Subject Masking printsubjectmasking.work
The font of this text is ‘Atkinson Hyperlegible’ by the Braille Institute. It was written and set in the program ‘Pages’.
Introduction
This work is the mask of an artwork.
Instead of presenting its subject to you, I want to mask out
the mode of the subject-production itself.
As a software for image-making and manipulation,
Photoshop is a common tool for the visual construction of
desires, identification, and complicity.
To follow along, you can find the same tools on
photopea.com for free.
In the following, I’ll map out the hardware grids of masking
Bedingungen, and demonstrate a few examples of different
ways to apply a digital mask. By drawing attention to the
contexts and modes of their production, I hope to add
another alternative to the way we make subjects (/
products).
Das product of my endeavors is the mask as a thinking tool
that negotiates critical ‘legibility’ by navigating edges. I’ll
call this ledge-ability.
Hardware Grids
Before I can get to the ambivalent edges of software, there
are Bedingungen that I need to address first:
This method is based on the grid of an Apple iPad and
everything that comes with it. I have not found an elegant
way to address the exploitative basis of its production yet.
[…]
Moving on to the Inhalt:
I want to mask out two matrixes that are of special interest
for this context for their subject-making properties.
One of them is a transparent grid layer of touch sensing
capacitors, which interpret my touch into a virtual
movement.
The other one is the visual grid of pixels which my eyes
translate into zusammenhängende information.
Anhand of these two grids, I want to point out systemic acts
of Vereinheitlichung, die mit Rasterisierung einher geht.
In between them, you’ll find […] as both conductor and an
intervention of these contexts.
What Does Software Feel Like?
‘Touch’, as a sense through which I ‘make sense’, traces a
line to the legible, and commercialized German forest that
James C. Scott describes in ‘Seeing Like A State’ (1998):
(Page 15:)
[…] “At the limit, the forest itself would not even have
to be seen; it could be "read" accurately from the
tables and maps in the forester's office.”
(Page 18:)
successfully but also to market homogeneous product
units to logging contractors and timber merchants. (14)
(Note Page 360:)
and control .“*
instance, synonymous; it was a system that promised to
maximize the return of a single commodity over the
long haul and at the same time lent itself to a
centralized scheme of management.”
[…]
mixed results to create a virtual ecology, while denying
its chief sustaining condition: diversity.
The metaphorical value of this brief account of
scientific production forestry is that it illustrates the
dangers of dismembering an exceptionally complex
and poorly understood set of relations and processes
in order to isolate a single element of instrumental
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the production of a single commodity.”
*In another iteration of this text, Scott’s timber trees were
commercial apple trees. Instead of the trees themselves,
the uniform products were the genetically engineered units
of apples. A common technique for this biological unit
production is called ‘Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS)’. It
causes a part of the plant’s second generation to be sterile.
This way, the uniformity of the product ‘apple’ is ensured,
because only the parent generation is allowed to reproduce.
8
I mention this because it gives me to opportunity to move
from trees to apples, to Apple (TM), and back to the iPad:
The grid layer of touch-sensing capacitors is transparent.
When I touch the screen, I
unterbreche
movement behind the physical glass.
Andara Shastika has made points about the colonial history
of ‘begreifen’. To ‘(get) hold (of)’ also means to ‘besitzen’
and ‘ein-nehmen’. Sadly, Shasti hasn’t published anything
about this yet, which is also indicative of another context
that this (con-)text masks - the verbal one.
9
I’d also like to add more modes of understanding here, with
yet another linguistic web of entanglements:
In English, I say “I see” when I cognitively understood
something. In Mandarin, I can differentiate between
understanding by looking (kàn de dng), and
understanding by hearing (tng de dng).
So what about feeling? A behelfsmäßige construction would
be (gn de dng (this is made up)) ‘understanding
through feeling’. It might be my colonial-self, who is still
interested in touch-understanding, but to ‘understand by
being touched’ resonates with the German ‘to be berührt’,
which is emotional; not through the cognitive senses, but
through emotional sensuality.
However, (Yúyn Lin-Woywod) has pointed out that
(gn jué de gn), the feeling, is more like a
general perception of a situation, and the translation makes
it more physical than it is in Mandarin. She also reminded
me of the fact that people read in Braille, so there was no
need to overload the connection of ‘digital understanding
through touch’ that much; which is - fair.
10
There is also (gn dòng), which is similar to ‘being
touched’ in German, and ‘being moved’ in English since it
relates to both the (gn) feeling and the (dòng)
movement.
dng) ‘to understand by moving’, and it resonates with the
aspect of Sara Ahmed’s thoughts on orientation in ‘Queer
Phenomenology’ (2006):
“It is by understanding how we become orientated in
moments of disorientation that we might learn what it
means to be orientated in the first place. Kant, in his
classic essay ‘ What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in
Thought?’ (1786, cited in Casey 1997), begins precisely
with this point. He uses the example of walking
blindfolded into an unfamiliar room. You don’t know
where you are, or how where you are relates to the
contours of the room, so how would you find your way
around the room? How would you find your way to the
door so you can leave the room? Kant argues that to
become orientated in this situation depends on
knowing the difference between the left and the right
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side of the body. Such a difference, in its turn, shows
that orientation is not so much about the relation
between the objects that extend into space (say, the
relation between the chair and the table); rather,
orientation depends on the bodily inhabitance of that
space. We can only find our way in a dark room if we
know the difference between the sides of the body. […]
Space then becomes a question of ‘turning’, of
directions taken, which not only allow things to appear,
but also enable us to find our way through the world by
situating ourselves in relation to such things.”
If I take Sara Ahmed’s advice and apply it to sensual
sense-making: What is an empirical way to understand the
digital space of subject-masking?
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Becoming A Digital Subject
At this moment in time (2021), I type and I speak in video
conferences. This is how I access my digital subject-hood. I
perform my subject-ness with my fingers, my digits, and my
tongue - dexterous body parts that are sensitive to touch.
As I face no one but an observant camera, my physical
presence dissolves into pixels and that render me into a
representative for my ‘self’. I am no longer a member of the
public, I am a public figure. I don’t speak, I broadcast. I am
hyper-connected but I touch, touch, touch - no one but my
smooth, shiny interface.
What I like about this virtual proximity is that everything is
subject to the digital collage of flat, flat pixel platforms.
I dream about my graduation work: I cover the floors of the
exhibition space with scaled up, green cutting mats. The
squares are now exactly 1x1 m². Visitors walk over the grid
without seeing it.
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I have nothing else to show and I don’t know what else to
say. When I wake up from my pixel dream, everything
becomes more readable in recht-winkligen frames.
Consumer-me is scattered all over virtual platforms.
Accepting ‘necessary’ cookies, and following the quantified
breadcrumbs of attention.
As a digitally conditioned subject, I crawl forward with my
virtual hands and my virtual mouth. The algorithms that
feed me know my taste. Here, I tippe auf Tasten - tasting -
taste vorwärts.
With this grim Märchen and this of Gretel and
Hänsel, let’s continue to follow along the path through the
uniform forests of 18th century Germany:
(Page 14 - 15:)
mathematicians worked from the cone-volume principle
to specify the volume of sale-able wood contained by a
standardized tree (Normalbaum) of a given size-class.”
(Page 15:)
virtually identical with the logic of commercial
exploitation.” […] The fact is that forest science and
geometry, backed by state power, had the capacity to
transform the real, diverse, and chaotic old-growth
forest into a new, more uniform forest that closely
resembled the administrative grid of its techniques. To
this end, the underbrush was cleared, the number of
species was reduced (often to monoculture), and
plantings were done simultaneously and in straight
15
Henry Lowood observes, "produced the monocultural ,
even-age forests that eventually transformed the
Normalbaum from abstraction to reality. The German
forest became the archetype for imposing on disorderly
nature the neatly arranged constructs of science.”
(Page 18:)
became a powerful aesthetic as well . The visual sign of
the well-managed forest, in Germany and in the many
settings where German scientific forestry took hold,
came to be the regularity and neatness of its
appearance. (…) The more uniform the forest, the
greater the possibilities for centralized management.”
[…]
16
From this forest grid of trees, we move onto a grid that is
based on liquid crystals:
When a liquid crystal display is turned on, the backlight has
to pass through several grids before reaching the Red,
Green, or Blue color filter of a sub-pixel.
By default, two polarization filters block all light. Their
respective vertical bzw. horizontal grids are arranged to
cancel each other out. The first filter, the horizontal one,
conditions the passing light to travel in straight, horizontal
lines. This makes the light’s movements more predictable
when it reaches the liquid crystal layer. Here, the light
follows the rice grain-shaped crystals. Because their
arrangement turns from a horizontal to a vertical alignment,
the light also bends along with them. This way, it can pass
through the vertical filter. Depending on the angle of the
crystals, the amount of vertically traveling light can also be
adjusted between the values of 0 (Black) and 255 (White).
This crystal’s bending properties are utilized by
standardization. They are arranged in units, that can be
polarized individually by the electrodes that encapsulate
them. When this electric current is applied, the crystals all
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align in the same direction. On their own, they wouldn’t
orient themselves in a predictable pattern. It’s only because
they are compressed in these units, that they lead the light
through the filter instead of scattering it.
In the end, the image I see on my screen is constructed
through filtered light, aligned crystals, and rows and rows of
rectangular pixels.
[…]
If we’d go further, we’d fall into obscurity.
To find our way back, we just have to follow the trees we’ve
marked out earlier. Whether these individuals are marked
for orientation purposes, or to cut them down depends on
who is reading this.
19
‘Sichtbarkeit. Epistemologie und Politik eines
Schlüsselbegriffs analoger und digitaler Medienrealitäten
(2019):
Normen der Sichtbarkeit, bzw genauer: der Lesbarkeit,
innerhalb derer eben diese Sichtbarkeit eingeklagt
wird (Schaffer 2008). Also erfordert die Herstellung
von Sichtbarkeit eine „Anpassungsleistung“ (Mesquita
2011, S. 14) an bestehende Normen, um in ein
bestehendes Privilegiensystem eingeschlossen zu
ausschließt.” (Page 5)
What I connect with is that the emphasis on visibility ein
Machtgefälle herstellt that demands assimilation into the
same value system that masks out these hierarchies in the
first place. To me, the issue here is not that this thinking
method will always exclude people. The problem is the
unquestioned binary division that this visibility grid applies.
20
At the end of the chapter ‘Wie, in welcher Form sichtbar’
Johanna also writes this:
Verwendung von Sichtbarkeit, die darauf hinweisen,
dass Hypervisibilität als exzessive Ausgesetztheit an
die Blicke anderer eine Gewaltdimension benennt.
Kobena Mercer beispielsweise zeigt auf, wie
„Hyperblackness“ in der Medien- und
Unterhaltungsindustrie als „neues Regime
dazu dient, durch Klassismus gezogene Differenzen zu
verdecken. Und schließlich ist mit Unsichtbarkeit auch
keineswegs generell ein Status der Machtlosigkeit
verbunden, ganz im Gegenteil definiert sich die
Wirkmacht gesellschaftlicher Normen gerade über ihre
Unsichtbarkeit.” (Page 6)
The last part about othering aligns with the way masking
layers construct subjects by excluding possible others.
Really, the question is not who is seen, but who is reading.
The tendency to focus only on what or who is visible leads
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away from the fact that the process of identification is
habitual and structural .
Because of my recurrent exposure to a specific set of
images, I can identify their subjects more quickly. Which
just means that they fit into one of my pre-made boxes.
Which subjects are more visible to me is not only a
statement über my environment but also about the Raster of
differences I make.
One way of breaking out of this repetitive evaluation is to
pay attention to how I am seeing and what I recognize as
information.
With the tools of masking layers, I can digitally navigate the
arbitrary edges of my own values.
22
1. Thumbnail of a ‘layer mask’ (left) and a layer mask icon (right)
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subtraction, the difference is that analoge masks shield a
subject from definition, while digital masks highlight and
define them. When an analoge mask is added, it is meant to
hide or obscure a subject. A digital mask, however, is meant
to subtract the surrounding context of the subject. Because
they are the only thing available for definition, the grouped
pixels form a subject.
In photoshop terms, this visual removal of context is called
‘freistellen’.
What is masked out creates an interface for reflection but
also for projection. On the other hand, what is hidden can
remain unbothered by the sharp edge of definition but is
also denied its own agency.
With these definitions, the process of negotiation begins.
24
Returning to Ahmed’s searching hands in the dark:
The following demonstrations might not only help to feel
out the edges of digital subjects; To consensually touch
these projection surfaces, I have to be aware of the value
systems that I touch them with.
(A question that I can’t find an answer to is: What is the
digital equivalent to the left/right value in physical space?
Maybe you can tell me.)
25
2. Close up of a pixel grid with a dividing border-line
26
Cutting
For the method of cutting, producer-me has to define where
the subject begins and where it ends. This loops back to
Scott’s “razor-sharp interest in the production of a single
commodity”.
First, I have to draw an arbitrary line through the gradients
of ‘here’ or ‘there’, ‘this’ or ‘that’. In this way, the cutting
mode of masking is similar to ‘othering’.
To cut out a digital mask in Photoshop, I use one of the
following selection tools: the lasso tool or the rectangle
bzw. ellipse marquee tool. All of them are freehand tools,
with which I can define differences solely based on my own
biases. While the marquee tools have a pre-defined shape,
the lasso tool also allows me to draw borders randomly.
The borders show up as a line that alternates between black
and white. Because these white and black phases appear to
be traveling across the image, this visualization is also
called ‘marching ants’. They always travel from left to right.
27
The subject I mask out with this is a collection of isolated
units. The most 'clean cut' subjects are those, which have
undergone prior conditioning like the 'Normalbaum' in the
German forest or the horizontally filtered light in the liquid
crystal displays. When the subject fits neatly into its
designated box, the process of commodification is most
efficient.
This isolation, however, also enables new virtual relations. I
can move the masked out subject around in the image and
construct new compositions with subjects that had little or
no prior proximities.
Also, when I approach this from the subtractive side, the
image’s focus shifts when I delete the original point of
interest. Sometimes this highlights the framing devices of
the image producer, and what they themselves pay attention
to.
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Painting
While drawing a line is about defining the subject’s edges,
painting is about its gradients.
When I am painting, I define subjects with values. Whether
they are bright or dark, saturated or muted, the contrast of
color, hue, and brightness is what defines the subject of a
painting.
I can apply this mode of painting to digital masking by
adding and subtracting from the mask layer with a low
opacity brush. This way, the subjects blend into the
surrounding pixels.
By painting, the subject is less of a singular object that I
can move around independently, and more of a planned/
planted element within the whole composition of the image.
Only when I know where the subject goes, I can slowly
mend/blend it into the surrounding context. This virtual
proximity emphasizes the subject’s context and relation to
the rest of the image.
29
This method lends itself to personal negotiations about how
much to add, and how much to take away from the subject’s
own context layer.
3. / 4. Close-Ups of the edge variation between ‘cut’ and ‘painted’
masking
30
masks of the software. In Photoshop these tools are called
‘Object Selection’, ‘Quick Selection’, or ‘Magic Wand’. The
latter tool is renamed into an ‘Action’ called ‘Select
Subject’ in the app version of the software.
[…]
O added that there is also the option to ‘manually’ adjust
the sensitivity of this algorithm for the ‘Magic Wand’ tool,
which adds more ways to negotiate with the calculated
grids of the software.
What this sensitivity does, is very similar to the process of
analoge painting. The algorithm gleicht hue, brightness and
color gegeneinander ab, and entscheidet so, what is part of
the subject and what is not.
31
The following is an example of a blend between painted
layer masking, and an algorithmically generated mask.
In this example, the context ‘cuts’ into the subject, because
parts of the dark eyelashes are interpreted as ‘background’
information and therefore not part of the subject.
What is interesting is where the software’s digital , and my
analoge interpretations differ:
Even though both of us are looking at pixels, my
interpretation of a subject’s edge diverges from the one
that the software ‘sees’.
What we do have in common is that we’re both fed by
algorithms. Mine are just stored in the analog and
analogous connections of a different language.
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calculated by the subject finding algorithm, and partly
masked out with the paint tool.
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Closing Thoughts
I suggest to use ‘masking’ as a Begriff to verweisen darauf,
dass Verstehen sich immer entlang einer mask layer von
Unverstehen bewegt.
Vorstellung der Transparenz, ebenso wie der der
Sichtbarmachung, „eine fetischistische Struktur
lenkt von den Grenzen des Repräsentationssystems ab,
in dem sie an die Stelle eines Mangels an
Darstellbarkeit das Ideal einer Fülle an maximaler
Sichtbarkeit setzt“ (Hentschel 2001, S. 70). Ähnlich
beschreibt Wendy Hui Kyong Chun die immense
Bedeutung, die Transparenz gegenwärtig sowohl im
Zusammenhang mit Produktdesign wie auch in
politischen und wissenschaftlichen Diskursen besitzt,
als „kompensatorische Geste“.”
Medienrealitäten’, Page 8)
In a way, masking is compensation. It hides Unverstehen in
the name of Übersichtlichkeit, which, as I know now, is a
pseudonym for commodification.
Masking also emphasizes the Hergestelltheit of any given
subject, as well as its simulated proximity to an argument’s
context. Because a mask is always constructed, it also
enables me to pose structural questions.
The tools of masking help me to navigate my own ledge-
ability. By consciously drawing out the edges of my own
bias grid, I also learn to identify how my values show up in
the subjects I am making.
Within the digital sphere, images become virtual collages
that do not lend themselves to the objective of binary
definitions. Their construction always includes the viewer
themselves.
Not only do I have to question what I think I see, but also
how much of it. The literal definition of a digital subject
becomes a quantifiable definition in a matter of pixels.
35
In the end, I arrive at the (wèn tí, question/problem):
What is my own resolution, meine eigene Auflösung?
37
I couldn’t let the white background remain an unquestioned
default. That’s why you’ll find that the colors are inverted in
the print version of this text.
For scale references, please keep in mind that ‘pixels’ here
refer to the digital representation of pixels in a grid, not the
actual physical pixels.)
1. The close-up of Photoshop’s gray toolbar shows a layer
mask. The image is divided by a vertical line. The left
side shows the rectangular thumbnail of a layer mask.
Its contents are mostly black, with two white dots on its
oberen Rand. This indicates that most of the image has
been hidden except for what the white dots contain. The
right side of the image shows the layer mask icon. It
has a rectangular form with a circular space in the
middle that appears to be ‘empty’ because it has the
same color as the toolbar.
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2. A grid of rectangular pixels is divided by a slightly
tilted, horizontal line about halfway through the image.
The upper part contains pixels in various shades of
blue. In the lower part, the colors of the pixels are
various shades of beige with dark speckles grays. The
line that is dividing the two planes alternates between
white and black for the length of a pixel. It follows the
slanted angle of the edge in a jagged way, that does not
line up with the color planes. In some areas, there are
blue hues on the beige side of the border. On the left
edge of the image, large portions of beige pixels are
grouped with the blue pixels beyond the border. Where
the division line is ‘off' like this, the gradient colors
between the blue and beige pixels are visible.
// This is a detail of a picture I took in the Messe
Kassel. There were blue carpets laid out for a dog fair.
On these carpets, people would present dogs to other
people who would judge them according to a breed
standard.
38
3. / 4. Two screenshots framed by the grey toolbars of
the photoshop app. On the right side, the paintbrush
tool is selected and the opacity slider is open, showing
that the brush is set to an opacity of 37%. The left
image is magnified by 538%, while the right one is
magnified by 1421%. Both images of the project show a
beige plane with dark markings. In the left image, these
markings read “yourselves” in a serif font that is turned
clockwise by 90 degrees. In the right image, the
markings are dark dots. In both screenshots, the oval
shapes cover half of the image. On the left, soft stripes
of muted brown and bluish-gray colors follow the oval’s
curve. The colors of the oval to the right are more
saturated and range from green to brown. On its edge is
a thin line of bright green, contrasting with a dark gray
color that fades into the beige of the surrounding pixels.
The edges of both forms vary greatly. They alternate
between sharp edges and soft gradients.
// These ovals are both image details took of my
pupils with a phone camera through a 40x zoom pocket
microscope. In the left image, the
39
microscope’s white case is captured by the phone
camera. The right side is an image of my iris through
the lens of the microscope. The digital layer ‘below’
them, is a masked-out photo of a book page O send
me. The book is called ‘Dreams, Evolution and Value
Fulfillment Vol. 2 (1986)’. It was dictated by Seth /
Jane Roberts and transcribed by Robert F. Butts. This
particular page is about cells knowing about their own
form and being curious about their edges.
5. The framing of this image is the same as the two before.
The image is zoomed in by 230%. There is a round
shape in the center of the image. Around it, there are
pixels in the same beige color as before. In the upper
left corner, a black shape cuts into the corner of the
image. This time, some of the markings read “-FILLM-“
in all caps. They, too, are turned clockwise by 90
degrees. The beginning of the word is cut off by the
lower edge of the image, and the end of it is obscured
by the round shape in the middle. The pixels within the
round shape have a large range of colors. Their hues
and saturations can be sorted into three planes that run
more or less vertically across the round shape that
40
contains them. The pixels on the edges are more varied
than the ones in the center, which makes the subject
appear to have more definition there, while the center
appears to be blurry. The darkest plane in the middle
contains a vaguely circular, blue group of pixels. The
two outer planes have different hues of beige colors
which are interrupted by dark, curved lines. These lines
are recognizable as individual hairs. The hair grows in a
curve to the left and upwards. Where they touch the
circle’s edge, the colors of the surrounding pixels cross
into the circle’s sphere. Here, the edge of the circle is
quite sharp, while the overall edge is relatively smooth
otherwise.
// This is an image I took of one of ’s eyes with the
same microscope. The light, blue cluster between the
lashes is the microscope’s reflection on the eye.
41
compliance and the real talk.
(https://cargocollective.com/yuyenlin)
O (Chase Carr-Braint / ), for being an inspiration, for
life-sized mark-making, and for the attitude of movement.
(https://hdl.handle.net/11296/m46d6h)
and the enthusiasm for quiet things.
Cat Woywod for the reflections, for the sound-based
thought-frame, and for teaching me about ableism.
(https://soundcloud.com/catwoywod/)
communication, for productive deconstruction, for writing,
and for paying attention.
frames of the body.
Gabriele Franziska Goetz, for the page as space, for the
patience, and for pushing me.
(https://ambulantdesign.nl/)
Bjørn Melhus, for seeing in virtual frames, and for enabling
me to so many experiences that I can’t possibly list all of
them here.
learning from you.
spiders (voec), Paul Diestel , Esther Poppe, Charlotte_r
Hermann, Henrik Seidel, ‘Pigeon’, Robin Vehrs, Rosa Menkman,
Eli Cortiñas, Amelie Jakubek, Jayden Hubrecht, Ipek Burçak,
Natalia Escudero, Ina Bierstedt, Huang Chien-Hung,
Chen Kai-Huang, Astrid Stricker, Georgi Krastev, Ella
Ziegler, Petra Heß, Sabine Hänßgen, ’Baltasar’, Rike Suhr,
Isabella Artadi, Paula Godínez, Jonas Töpfer, Elio Carranza,
Feng Ho-Hsuan, Michael Göbel , Jonas Flessel ,
Pascalina Krummenauer, Palina Lanskaja, Regine Woywod,
Isabel Paer, Clare Butcher, Jasper Meiners, Hannes Drescher,
Sepake Angiama, ‘Suey’, ‘Liebchen’, Pamela Valfer, Saskia
Kaffenberger, den enBees München, Stefan Woywod, ‘Drago
Hitchcock’, Klaus Vincent Steinkemper, Inge Oschek, the
colleagues at Aids-Hilfe Kassel, the T*räumchen team, the
students of ‘Theory and Praxis’, the ‘Virtual Realities’ class, the
Basisklasse Bildende Kunst (2014) and the Basisklasse VisKom
(2021) of Kunsthochschule Kassel.
Objects, Others. Duke University Press, Durham North
Carolina.
eines Schlüsselbegriffs analoger und digitaler
Medienrealitäten. In: Dorer J., Geiger B., Hipfl B., Ratkovi
V. (eds) Handbuch Medien und Geschlecht. Springer
Reference Sozialwissenschaften. Springer VS, Wiesbaden.
Scott J. C. (1998) Seeing like a state - How certain schemes
to improve the human condition have failed. In: Scott J. C.
(ed) Yale Agrarian Studies Series. Yale University Press,
New Haven and London.
Abschluss an der
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Introduction