Bitmap is a project based on binary artistic systems.
This project explores the concept of binary through a combination of analog and digital processes. Inspired by When Objects Dream by Man Ray at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the work begins with a series of B&W photograms created using darkroom tools such as film reels, agitation rods, scissors, and negative holders, placed directly onto photosensitive paper and exposing it to light. The resulting images (Photograms) emphasize the fundamental binary relationship between light-exposed areas, which turn dark (black), and light-blocked areas, which remain light (white).
The project then expands this binary logic into a hybrid analog/digital workflow. A perforated abstract object made from white air-dry clay is scanned with a flatbed scanner to generate both grayscale and bitmap images. The perforations allow light to pass through, echoing the principles of the photogram process. In Adobe Photoshop, the grayscale scans are transformed into high-contrast, two-color (black and white) images using bitmap color mode. Additional experimentation with adjustment layers and image inversion further refines the visuals.
This process reduces the images to their most minimal form, similar to black ink on white paper. The resulting compositions explore binary oppositions such as positive/negative and high resolution/low resolution, reinforcing the project’s core investigation of the binary concept.
The resulting bitmap images are used to create simple short video sequences that explore rhythm, repetition, and transition. The final piece is an interactive mosaic of looping videos that viewers can control independently (Play/Stop).
In a further stage of the project, previously scanned images are magnified into reduced, minimal pixel-like compositions. Detached from their original representational function, the pixels emerge as tactile visual textures, surfaces that oscillate between abstraction and materiality. These fragmented image-fields are subsequently transformed into miniature video works accompanied by repetitive two-note ostinato sounds. Activated by the viewer, the sound videos function simultaneously as image, instrument, and interface: each can be played or stopped individually, allowing the audience to compose an unpredictable cacophonic symphony through interaction.
The final phase of the project materializes in the form of three artist books: a photogram book, a bitmap book, and a sound book. Together, these virtual publications trace the project’s progressive transformations across image, code, texture, movement, and sound. The sound book, in particular, operates as a condensed archive of the entire process, gathering and synthesizing the elements that have carried the work to its final form.