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Datamosh modul8 plug in6/25/2023 ![]() The Quicktime 7 movie.mov window changes into what looks like a ‘terminal’, which is then commanded to save itself as a QTlet named ‘shark_pile’. The shark folds up in a kludgy pile of video, resting on the bottom of the desktop, still playing but now in a messily folded way. Suddenly, a pointer clicks the pause button of the interface, and the Great White Shark turns into a fluid video, leaking out of the Quicktime 7 movie.mov interface buttons. Movie.mov shows a slow motion nature video of a Great White Shark, jumping out of the ocean. It opens inside a Quicktime 7 player, on top of what later becomes clear is a clean desktop that is missing a menu bar. Story-wise, QTzrk starts when the movie.mov file is clicked. The QTlet elements are featured in QTzrk but are also released as standalone downloadables, available on Satrom’s website however, they no longer play properly on recent versions of Mac OS X (the masking option is now obsolete and playing these files significantly slows down the computer). The QTlets are constructed and opened via a now obsolete option in the Quicktime 7 software: Satrom used a mask to change the shape of the otherwise four-cornered videos and transformed them into ‘video shards’. The second type of video element are the QTlets – smaller, looped videos that are not quadrilateral. Movie.mov is shown on top of the desktop, an environment which gets deconstructed during QTzrk. The first element, a 16:9 video, is a desktop video – a video captured from the desktop perspective – and features ‘movie.mov’. Technically, QTzrk (Jon Satrom, video installation, 2011) consists of two main video ‘elements’. Resolution studies also involves a research on alternative settings that could have been in place, but are not – and the technologies which are, as a result, rendered outside of the discourse of computation. But resolution studies does not only involve the study of the effects of technological progress or the aesthetization of the scales of resolution. In essence resolution studies is about literacy: literacy of the machines, the people, the people creating the machines, and the people being created by the machines. The case study serves as an introduction to: "Resolution Studies”, a proposal for a theory that involves more than just the calculation of resolutions as described in physics. With the help of this case study Menkman illustrates how certain digital video setting, or resolutions, are not supported unilaterally, but could have changed our entire understanding of the medium of video. ![]() This essay starts with the description of a pioneering work of video art by Jon Satrom: QTzrk (2011). Refuse to let the syntaxes of (a) history direct our futures.
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