«Compression: between trees and symbols»

Sigifredo Escobar Gómez / Ricardo Cedeño Montaña / Yuli Paola Vargas Rodriguez / María Camila García Parada (Colombia) Table A – Persistences

This article addresses the way in which technological media assimilate scientific ideas and knowledge into materials, techniques and formats.

Although a ubiquitous and banal technology, media formats and their related patents are the places where the intimate relationship between scientific ideas and theories about our senses and the materiality of technical media can best be observed.

I argue that the images produced by technical means make visible on a surface what science knows about the effects of stimulation on the human senses of invisible elements such as photons, electromagnetic radiation and chemical compounds.

In this article, I offer a media archeology-oriented overview of early color film formats by examining three of the earliest color film media formats-Pathécolor, Chronochrome, and Tripack.

This helps to appreciate the interconnected stories of how media technologies associated with film shifted image production from approximations, conventions, and styles to measurements, calculation, and chemical reactions.

For this, the source of information comes mainly from film formats and patents, where the technological becomes operational.