In computer speak, "lossy" refers to compression techniques that reduce a file's size by shedding unnecessary information. This type of compression, as opposed to "lossless," permanently alters the file’s content. There's usually a tradeoff: The file takes up less space, but at the expense of overall quality.

The term lossy has long been relegated to the world of technology—a word used to describe .mp3s, .jpgs and video files that have had their bits and bytes jettisoned in the name of saving space—but as our digital and physical lives become increasingly intertwined, it’s fair to ask: Could the idea of lossy compression extend beyond typical media?

For artist Rachel Rossin, the concept of lossy compression is an unavoidable part of the human experience in 2015. “Inevitably it’s a metaphor for entropy,” she says. And entropy, she says, is everywhere. In her recent exhibition at Zieher Smit & Horton, Lossy, Rossin explores this idea by questioning what happens when the lines between what we consider virtual and physical reality begin to blur.

Rossin is a painter and self-taught programmer, and in the show she deftly blends the two mediums. The artwork is split between Oculus Rift virtual reality experiences and oil paintings that reflect the deformed and disintegrating reality you see in the VR pieces. Though Rossin’s physical works might seem to exist independently of her virtual ones, creating them all required a deep integration of both mediums.

To paint her abstracted “still lifes,” Rossin employs a distinctly 21st century process. First, she uses photogrammetry software to capture 3-D scans of intimate spaces like her bedroom and studio. She then feeds these scans into 3-D gaming software such as Unity that enables her to alter them by applying the forces of physics to certain portions of the scene. Finally, she translates her sculpted digital scenes into oil paintings.

On canvas, flower petals drip under the weight of gravity and light takes on an erratic quality. In the process of passing a scene back and forth through these different realms, virtual reality ends up warping physical reality, making it feel less intact and slightly surreal. This painted, chewed-up form of reality has undergone something analogous to lossy compression. “In both realms, there’s an interpretation,” Rossin says. “There’s an interpretation in the virtual world of what reality is, and then there’s an interpretation by myself of what the virtual world is in a physical reality.”

What we’re seeing, then, isn’t virtual or physical reality per se, but an amalgamation of the two that produces a visual style completely native to this new dimension. Of course, art is often just a lens through which we can look at complex ideas, and Rossin says that the show is really an exploration of our complicated relationship with technology. As our digital lives bleed more and more into what we consider our "real" lives, Rosin says it's the job of an artist to explore the blurry gradient of virtual reality we're already living in. "I don't know how else you would be able to talk about these ideas," she says. "That's what art’s for."