
On Compression / Lakes
2014
"On Compression / Lakes" by Cory Arcangel (2014) explores the digital degradation of imagery through the lens of data compression, presenting landscapes that have been subjected to repeated encoding and decoding processes. The work examines how digital artifacts and glitches transform serene natural subjects—lakes—into abstracted, pixelated compositions that highlight the tension between nature and technology. Arcangel's piece invites viewers to consider the aesthetics of information loss and the unintended beauty that emerges from computational imperfection.
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
Notes
Execution: Executed in 2014, this work is unique.
🔨 Auction Lot
Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
May 15, 2020
Estimate: $30,000 to $40,000
Lot 134
More by Cory Arcangel
Artists in conversation

Rafaël Rozendaal
Dutch/Brazilian · b. 1980

Rozendaal creates post-internet digital works that examine the aesthetic language of screens and compression artifacts, often transforming simple natural or abstract imagery into meditations on how digital mediation reshapes perception. Like Arcangel, his practice lives at the intersection of net art conceptualism and minimalist visual output.

Wade Guyton
American · b. 1972

Guyton uses inkjet printers and digital processes to intentionally corrupt and degrade imagery, producing works where technological malfunction and data artifacts become the primary aesthetic content. His exploration of how machine errors transform landscape and representational subjects closely parallels Arcangels investigation of compression and information loss.

Jon Rafman
Canadian · b. 1981

Rafman works within a post-internet and new media framework, sourcing and transforming digitally mediated landscapes to examine how technology filters and distorts our experience of the natural world. His conceptual focus on the tension between organic subjects and their digital degradation mirrors the core concerns of On Compression / Lakes.
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