User:Tharim/minor mindofthemachine

Life Compression

PEOPLE

Alkenah Wansing Major: Graphic Design

PAGE ALKENAH

Suzanne Guitjens Major: Fashion

PAGE SUZANNE

Tharim Cornelisse Major: Illustration

PAGE THARIM

DEVELOPMENT

Early on ln the project we picked the subject of compression to work around.

We looked into a few different kinds of compression, the history of compression and the relationship between compression and our project.

When computers, personal computers in particular, were upcoming compression was very needed. Data wasn’t usable because files were to big and computers to “slow”. Files needed to be smaller for the computer, but had to remain the same quality for humans. For example audio files had to be smaller, but still had to sound good. Images had to contain less data, but still had to look good. Algorithms were created to do exactly this.

QUADTREE ENCODING Quadtree encoding is a compression method which is used in JPEG compression and is based around a fairly simple concept in which the computer doesn't need to save the information for all the pixels in a image. It keeps dividing the picture into sections which have more or less the same color. The computer just has to remember how many times and where he split up the picture.

Above you can see two images which have been compressed with a quadtree system. The one on the left has been to told to split up fewer times than the one on the right so you can see the different sections in which the computer divides the image.

IMAGE TO AUDIO, AUDIO TO IMAGE We experimented with using the “wrong” kind of compression. For example how would a .jpg file sound like. We took a picture of three dices and saved it as a .raw file in photoshop and then opened it in Audacity. Audacity is an open source DAW (digital audio workplace). The file would just sound like noise, but what was more interesting was using audio effects on raw data and then opening it in photoshop again. This way you can visualise the audio effects and how they alter the image (see some of the results above).

You can also use this technique the other way around. Converting an audio file to a .raw file and editing the raw file in photoshop. You can play with opacity, gradient or hide images in the code for the music. We hid a picture of the Beatles in a bit of their song “Strawberry fields forever”.