The institutions for Resolution Disputes (iRD) call attention to media resolutions. While »resolution« generally simply refers to a determination of functional settings in the technological domain, the iRD stresses that a resolution is indeed a settlement (solution), but at the same time also entails a space of compromise between different actors (objects, materialities, and protocols) in dispute over norms (such as frame rate and number of pixels). Common settings can ossify as generally accepted requirements or de facto standards, while other standards are notated as norms by standardizing organizations such as the International Organization for Standardization.
Resolutions organize what gets seen, and what is dismissed, obfuscated, or even forgotten. But who is responsible for setting these resolutions? Who gets to decide the hegemonic conventions that resolve the image? How do these standards come into being? Rosa Menkman aims to provide some answers to these questions.
