RGB color scale from one to 255. Corresponding inks are then mechanically mixed and applied to paper as an artifact that distills an idea and an operation.
The distillation of images, like the distillation of matter, emanates heat. The object represented by the RGB scale printed on the page is an image of a distillation device. The object itself is a retort: a vessel used in some laboratory settings to house the alchemic process of distillation. The long, downward-pointing neck of the two-chambered retort mediates and condenses the flow of liquid material in order to bring forth a purer substance. Much like the refining processes for the precious metals that today lace our computer chips, the retort as artifact distills and preserves an idea into an operation.
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