de-enhanced sigmar polke re-enhanced

historyii_450

Everyone loves that scene in Blade Runner where Harrison Ford scans in on the polaroid image while drinking scotch, even though the segment's rife with continuity errors and anyone who's used Photoshop knows enlarging mush just gives you bigger mush. Above is a Sigmar Polke grid from google images that has been enlarged, brightened, sharpened and de-yellowed. Some new content is revealed but no snake-woman in the mirror. (Maybe if we keep zooming...)

Polke made a career of enlarging newspaper photo grain but it remains to be seen if that can be done with bicubic quantization noise from a distressed jpeg (some of which can be seen in the upper left panel). Only rarely does it look good. According to the filename the title of this grid is "history ii." No history is complete without spanking (barely visible in the pre-Harrisonized version). Even at these dubious resolutions Polke has an exquisite eye (but not too exquisite).