Distortions of Perspective; or, Why I Love Ditherpunk.
Ditherpunk has overtaken my artistic vision in a big way as of late. Since getting my Sony Mavica up and running, I've been absolutely obsessed with editing my photos with the explicit purpose of making the compressed PNG export look nice. I've been doing the same to video game screenshots that I upload to my Bluesky account. I could just export these image files as a normal lossless PNG or a low-compression JPEG, but where's the fun in that?
But then again, where's the fun in this? Why do I do things this way?
Firstly, I love ditherpunk. From games like Critters For Sale, Who's Lila and Return of the Obra Dinn, there is this out-of-time vintage flair in the ditherpunk style. Dithering - noisy, pixelated distortions that help blend one colour or value into the next, almost like crosshatching - creates enough of an abstraction away from what is trying to be displayed for the mind to fill in the gaps. In horror games, this can effectively create a sense of paranoia, finding disgusting or horrifying shapes in the mess of shuddering pixels that ultimately hide nothing but a shadow. But my artwork doesn't portray this sense of horror, so what is it trying to do instead?
Dissociation. That is the intended sense of my artwork. It is supposed to feel nostalgic and sentimental, but vaguely so; my images don't hold themselves to tech-specific colour palettes one might find with specific hardware like old Amiga or Commodore computers. The limited colour palette only points toward that era of digital graphics, but the images are still far too high a resolution and pixel density to truly represent the era.
Details are lost in the colour compression; shadows, midtones and highlights crunch together to give the vague appearance of an object or person without allowing for immediate recognition of what or who is being observed. This mirrors my own experience with memories as someone who deals with Dissociative Identity Disorder. The constant brain fog combined with the terrible memory that are prevalent in people with DID messes with my ability to recall details in much the same way. People become vague shapes of themselves, memories become vague suggestions of sentimental feelings. I guess at the spaces between the compressed artifacts to try and manufacture a feeling of a complete memory, desperate to cling to the memories I cherish.
Some memories are more detailed than others. The compression is still there, but subtle enough to allow for vague shapes to become more distinct and profound. In those memories, I can place myself in that moment in time as if I were really there again.
Those memories are few and far between.
Most of my memories are just... gone. I don't recall how I've met any of my friends or loved ones. If I do, it is a vague suggestion at a memory and is often not even the first time I'd met somebody - merely the first time something notable happened with that somebody. It feels terrifying, at times. As days roll by, fear sometimes splashes itself into my mind. What will I remember of today? I already don't remember much of yesterday. What will I forget tomorrow? Will it be something important?
This is why dithering and high-compression artifacts attract me so much, and why I use them in my artwork. It feels like a more accurate representation of what my memories look like than the original images or screenshots I take. Photo albums usually display images in crisp quality at the time of the image being taken, fixed to a specific moment in time with extreme detail. I never remember anything like that. When I comb through old photo albums my mom keeps in a cabinet, I can't put myself there; instead I recall the previous times I'd seen those photos. The memories have disappeared and been replaced by the photos themselves.
My compressed imagery is what that feels like. The vague nostalgia and sentimentality of a memory, crushed into bits and bytes that can only point in the general direction of the memory's contents. The mind fills in the gaps where details should be, fabricating parts out of assumptions about the memory. Shapes become hazy and vague, fogged up by pixels as they try to reconcile with the loss of detail. Speech becomes vague pitches and rhythms. Faces become mud.
There is comfort in seeing the images I create mirroring this. It makes my memory issues feel less terrifying, as if they were abstract on purpose. As if it were the normal function of a human mind. It isn't, but feeling like it is comforts me anyway.
It seems to comfort others, too. People like my ditherpunk imagery. They like the loss of detail, the vaguely old-tech feel of it. Like watching a crusty old computer doing its best to show you something neat. That, in a way, is what I feel I am.
An old, failing computer trying its best to show you something neat.
