RY TICS GALL E The accident doesn’t equal failure, but instead erects a new significant state, which would otherwise not have been possible to perceive and that can “reveal something absolutely necessary to knowledge.”
—Sylvere lotringer and Paul virilio [1] EXHAUSTION AESTH E
DATA DIARIES (2003) art object. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York [2]. Cory Arcangel Arcangel describes the creation process of Data Diaries: Cory Arcangel is a leading exponent of technology-based The old QuickTime file format had a great error-checking art, drawn to video games and software for their ability to bug. If you deleted the data fork of a movie file and left rapidly formulate new communities and traditions and, the header, QuickTime would play through random equally, their speed of obsolescence. In 1996, while study- access memory and interpret it as a video as defined by ing classical guitar at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the header. So, for this project, I converted the RAM of Arcangel had his first high-speed Internet connection, my computer into a video for every day of a given month. which inspired him to major in music technology and start All aspects of the video (color, size, frame rate and learning to code. Both music and coding remain his key sound) were determined by modem speeds of the day, tools for interrogating the stated purpose of software and as the videos were debuted and distributed via the Web. gadgets. That is, they were just small enough to stream in real time Reconfiguring web design and hacking as artistic prac- (no small feat!) over a 56k modem in 2003, giving users tice, Arcangel remains faithful to open source culture and a pretty good viewing experience [3]. makes his work and methods available online, thus super- imposing a perpetual question mark as to the value of the Data Diaries:
Cory Arcangel, Data Diaries (still), 2003. 62 single-channel videos, color. A pioneering example of and precursor to much contemporary glitch art. (© Cory Arcangel. Commissioned by New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. [aka Ether-Ore], for its Turbulence website. Made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation. Courtesy of Cory Arcangel.)
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Jon Satrom, Windows Rainbows & Dinos (2010). A 13-minute single-channel comic video drama that takes place entirely on a Macintosh desktop. (© Jon Satrom)
WINDOWS RAINBOWS & DINOS (2010) Jon Satrom Jon Satrom is a Chicago-based glitch Mac OSX interface and Microsoft makes blips and noises like a cancer artist who undermines interfaces, software package by breaking down of 0s and 1s over the desktop stage. problematizes presets and bends the visual interface of what we have In a surprising midpoint, two GIF- data. He spends his days fixing come to accept as the access portal style animated dinosaurs are seen things and making things work. He to the functions of “easy-to-use” having sex, a hilarious “Monty spends his evenings breaking things domestic consumer digital software Python-esque surreal injection into and searching for the unique blips [5]. Interfering with official norms the sterile visuality of the software inherent to the systems he explores of visual language introduces interface” [6]. The Sisyphean drama and exploits. By overclocking questions relating to the power of of control technology ends with the everyday digital tools, Satrom kludges software companies such as Apple realization of comic futility. Satrom’s abandonware, funware, necroware and Microsoft to control when and work is an effective application of and artware into extended glitchy how we use digital technology, not Brechtian techniques of direct address systems for performance, execution to mention the implicit and often for the digital age, of estranging and collaboration. Satrom’s art is a invisible limitations created by reality in the process of revealing subtle critique and parody of the day- this closed-source programming the means of digital production and to-day struggle the user experiences environment. reproduction. when trying to make their computer Windows Rainbows & Dinos is a work for them [4]. delightful 13-minute demonstration of Windows Rainbows & Dinos:
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01361 by guest on 25 September 2021 RY TICS GALL E DEAR MISTER COMPRESSION (2010) Rosa Menkman Rosa Menkman is a Dutch-based glitch artist and theorist and suddenly you appear everywhere. . . who focuses on visual noise artifacts, resulting from your constructions are starting to constitute myself accidents in both analogue and digital media (such as they emerge inside me EXHAUSTION AESTH E glitch, encoding and feedback artifacts). Although many you create a space in which i voluntarily degrade myself people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, i am halted by your presence Menkman emphasizes their positive consequences. These I have to make drawings of you artifacts facilitate an important insight into the otherwise The day that i understand i could not live without you. obscure alchemy of standardization via resolutions: the creation of solutions or protocols, and their black- The piece acknowledges the thickness and materiality of boxed, unseen, forgotten or obfuscated compromises and data emerging “inside” one’s psychic experience without alternative possibilities [7]. mourning a purer human past. To make this a love poem While Menkman has produced a prolific body of glitch for the computer, the artist painted herself white, in the art, Dear Mister Compression offers a particularly poetic attempt to “blank” herself, to get lost or erased between the take on the issue of digital errors as compression artifacts. lines of the vertical blanking interval, that flickering time As the red and orange contours of Menkman’s face are difference between the last line of one frame or field and seen, positioned to the right of the frame, the image is the next frame or field rendered on a display. Menkman juxtaposed with cool purples and a white, text-based love has also explained in public talks and personal chats that poem on the left. Excerpts read: this white painting resulted in an extreme allergic reaction to the face paint that threatened her eyesight, temporarily Normally I ignore you blinding her, in a literal whiteout and erasure. One finds a I don’t see you because I think you are supposed to be further confluence of emotional and technological states transparent in this lived, broken world of chromatic glitches [8]. the quirks of your voice, the particularities of your looks but now . . . i want to re-see you and re-hear you Dear Mister Compression:
Rosa Menkman, Dear Mister Compression (2010). In the video, the red and orange contours of Menkman’s face are juxtaposed with cool purples and a white text-based love poem generated by the computer. (© Rosa Menkman)
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Team Doyobi (Alex Peverett and Christopher Gladwi), Art of Memorex (2012), Skam Records. A four-minute datamosh of multicolored digital artifacts in varying sizes and pattern formations intercut scenes of a surfer riding the ocean waves. (© Alex Peverett)
ART OF MEMOREX (2012) Team Doyobi Team Doyobi (Alex Peverett and Christopher Gladwi) random out of an inherited Japanese phrase book), they are an electronic music duo specializing in “audio cross shifted their focus to live performance [9]. breeding.” Their work draws on various influences and The Art of Memorex is a 4-minute music video music genres. A reflection of having grown up during featuring multicolored glitch artifacts in varying sizes the home computer boom of the 1980s, their aesthetic is and pattern formations intercutting scenes of a surfer shaped by Commodore Amiga home computers, public riding ocean waves. The piece is excerpted from their domain software, collages of IDM (intelligent dance album Digital Music Volume 1 (Skam Records, EP, 2012). music) beats and melodies with 8-bit samplers, car-boot- The artifact-interruption emulates David Carson’s surfer sourced IDM, creative thinking and cheap and accessible grunge aesthetic of the 1990s, re-choreographed to an technologies. Over a decade of collaborations has resulted upbeat techno track with slick and smooth interior tenor. in a unique sound of lo-fi, glitch-addled yet soulful dance Art of Memorex: music that has gained them a reputation as one of U.K.
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01361 by guest on 25 September 2021 RY TICS GALL E STATUS UPDATE, 2AM (2011) Andrew Benson San Francisco–based visual artist Fire-I Board camera; Canopus lightly pulling him forward. This Andrew Benson has developed ADVC-110; Korg NanoKontrol; effect, used frequently in Benson’s a highly technical yet extremely various custom controller circuits and work, is generated through Jitter (or EXHAUSTION AESTH E colorful new media art practice sensors; Arduino, Teensy and AVR Max), a motion tracking software interweaving altered electronics microcontrollers [10]. made by Cycling ’74 that allows and software that he is constantly Status Update, 2am is a portrait of programmers to visualize 3D or 2D refining and developing. He tends to the artist awake at his computer at movements or sound processes in work with MIDI files, pixels, video 2 a.m. The piece begins with a morass real time. Benson uses this capacity to loops, animation and illustration, of audio distortion and abstract create the sense that he is controlling combined with live performance colored textures. In the background and sculpting the glitches with his to create “trippy video loops” one can make out Benson’s figure as hands. Once upright, he peers wearily launched online and during live he attempts to rise from a presumed into his computer’s screen. performances. His hardware go-tos sleep. Colored triangles and shapes include a MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz; in the foreground appear “attached” Status Update, 2am: Altered PS3eye camera; Unibrain to his hands and body as he moves,
Andrew Benson, Status Update, 2am (2011). This portrait of the artist at his computer at 2 a.m. was made with Max S P, a motion-tracking software. (© Andrew Benson)
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References and Notes 6
Galeria NT / Imaginarium, Łód´z, Poland. EXHAUSTION AESTH E 3
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