Single Frame Journal #3

C Y D N „Lossy in 300 DPI”

I’m writing this on a rainy day, hearing an old lăutar—a street troubadour—pulling at the damp strings of a worn-out violin, and I can’t decide whether to close the window or not. Anyway.

This one goes out to all the bits we’ve lost, to all the zeros and ones we’ve left behind—those tiny sacrifices that make lossy compression possible in the first place.

And speaking of it— Lossy Compression — Technical Definition Lossy compression is a data encoding method that reduces file size by permanently removing certain information from the original data. The algorithm discards what it deems less significant to human perception—based on psychovisual or psychoacoustic models—to achieve a smaller, more efficient file.

This time, CYDN presents abstract art dressed in nostalgic engineering, pulling me into heavy emotions built metaphorically from digital remnants.

I enjoy these intellectual exercises of immersion in “big truths,” guided by the human capacity to both personify and abstract universal phenomena—like, in this case, compression as a means of efficiency, accepting the eternal loss of configurative elements from a system, even one handcrafted from pixels glowing through layers of liquid crystal and LED backlight.

I love when abstract art transcends its decorative purpose and becomes a substitute for humanist facets of contemporary life.

I’m tempted to say it makes them more digestible—but today, in an age of informational overload, that phrase feels tainted. So instead, I’d say Lossy in 300 dpi puts us in a state suited for contemplating a fateful, universal, and quietly poetic subject: the permanence—or impermanence, depending on perspective—of loss.

A loss that isn’t tragic but necessary—a conscious surrender that clears space for clarity, for breath, for new data to find its form. I don’t know, maybe I’m going too far with this—but the pale reds and blues guide me toward meditations on time’s passing, on looking back, and on having the proverbial decency to mourn.

To mourn what, though? The remnants that weigh us down? The data-clogged arteries of our own memory? Maybe it’s not a tragedy after all—maybe it’s a cleansing. A deliberate shedding of excess, a release from the noise we once mistook for meaning.

Because without context, information is just residue—zeros and ones drifting aimlessly, stripped of purpose, finally light enough to let something new emerge.

And the testament to that lies in the ascending rhythm of the composition and in the rough, imperfect digital textures created by the white overpainting—overpainting that turns sunsets into dawns.