Glitch Art, Compression Artefacts, and Digital Materiality
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Carleigh Morgan CALCULATED ERROR: GLITCH ART, COMPRESSION ARTEFACTS, AND DIGITAL MATERIALITY Abstract This paper proposes a reconsideration of the aesthetic category of ‘glitch’ and advocates for a more careful theorisation around indexing — in the sense of both locating and naming — errors of a digital kind. Glitches are not as ran- dom as they seem: they are ordered and shaped by computational hardware and software, which impose a mathematical rubric on how glitches visually manifest and set ontological and technological constrains on glitch that limit how digital errors can and cannot be made to appear. Most crucially, this paper thinks about how one particular type of glitch — a compression artefact called a macroblock — can often appear as random, erratic, or unpredictable but is, in fact, materially constrained and visually conditioned according to the principles of computing and computer design. At its core, compression aesthetics can shed light on the operations of algorithms, the structures of digital technologies, and the priorities and patterns which occur as a function of algorithmic manipulation. The randomness, unpredictability, or messiness which glitch studies invokes around the glitch is in danger of overlooking the ways that the material architectures and algorithmic protocols structure the digital glitch by organising, constraining, and given form to its appearance. APRJA Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019 ISSN 2245-7755 CC license: ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’. Carleigh Morgan: CALCULATED ERROR Bodies and machines are defned marked by fuctuating glitch effects. by function: as long as they operate All of these works owe at least one of correctly, they remain imperceptible. their particular stylistic effects to the process — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, known as compression hacking. This paper Phenomenology of Perception (239). examines how compression hacking works as process of algorithmic manipulation and In 2005, Takeshi Murata released a short considers what the artistic practice of com- flm called Monster Movie. This flm show- pression hacking exposes about the com- cased a swamp creature emerging from position of digital images. The key argument the muck that was noteworthy for its unique is twofold: frst, that the particular effects visual effects: blocks of mutating pixels that produced by compression hacking are deter- seemed to burst through the monster’s body, mined by the computational processes and deconstructing its image into a scattered material properties of digital media; second, and murky pixel array. Other glitch art, like that the algorithmic functions that are used David O’Reilly’s Compression Reels and the in compression hacking establish the condi- net 2.0 aesthetics of cyberpunk art collective tions by which compression artefacts can PaperRad, were sparked by similar inter- appear, but that sometimes these compres- ests in exposing the underlying algorithmic sion artefacts remain invisible. Nevertheless, protocols and structuring interfaces of digital the production of compression artefacts as media. In the 2000s, glitch style migrated a result of compression hacking depends from its origins on niche punk-art message not only on certain level of algorithmic boards and underground websites to become functionality, but also on the matter of digital incorporated into commercial music videos technologies: compression artefacts, like all for both Kanye West and electro-pop group glitch effects, owe their various materialisa- Chairlift. Directed by Ray Tintori, Chairlift’s tions to technologies which are not entirely music video for Evident Utensil used glitch dysfunctional. In other words, malfunction is effects to create a visual aesthetic marked borne out of function: a digital error depends by an array of mutating colour blocks that on the enduring functionality of the systems fused the band with their surrounding envi- which give rise it, to make such an error leg- ronment and seemed to rupture the diving ible as out-of-the-ordinary. One corollary to line between the environment staged in the this argument is that the presence of what video — its content — and the colours on appears to be a glitch in a digital image does the surface of the screen — its form. Kanye not always indicate the presence of an un- West’s Welcome to Heartbreak achieved a derlying technological error — a claim which more fastidiously controlled, choreographed unsettles the notion of technological trouble- style of glitch art that combined chromakey shooting and the heuristics underpinning a and green screen techniques to unsettle ‘diagnostics’ of technological failure. the grammars of commercial video edit- To these ends, this paper proposes a ing. Starring West and featured singer Kid reconsideration of the aesthetic category Cudi, the music video depicted the rappers of ‘glitch’ and advocates for a more care- ‘melting’ into each one another, alternating ful theorisation around indexing — in the recognisable fragments of their faces with sense of both locating and naming — errors sequences of digital skids and bleeds that of a digital kind. Most crucially, this paper fractured the representational image and thinks about how glitches — which often transformed it into an unstable landscape appear as random, erratic, or unpredictable 205 APRJA Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019 — are materially constrained and visually descriptor which seems to describe the quali- conditioned according to the principles of ties of compression artefacts themselves computing and computer design. Glitches — e.g. ‘moshing’ conjuring a pixel-based are not as random as they seem; in fact, they modularity and squishiness — it does not are ordered and shaped by computational foreground the technological dimension of hardware and software, which impose a this artistic process as clearly as the term mathematical rubric on how glitches visually compression hacking does. ‘Datamoshing’ manifest and set ontological and technologi- elides the role that the artist plays in refor- cal constrains on glitch that limit how digital mulating the video fles to produce visual errors can and cannot be made to appear. compression artefacts, and in so doing intro- This paper will emphasise compression duces confounding variables into the discus- hacking for a few reasons. The frst reason sion that this paper does not have the scope is to draw attention to the human labour and to address. Thinking about how to achieve the activity of ‘hacking’ which generates com- compression artefacts as a product of pression artefacts. It also reinforces that this compression hacking means that less tech- artistic practice is achieving by playing with nologically invasive methods for achieving the computational logics of compression — its stylistic effects — so datamoshing done compression hacking requires a modicum of by applying a photo or video flter through computational literacy and is an activity un- the implementation flters via programs dertaken by someone who understands how like Photoshop — can be set to one side. to manipulate the information encoded in im- Although any fle format can be compression age or video fles. With an emphasis on the hacked, this paper will focus on digital video/ ‘hacking’ of compression hacking, it is clear moving images for two reasons: because this that this paper will not address compression is the format which has mostly received the artefacts or glitches as spontaneously oc- attention of compression hackers. curring: the epistemic frameworks used to diagnose a digital error in the instance of a glitch’s spontaneous occurrence would act On compression algorithms as a confounding factor. Simply put, looking at the glitch generally, rather than at glitch art specifcally, one is forced to contend with The law of information processing upholds other variables pertaining to the origin of a that the “fewer states one needs to process glitch. To think of glitch as a homogenous a message, the faster and more effcient the aesthetic form rather than glitch art as a spe- system is” (Kane 220). Data compression cifc technological practice — or to begin with follows this law by simplifying how data is compression artefacts rather than compres- stored. The purpose of data compression sion hacking — means grappling with the is typically to optimise storage space or notion that the glitch appears despite there increase data transmission rates, and it is being no known intervention from an outside often motivated by a desire to save both time agent (e.g. artist, hacker, programmer) who and money. Compression algorithms record can testify to a glitch’s cause or represent a only the measurable changes in the image reason for its occurrence. data. As a result, only areas of a moving There is another terminological clarif- image which describe differential motion or cation to make here. Although the term ‘da- changing luminance values are captured tamoshing’ operates as an onomatopoetical by the compression algorithms (Arcangel). 206 Carleigh Morgan: CALCULATED ERROR According to this principle, images with fewer In order to dramatically reduce the amount substantial changes from frame to frame are of data that needs to be stored, what is easier to encode. “The whole point of digital captured in a compressed video fle is only image compression,” Cory Arcangel writes the difference between the initial, or i-frame “is to be able to reconstruct an image without and the subsequent images, the p-frame, having to send all the data.” Lossless com- (sometimes called