Digital images exist as complex data sets. They are collections of information which exist discreetly; beyond time and material. The image is pulled into being through image processing software in real-time. Therefore images exist in the abstract; stored electronically the image could exist on paper or in human memory and still be fed into image processing software to be displayed as colour and light as an absolute replication.

Unlike prior forms of cultural objects, images exist not as the object itself but as a memory, to be recalled as a vision in real-time. This recollection is the exact and (near) instant processing of the image data, infinitely replicable and reproducible. Images thus exist in real-time, they are things without labour, material and history.

This project is positioned in this image-space, it is concerned with treating images as datasets. This body of work looks towards reconciling the nature of digital images with how the image is consumed. Teasing at how this frames the relationships we have with our images. Does is matter what lies beneath the visual surface of images that evoke love, desire, anger, indifference, etc?

My methodology has looked to establish a practice which exposes the abstract nature of digital images through a process of manipulating the source data of a JPEG file of my portrait. I have embedded messages in English into this file, changing (or predominately deteriorating) the image. The resulting images are unsettling mutations of my portrait which contain hidden yet present messages within them. This process aims to expose the image as the information that lies beneath its surface, to reveal what is bringing viewed as the signalling of information. This work is rooted in hidden, unknown and encrypted information behind the surface of the image.