Glitch Readerror
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GLI.TC/H 20111
READER[R0R]
GLI.TC/H
READER[ROR]
20111
11-11-11 / ?
User Agreement:
GLI.TC/H READER[ROR] 20111 is distributed under the copy<it>right
license, copying/sharing is encouraged/appreciated.
2 / GLI.TC/H READER[ROR] 20111
DE[A]DICATION / 3
CONTENTS
007_ THNX:
011_ FWD:
015_ Tom McCormack
Code Eroded: At GLI.TC/H 2010, RHIZOME
023_ Curt Cloninger
GltchLnguistx:The Machine in the Ghost / Static Trapped in Mouths
043_ http://gli.tc/h/wiki
045_jon.satrom
BARF.ART_ICLE/GIGO
053_ Nick Briz
Glitch Art Historie[s] / contextualizing glitch art -- a perpetual beta
059_ Rosa Menkman
The Glitch Art Genre
069_ Rosa Menkman and Iman Moradi
GLI.TC/H B/Lingo
073_ Hannah Piper Burns + Evan Meaney
Glitches Be Crazy, the problem of self-identification through noise
077_ Channel TWo
Artificial Synchronicity: The Empire Never Ended
081_ http://t.rashb.in
085_Mez
089_ jonCates
3 3
119_ Matthew Fuller
Know Your Sorts
131_Nick Briz, JODI, Rosa Menkman, jon.satrom
4040404040404
137_ Alexander Galloway
FORK
143_ A Bill Miller
147_Laimonas Zakas
151_ Iman Moradi
Glitchbreak.
/5
THNX
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var READERRORcontributors = [ Hannah Piper Burns,
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var ArtistDonations = [Melissa Barron, jonCates, Jeff
Donaldson, Morgan Higby-Flowers, Don Miller, Ben
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P, Tom Sparks, jason shanley, Candice Payne,
Jan Szpila, James Connolly, Immo Blaese, Beatriz
THNX / 7
THNX
/9
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FWD:READER[ROR] / 11
function rubrix() {
var deconstructive != generative;
var fractures != constructs;
var inaccurate != accurate;
var misuse != use;
var absent != present;
var revealing the system != denying the system;
var glitchspeak != language;
if (polar coordinates) {
var != binary oppositions;
}
}
What does saying glitch is/has formed communitie[s] or even a
genre actually return? ~
To consider glitch art as a communitie[s].exe is to emphasize
that glitches are social constructs, rather than definitive
algorithms. While these communitie[s] are in a state of
perpetual beta, there is still a rough consensus and a [failing]
deep[er] code ++ w/feedback of consistent patterns in thematic
content + iconography + discrete narrative structure[s].
Thus, the READE[ROR] becomes a dead-tree [component]
offered in the spirit of a gathering that celebrates the forking
and merging path/s/ of the 20111 glitch mods && networks
&& threads. while its type is fixed in ink, laser, and encoding;
that which it represents continues to be fluid, contradictory,
and (with help) communal, allowing GLI.TC/H (fr)re(e)tailers,
creatives, crawlers, and agents to use it as indefinitely movable
type.
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FWD:READER[ROR] / 13
TomMcCormack
McCor
Tom
Code Eroded: At GLI.TC/H 2010, RHIZOME, Oct 2010
In the inverted world of glitch art, functionality is just a sterile enclosure of creative space and degradation, an agent of renewal.
Such was the spirit in the air at GLI.TC/H 2010, a five-day conference in Chicago organized by Nick Briz, Evan Meaney, Rosa
Menkman and Jon Satrom that included workshops, lectures,
performances, installations and screenings. Intuitively, most
people involved with new media know what glitch art isits art
that tweaks technology and causes either hardware or software
to sputter, fail, misfire or otherwise wig out. Narrowing in on a
more precise definition can be perilous, though. Purists would
insist on a distinction between art that uses actual malfunctions
and art that imitates malfunctions, but the organizers of GLI.
TC/H 2010 took a catholic approach to their programming.
A concern with the histories and pre-histories of glitch art pervaded the conference. In her lecture and presentation, Rosa
Menkman offered an avenue for one possible genealogy, juxtaposing Len Lyes A Colour Box (1937), a kinetic film consisting of
scratched and hand-painted celluloid, Nam June Paiks famous
Magnet TV (1965), a television with a magnet placed on top to
distort the signal, Cory Arcangels TH42PV60EH Plasma Screen
Burn (2007), a plasma television with text burnt into it and Jodis
Webcrash2800 \%SCR2 (2009), which consists of cracked LCD
monitors. As celluloid gave way to cathode ray tubes, which
gave way to plasma screens and liquid crystal displays, every
mutation seems to have been accompanied by a desire to break
the screen, to draw out some of its essential properties; properties which either werent reckoned with by its makers or were
purposefully hidden.
/ 15
Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, who work under the name
Jodi, are clearly spiritual ancestors of modern data corrupters.
In addition to being Skyped in for the closing lecture and discussion, Jodis piece Untitled Game (1996-2001) was displayed at
the GLI.TC/H gallery show. Untitled Game consists of 14 variations of the video game Quake 1, all of which push the game to
the border of illegibility, re-ordering the code in such a way as to
make abstractions of the original material. But what remains in
the work is the element of interaction; the arrows will have some
effect on whats presented on the screen, sometimes even giving
you the feeling of moving forwards and backwards, side to side.
One modification renders the pixels in a grid-like black and white,
giving the feeling of moving through a Frank Stella painting withkaleidoscope sunglasses.
Interactive work was frequent at the GLI.TC/H gallery opening,
and is in some ways a natural move for glitch artists. The promise of psychedelia (a genre that glitch work often flirts with and
sometimes belongs to) is the promise of empowering the viewer
through a disruption of their routinized modes of perception; and
where empowerment is a goal, interactivity is never far away.
One of the most interesting interactive works was a live datamoshing installation by Bob Weisz, Paul Korzan and Tom Butterworth. Weisz coauthored Chairlifts Evident Utensil video and
made the YouTube datamoshing tutorial How to Datamosh. The
groups installation consisted of a live video feed which would
datamosh every 60 seconds. In addition, there was a microphone that sped up the datamoshing process when spoken into.
What resulted was a kind of hypnotizing narcissistic feedback;
you watched your face distort in accordance with your voice.
An ethic of interactivity also guided the day of workshops at GLI.
TC/H. Where a 16mm experimentalist like Phil Solomon imperiously guards the secret methods he uses to erode and reorganize film emulsion, glitchers seem eager to share their strategies. Part of this probably has to do with the fact that many new
media artists are code junkies who come directly out of the open
source movement; but then the opensource movement may
have equal roots in functional programming and media art. In
the first workshop, Patrick McCarthy and Alex Inglizian showed
how to break open electronics and do some elementary circuit
bending, providing participants with a straightforward approach
to hardware hacking. Nick Brizs workshop took a more uncon-
Tom McCormack / 17
Tom McCormack / 19
Curt Cloninger
GltchLnguistx:
The Machine in the Ghost / Static Trapped in Mouths
This essay applies Mikhail Bakhtins language theory of the utterance to the machinic event of the glitch in order to illuminate
contemporary glitch art practices, and to suggest fruitful ways
in which they might proceed. I understand the glitch to be an
affective event generated by a media machine (computer, projector, game console, LCD screen, etc.) running in real-time, an
event which creates an artifact that colors and modulates any
signal or content being sent via that machine. In 1962, John
Glenn famously defined glitch as a spike or change in voltage
in an electrical current.1 Glitch has since come to demarcate a
set of audio/visual artistic practices which capture, exploit, and
produce glitch artifacts.
My goal is not to end all conversation about glitch art by ontologically overdetermining what a glitch is and how exactly it works.
Instead, I pose this specific, particular position in the hopes of
ending some of the more dead-end and circular conversations
about the glitch. I also hope this essay will open up more fruitfully problematic conversations, and will lead to less banal, more
conceptually rigorous works of art.
Dichotomies To Be Exploded
It is a clich of early cyber-theory to embrace the transcendental
ideal of disembodied code and run with it. According to this approach, humans are simply data run on wetware. If we could
somehow abstract this data and port it to computer hardware,
we could upload our souls/selves. We could become the ghost
(dismebodied spirit/code) in the machine (computer hardware).
This hope of disembodiedimmortality is rooted in some specious,
idealistic presuppositions about the way computers and humans
actually work. Much of who humans are is inextricably bound
to the action of our bodies in lived and present time. Likewise,
computers dont execute code in a transcendent, metaphysical
vacuum. Code is run on physical hardware in lived and present
(albeit massively accelerated) time. Computer code (like human
language) may theoretically exist in a timeless transcendental
/ 23
Gabriel speaks about surface disturbances as his mediated surface is disturbed. The more his language describes the uncanny
violence of underground disturbances, the more violently these
hidden disturbances irrupt and modulate his mediated surface.
The media machine here is very analog -- the mirrored surface
of water.3
Curt Cloninger / 25
.....................................................................................................
B. ANALOG IMAGE PROCESSOR 3
.....................................................................................................
D. MOUTHS TRAPPED IN STATIC
fragment of a poster which was derived from a datamoshed video by Tokyo artist UCNV
Curt Cloninger / 27
Philosophers as Adhesives
Perhaps philosophers are like adhesives. You have to pick the
right one for the job, and there is no single right one for every job.
Plato is like Elmers Glue: he is ubiquitous; he holds things together well enough; and everyone has swallowed him at a young
age unawares without any immediately fatal results. Derrida is
like duct tape: it is tempting to apply him to everything, but if
you apply him too liberally to problems that need a less than
all-encompassing approach, the results will be very sticky and
munged-up with a bunch of deconstructive residue which largely
obscures the original problem. If McLuhan is a thin rubber band
(more or less useful in his analysis of media), then Debord is a
thick rubber band (trying earnestly to outwit the trap of media
spectacularization), and Baudrillard is a silly band (resigned to
play in a mediated simulacrum).5
Of course these are oversimplifications, but not necessarily
un-useful ones. The philosophers from which you launch will
necessarily color the subsequent inquiry of your art theory and
practice. In order to analyze the glitch, Ive chosen Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin.6 Bakhtin is like
gaffers tape. He adheres tightly when suitably applied, but he
releases his grip quickly when it is time to decouple things and
move on to new locales and configurations.
Bakhtin and The Utterance
Before I oversimplistically explicate Bakhtins theory of the utterance, I will begin with some direct quotations:
Language enters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and life enters language through concrete utterances as well. The utterance is an exceptionally important node
of problems.7
Only the contact between the language meaning and the concrete reality that takes place in the utterance can create the spark
of expression. It exists neither in the system of language nor in
the objective reality surrounding us. Thus, emotion, evaluation,
and expression are foreign to the word of language and are born
only in the process of its live usage in a concrete utterance.8
Each text (both oral and written) includes a significant number
of various kinds of natural aspects devoid of signification... but
which are still taken into account (deterioration of manuscript,
poor diction, and so forth). There are not nor can there be any
pure texts. In each text, moreover, there are a number of aspects
that can be called technical (the technical side of graphics, pronunciation, and so forth).9
To Bakhtin, the lived and ongoing present is the locus where the
abstract rules of linguistics and semiotics are injected into being.
Language never comes into the present generically. It is always
colored by and contingent upon embodied, contextual affects of
lived being. I can say Im hungry at a certain place and time,
and someone else can say Im hungry at a later place in time.
Both sentences are linguistically and semiotically the same, but
they are completely different utterances due to the differing
lived contexts into which they were uttered.
Unlike Derrida, Bakhtin satisfactorily takes into account the importance of embodied affect on human language. The breeze
blowing through my wifes hair as she meets me in the yard and
says, Welcome home, honey, the timbre in her voice, the tilt of
her head, the 6 angle of the sunlight striking her cheek -- all of
these things are as much a part of human language as the denotative/semiotic meaning of the English word welcome.10
Bakhtin is particularly useful for analyzing the glitch because he
doesnt overtly fret over the differences between a live event
and a mediated, time-shifted event. When I read a book in realtime, that reading event constitutes a live utterance, because
the author of the book is uttering to me in lived time now. The
typography of the book, the way the cover feels in my hands,
the way the light falls on the page of the book -- all of these are
real-time, embodied affects that color the language of the book
in the same way that the breeze through my wifes hair colored
the language (welcome) she uttered when she met me in the
yard. The language of a book on a shelf may be transcendental
and out of time, but that language will never get run in real-time
unless I open the book and read it. When I do, embodied affect
enters into the flow of language and colors it in an actual, meaningful, non-incidental way.
Modulating Language via Affect
The first scene of Chris Markers Sans Soleil celebrates the surplus of lived, embodied affect. A scene of three blond-haired girls
walking on a road is shown briefly. The scene doesnt semiotically or linguistically mean anything, which may be why the film
maker (the fictitious sender of letters to the narrator) is unable to
successfully couple the scene with any other images. The film
maker associates this surplus of affect with both memory and
happiness.
Curt Cloninger / 29
In my own new media reinterpretation of Markers scene, I associate this surplus of affect with the history of photography, the
disturbing uncanniness of dreams, and the glitch. It is worth noting that the particular low-resolution video file that I have embedded in this essay is a much degraded and massaged version
of a DVD quality version of Markers original analog film. Yet
even the original analog film is not a record of the film makers
original lived experience on that day. Derrida becomes useful
here 7 (briefly, but fundamentally): there is always a slippage,
an original difference between something in itself (the girls, the
fence, the hills) and our perception of it. All subsequent meaning
in language derives from this original difference.
According to this understanding of affect, glitch, utterance, and
original difference, everything is always already mediated.
Debord wants to return to an original, real, unmediated experience. Baudrillard says we can no longer return to that original real experience, because we have moved beyond mimetic
mediation and on into simulation and hyper-reality. The problem
with both of these positions is that media are (and always have
been) real. Language spoken in a movie playing in real-time is
language actually uttered in real-time. Granted, it is a strange
kind of second-order language, a quoted and remixed language
(what Bakhtin might call a secondary genre of utterance, like
characters speaking in a novel), but it is no less a real-time, uttered language event. A book, a video, a piece of software -- all
contain potential utterances. Each piece of media awaits its next
real-time run when it is uttered into a unique, singular, never repeatable, spatio-temporal, lived context.
Curt Cloninger / 31
Curt Cloninger / 33
more (or different). He cannot be reborn, rejuvenated, or transformed -- this is his finalizing (ultimate and final) stage.15
Compare Giottos figures to Gerhard Richters figures:
Giottos Raising of Lazarus (1305) 14
1. Based on what criteria? Based on marvel, surprise, authenticity (unstaged-ness [related to surprise]), messed-up-ness,
kitschy retro-ness, beauty, promise/fruitfulness (a potential to
lead somewhere new)?
2. How can we glitch our own criteria of glitch reception? How
can we glitch ourselves so that we dont always select the same
old glitches? Cagean aleatoric systems? Oulipean systems of
constraint? Collaborative systems? Warning: there are some inherent problems when glitching your own aesthetic criteria. 15
At some point you are going to have to fall back on meta-criteria
in order to determine whether your newly glitched aesthetics are
aesthetically successful. It is a bit like shooting at a moving target, like using drugs and then trying to objectively evaluate the
effect of the drugs while you are still on drugs.
Curt Cloninger / 39
3
On the topic of water as a reflective medium, it may be worth
noting that McLuhan claims Narcissus did not fall in love with
himself, but with his own mediated image. cf: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), Chapter 4.
4
6
I am primarily drawing from three texts: Bakhtins early (mid1920s) essay fragment published as Toward a Philosophy of the
Act [trans. Vadim Liapunov (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1993)]; His 1953 essay The Problem of Speech Genres; and
a series of 1971 notes published as The Problem of the Text in
Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment
in Philosophical Analysis.
7
Ibid., 87.
9
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical
Analysis, in Speech Genres, 105. 16
10
cf: The Seals & Crofts lyric Summer Breeze for a wonderfully
sappy, idealized celebration of pure affect.
11
12
Visual glitch theorist Iman Moradi uses the term pure glitch
to describe what I am calling wild glitch. cf: Moradi, Glitch
Aesthetics, 8-11.
13
Rosa Menkman, Glitch Studies Manifesto, (Amsterdam/Cologne: 2009/2010), 7. Moradi uses the term glitch-alike to describe what Menkman calls domesticated glitches.
14
Ibid., 11.
15
Bakhtin, The Problem of the Text, 115. Note: Tiling background source image is Neuordnung (2003) by Benjamin Fischer. 17
Curt Cloninger / 41
GLI.TC/H/WIKI / 43
jon.satrom
BARF.ART_ICLE/GIGO
In keeping with bending protocol and breaking structures GLI.TC/H has opened a document to collaboratively construct/ deconstruct the layout for the 20111
READER[OR]
GLI.TC/H is compiling a selection of TXTs to be output in digital static-document formats and printed on
dead-trees. Writers, thinkers, and artists have encoded their thoughts, ideas, concerns, theories, philosophies, ideologies, and other txt.ecutable documents
for the GLI.TC/H 20111 READER[ROR]!
/ 45
IN.F3XXX10N.US is an online art exhibition, organized and initiated by jonCates && Jake Elliott, running from July 1 - July 31 2010. During the run of the
exhibition you can infect us @ IN.F3XXX10N.US!
On July 31 2010 this domain will expire, effectively
ending our control of the exhibition but opening the
opportunity to anyone who wishes to purchase the
domain and continue the project in whatever form
they may imagine best.
jon.satrom / 49
Nick Briz
Glitch Art Historie[s]
contextualizing glitch art -- a perpetual beta
/ 53
a screen-cap + bend on the day the glitch art wikipedia page was deleted, by Rosa
Menkman from http://gli.tc/h/wik
Nick Briz / 57
Rosa Menkman
The Glitch Art Genre
From:
The Glitch Moment(um), Institute of Network Cultures, 2011.
The fatal manner of glitch, its orientation towards the destruction of what is, can present a problem to those who want to describe old and new culture as a continuum of different discrete
practices. One way to deal with this problem is to repeatedly
coin new terms and concepts to make room for splinter practices
within the expanding media cultural field. An abundance of designations such as databending, datamoshing and circuitbending
have come into existence to name and bracket varieties of glitch
practices, but all in fact refer to similar practices of breaking flows
within different technologies or platforms.
While technological glitch is primarily a process of shock requiring investigation and cognition, glitch art is best described as a
collection of forms and events that oscillate between extremes:
the fragile, technologically-based moment(um) of a material
break, the conceptual or techno-cultural investigation of breakages, and the accepted and standardized commodity that a
glitch can become. To encapsulate a whole range of unstable
processes and sometimes almost contradictory intentions of
glitch artists, it is useful to consider glitch art as a genre. In thinking about a genre that encompasses both the most rebellious
and the most stable or commoditized works of glitch, the first
question that arises is whether there can even be any common
denominator in these works. What does saying glitch is a genre
actually mean?
To consider glitch art as a genre is to emphasize that genres are
social and consensus-based constructs, rather than definitive
categories.1 Steve Neale has suggested that genres are best
understood as processes:
The process-like nature of genres manifests itself as an interaction between three levels: the level of expectation, the level of
the generic corpus, and the level of the rules or norms that
govern both. [] the elements and conventions of a genre are
always in play rather than being, simply re-played; and any ge/ 59
immediacy. These failures are embodied by noise artifacts; categorizable as either compressions, or feedback, or the not (yet)
technologically defined break of a (computational) flow, named
glitch. Moving from information theory into the art and culture
of noise and noise artifacts, glitch art proliferates in a spectrum
of disturbances that traverse both the sonic and visual, technical and socio-cultural realm. Here the difference between failure
and glitch becomes important: while failure is a phenomenon to
overcome, the glitch is a phenomenon that will be incorporated
into a new processes and conditions of technological design or
cultural meaning.
Contemporary glitch artists exploit the inherent moment(um)
of glitch in different ways. A threefold categorization of glitches
addressed a continuum for thinking about glitch: from complete
machine spontaneity in the accident form, to controlled, debuggable or conceptual glitching; to a more conventional realm of
glitch design and aesthetics. The perfect glitch only exists for a
spectator at the tipping point between destruction and the creation of something new; this is more a dialectical relation than
a linear trajectory of possibility. Glitch reveals but also bridges
gaps between the functioning and the malfunctioning of systems.
In the end, the glitch is a subjective phenomenon. There is no unequivocal cultural definition of glitch, as there is none for noise,
because in the end, what glitch is and what glitch is not is a subjective matter. Further, as a sub-genre that participates in larger
media cultures of distributed authorship, this subjective experience of glitch is paradoxically shared by many, which makes
glitch theory difficult to practice, accessible to many, contestable
and necessary. An intended or designed error can still rightfully
be called glitch art; and glitch art is not always just a personal
experience of shock, but can be a metaphorical expression, dependent upon multiple agents for interpretation. Accordingly, it is
less interesting for theory to police the difference between true
or false glitch art, than to understand how and through which
technological systems and cultural fabrics any particular work
of glitch art comes to be understood and experienced as glitch.
At the same time, some recent shifts within the realm of glitch art
are important to keep track of. It seems that increasingly, glitch
art practices downplay the technological dimension of glitch, and
that the concept of glitch has changed. As the error itself has
been increasingly gentrified, the glitch is already being supposedly upgraded to more static and imagistic values (minus the
radical moment(um) of glitch). Glitch is also becoming a prominent area of study, and archive of thought, for the media culture
Rosa Menkman / 63
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\[[ZYZY[ZLZZ\\YZ
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^!^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
;6G!
G66;P;;
GODF=FDGK`;FNPRaONC
<@8
;8<R
NHPK;DG=K
;`NKPRNH<8<C
@;B
/ 67
HALIFAX 05
EXPERIENCE
SYSTEM
FLOW
INTENTIONAL
ENCODING
IMMEDIATE
DIGITAL
UNEXPECTED
CONDITION
GENERATIVE
BMP
ORIGINAL
RESIDUAL
CONCEPTUAL
TRASH
TRANSMISSION
TRADE
SIGNAL
SOCIAL
GLITCHBROWSER
MONGLOT
SATROM
ARTIST
FILE FORMAT
JODI
RAUSCHEN
BINARY
MONDRIAN
PROCEDURAL
CRASH
GUSTAV METZGER
BEFLIX
TRANSMEDIA
MORADI
DECODING
TRACE
CASCONE
FAKE
IMPRESSIONIST
DECAY
COMMODITY
SOURCE
PHENOMENON
VASULKA
SLIP
MEANING
UNPREMEDIATED
SUBLIMINAL
POLLOCK
BEFLIX
COMPRESSION
DATAMOSH
JPG2000
REAL
GLITCHALIKE
DISFIGURE
LIVEART
CONTROL
EXPERIENCE
GIF
INFORMATION
SOURCE
KANYE WEST
MORADI
ORIGINAL
FLOW
MEDIUM SPECIFICITY
DECODING
SUBJECTIVE
ABUSE
INTERRUPTION
SOCIAL
RUIN
UCNV
REFLEXIVITY
CONTEXT
DECAY
TOOL
ILLOGCAL
GENERATIVE
CRACKLE
MACHINE
CONVENTION
FILTER
POETIC
SANGILD
SLIP
SYSTEM
FRAMEWORK
JPG
Rosa Menkman
and Iman Moradi
GLI.TC/H B/Lingo
A festival, even one about glitches, cannot exist without expectations and playable frameworks.
DESIGN
DESIGN
WABI SABI
INTERLACED
MISTAKES
BORDER
NOSTALGIA
SERENDIPITY
ESTHETIC
REASON
DISASSEMBLY
ETHICS
HACKING
ORDER
ACCIDENT
BINARY
AFFECT
PROGRESS
UNDESIRABLE
STYLE
EFFECT
UNCANNY
PROGRESSIVE
PROTOCOL
POST
VOID
ECONOMY
RAW
POLITICS
GENDER
SOURCE
FILTER
MEMORY
ABSTRACT
SUBVERSION
FAILURE
PRESERVATION
OTHER
MADNESS
HEX
UTOPIA
ERRATIC
RHETORIC
CRITICAL
PARADOX
ARTIFACT
GLITCH
DOGMA
MATERIALITY
RELIGION
SYSTEM
ENTROPY
GENRE
IMAGINARY
SYMBOLICAL
NOISE
AVANT-GARDE
ERRATIC
DICHOTOMY
DELETION
MOTHERWELL
KITTLER
HARDWARE
CONCEPTUAL
EXPLOITATION
EMULATE
SIGNIFY
PHILOSOPHY
SYMBOL
SUBLIME
TRANSCODE
DIFFERENCE
DESTRUCTION
SOFTWARE
FRAGMENTED
JOHN GLENN
PERFORMATIVE
CIRCUITBENT
DATABEND
CONTINUOUS
HALIFAX 05
EXPERIENCE
SYSTEM
FLOW
INTENTIONAL
ENCODING
IMMEDIATE
DIGITAL
UNEXPECTED
CONDITION
GENERATIVE
NES
/ 69
/ 71
Hannah Piper
Burns + Evan
Meaney
Glitches Be Crazy
the problem of self-identification through noise
3
If noise is natural4, why do we move towards unification with
such stridency? Why do we shy away from embracing the multiplicity and attempt to impose structure as a default? Our entire
imperative is towards defining our identities apart from the polyglot goo of existence. It seems that meaning for its own sake is
a worldview from an older, quieter world.
/ 73
Do we always do what is natural? Is natural the same as a priori? Doubtful. We constantly work against our best interest. So
striving for unity5 and completeness could be seen as another
act of self destruction6?
4
But isnt NOISE unity? The search for signal is the search to set
oneself, apart. Signal is hierarchy7.
Glitches are guts8. Just like when our inner systems break
down and our many moving parts spill out for the world to see,
glitches are the source of the same raw, abject seduction. So,
self-destruction might be a bit grandiose a term for what unity
gives us, but self-denial9 might be appropriate. When a thing is
running right- be it a digestive tract, a motor, or a data processwe dont think about it.
6
10
I suppose its true we do glitch ourselves all the time on purpose. But it certainly isnt seen as healthy. We glitch ourselves
by adding unnatural, even toxic elements to our systems, and
one could argue that even as we accept and even welcome
these momentary breaks, they serve to comfort us through denying our original states.
11
Is this a mud puddle or a rainbow? To put it another way,
doesnt holding up the aberration, the exception, the break, the
interruption, the mistake work against unity12 just as much?
12
If unity really wanted to be called unity, it would have to include mistakes.
I was using pornography in the taboo sense, in the importantbecause-it-is-off-limits sense. But it does raise the question of
production. Pornography, as it gains acceptance and familiarity serves a different purpose than when it is spurned. So too,
perhaps does a glitch. A produced (domesticated) glitch and
a found (wild) glitch14 accomplish two different goals through
interpretation. One discredits the medium through a flaw we
diagnose and one simply falls as an aesthetic, bordering on
anesthetic15.
13
14
Imagine its the difference between an acid trip and a stroke,
essentially. But nobody seems inpired by a stroke. Glitching
something is still ultimately about controlling the narrative- creating continuity through agency.
15
*pornography13 is the opposite of a glitch. pornography is comforting, constructed to semiotically induce a reaction. the same
cant really be said of a glitch- the definition of uncontrollablehowever. actual sex, on the other hand, with its inexorable pull
towards death always, its moments of creating something new,
its vulnerability and horror and transcendence of both, might be
more of a glitch. especially if its unreproductive/unproductive
sex, which is, by definition, an interruption, a use of a process
against its primary function. Glitches are likewise unproductive.
Channel TWo
Artificial Synchronicity: The Empire Never Ended
Channel TWo / 79
T.RASHB.IN
http://t.rashb.in
/ 81
To celebrate GLI.TC/H 20111, a new batch of gremlins are available to digest your data! These fresh and hungry gremlins were
raised in Chicago by gremlin breeder Sean Dove.
/ 83
Mez
BOMBED!*]
http://netwurker.livejournal.com/
11:47am 02/07/2011
[-eat-these-deliciousrebellion(_Lulz_B)oats-]
09:13am 07/06/2011
_There's-A-Definite_LuL_In-Established-C
onve(ntional)RS(S.oblig)aT(ory)ional-F(BI)Low_
_U-th(RT)Ink-Mid-East-Riot_(sic{k})bags::We(t)-Breath(fl)Utter(ed)-CoR(I)PoRate+Rot+SPew_
:
:Lulzsec[ondary+Anon_1st]:
:
|_don.t.u?_|
:Topiary
:Tflow
Post
:Sabu
:Kayla
:Avunit
:
=
#GEnd(Gam)erBlowChunks
#UDintDidU #WeAreSposed2ShuttleAndShiftUrCorporateSheete
_femmeage_inv(r)e(cu)rsion_
#Sux0rOnThis
11:39am 22/07/2011
*drop_boxx[y]ed+alt[ernate]
Read 2 - Post
*issuu|me:square[d]|u[e]
*broke-N+dum[my]bed_dpwn.
Post
#[p(E)lasticity]T[Cr]umbling#
10:06am 14/07/2011
11:47am 02/07/2011
/ 85
_[H]#OW(L)[S]
_[N]#OW[S]
_[BR]#OW[S]n
ideologue||ide[-h]ol[-l]o-G
_[C]#OW[S]
03:47pm 23/09/2011
Read 1 - Post
Post
ideologue||ide[-h]ol[-l]o-G
03:47pm 23/09/2011
#EYe[:S:M:]eAR
...k#Ills all ambiGUI-T...
03:38pm 23/09/2011
#StAndingSTockSTill
#BodyFLIcksAndEyeKNits
#ReTinaFLasHAndDamAgeBUrn
Post
Post
#EYe[:S:M:]eAR
_LonGe(t)vity_Ru(i)n_
_u.wear.the#SheepSkin...
03:38pm 22/10/2011
23/09/2011
07:42am
08:27am 13/08/2011
#StAndingSTockSTill
[thI(P)s trIck.L_sense of bLon(g)de+brun(pip)ette.
#BodyFLIcksAndEyeKNits
short_s(tAck)h(Jean)Arp_shock
...i.we[rewolf]ar.the.sheep_.2 ur head (side "s"plosion-y).]
#ReTinaFLasHAndDamAgeBUrn
[thump_tubs(drumming_thru_ur_OW(S)ie_head)
Post
"ur a dic[tatorial.maskin]k" -phrases
Post
scabbing.ur.emo(tion.all).s(r)ide.]
Post
_u.wear.the#SheepSkin...
_sh[k]ibb[le.d][XX]leth_
...i.we[rewolf]ar.the.sheep_.
08:27am 13/08/2011
08:41am 07/08/2011
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kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
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02:06pm 21/10/2011
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08:41am 07/08/2011
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kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibble.dox+kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
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kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
--------------------------+ her
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
cardboard
[grind]
4 those.
avatar [who
in.
might be made not
u.kno.
12:11pm 19/10/2011
the.
up of Boxes,
u.want.2.
kibble_kno:
but is *not*
|_don.t.u?_|
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kibble.dox+kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
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kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
kibbledoXXkibbleOXdribbleOS
[grind]
Mez does for code poetry as jodi and Vuk Cosic have done
for ASCII Art: Turning a great, but naively executed concept
into something brilliant, paving the ground for a whole generation of digital artists. (Florian Cramer). The impact of her
unique code/net.wurks [constructed via her pioneering net.
language mezangelle] has been equated with the work of
Shakespeare, James Joyce, Emily Dickinson, and Larry Wall.
u.kno.
u.want.2.
|_don.t.u?_|
Friends
Info
Calendar
mo[ve.men]tion
skip
/ 87
jonCates
3 3
(AKA: Broken Records: Hystories iof Noise && Dirty New Media)
CHICAGO 2011
COPY-IT-RIGHT
jonCates presenting !NV0()4XXX!0N555 @ Glitch exhibition curated by John Pomara and Dean TerryCentralTrak (2011)
/ 89
actions are a continuity, a conversation, a critical discourse calling attention to our predicament as increasingly technologized
subjects of global capitalism and corporatist regimes.
The corporate logic of our consumer computing devices relies
on false promises of - or rather belies broken hopes for - functionality; or rather is constructed/proposed on the basis of lies
which coverup a coercive force in the form or fabric of functionality. Business models are among the most operative metaphors
of everyday computing culture. The international business machines we use run embedded concepts such as the desktop
metaphor. The digital world in which we live efficient and highly
productive lives is individuated through hypercapitalism. We actively design and consume ourselves through our digital culture
in micropayments made real from the speculative dreams of
Xanadu imagined by Ted Nelson to the iOS integration of App
Store purchases and accounts managed by Apple Computers.
The isolated individuality of the single user keyboard and screen
arrives to us in hindsight through a McLuhanesque rear-view
window future: inherited from Burroughs Corporations calculators and International Business Machines typewriters, mixed
with the mechanics of radio and televisions, illuminated by the
bright weaponized light of utopian military industrial enthusiasm
from the American 1940s.
We are also connected to other memories and hystories in
personal, subjective, interpreted, encoded, shared, plural, diffuse and divergent networks of meaning. Alan Kay and Adele
Goldberg gave us a gift, a glimpse of playfulness or convivial
tools, as inspired by Ivan Illich, to rethink the destructive power of
global capital, spectacular consumption and coercive inculcation
claiming to be educational forms. First generation Net Artists,
experimental New Media pioneers/path-cutters and Glitch.err(s)
such as JODI inspire us to be curious cats who just wanna
push programs over the edge. v Mayhaps this curiosity comes
with a cost, as Eddo Stern has suggested, in a conversation with
me, that artistic positions such as these run the risk of perching too precariously on an ever-moving/mediated edge which is
made believed in waves of technosocial sharpness (a cultural
currency) and premeditated dullness (as forms fall into planned
obsolescence) then into nostalgic waters (kept warm by our own
autobiographies) by the self same corporate cultures we critique.
Crash is also all about uncertainty... Crash exposes a vast
range of social, political and computational issues at the same
time as itself acting or signifying exposure. Crash can readily be
seen as the exposure of the programmable and machinic in that
90 / GLI.TC/H READER[ROR] 20111
and more currently the preset variations of Glitch Hop as expressed through presets, filters and VST plugins such as Ableton
Lives Deconstruct filter (located in the Beat Repeat category)
or Kieran Fosters (ILLFORMEDs) directly named Glitch VST
plug-in from 2005. xi
Kodwo Eshun says, of his concept of remixologies in Iara Lees
documentary Modulations, that the remixological approach is
the convergence of all kinds of musics that in their own form
would never have mixed. xii While running lipstick traces xiii over
linear hystories, Eshun describes these combinatory effects/affects as implosions. His choices of words are always intentional
and intentionally poetic but betray the nonlinear dynamics of implosions, of destructive processes of collapse. Like Lyotardian
collapses of narrative or imploding Cathode Ray Tube screens,
these destructive moments are creative breaks or rather ruptures. These ruptures or breaks are also openings into newly
created interstices. As Rosa Menkman has articulated, we intentionally inhabit these spaces and/or generate them, break in
and open them this way because noise and glitches are (often)
about breaking or pushing boundaries and relaying the membranes of what is socially accepted as categories or genre. xiv
Noise music, in its many alterations, ruptures conventional generic boundaries: it is often not music at all, but noise, or sound,
combined with visual material... it escapes the closure of the
(theatrical) stage... When staged, the relation between performer
and everyday person is blurred, and participation by audience
members in Noise events is, in specific instances, a distinctive
phenomenon. - Csaba Toth xv
Cracked Ray Tube is a collaborative realtime project by Chicago artists Kyle Evans and James Connolly that combines analog television and vga monitor feedback
hacks. - http://crackedraytube.com
jonCates / 93
ning buffers that break like eggs and leak memory as if it was (at
least linguistically) fluid. Unstable fluids fill unstable media xxvi,
awash in memories made warm by our seemingly ongoing need
to personify and/or anthropomorphize machines, make speciesspecific biological metaphors as models to understand devices
of our own making or comfort ourselves in the face of our own
fears of approaching technological singularities beyond which
we have no capacities to imagine.
For me these are the recent futures and nearby pasts in which
Glitch, Noise and Dirty New Media connect and/or coalesce
which is why when the GLI.TC/H organizers initially asked me,
back towards the end of 2009, about how to frame/organize the
event, i suggested a focus on the intersections of Noise & New
Media Art. xxvii Menkman herself has also framed the conversation in these terms, utilizing Artifacts as an enframing device to
describe the apparatus of glitch as an expanded field of technosocial interrelations. The specific Chicago community that i have
worked to develop and discourses i have enabled attempts to
connect concepts of Noise and dirtiness of New Art, i.e. digitalPunk, Dirty New Media and Glitch Art in ways that literally correspond to and connect with communities of Noise Music and
musicians. The r4WB1t5 micro-festivals, which i initiated with
Jon Satrom and organized with an expansive group of artistparticipant-organizers over the years (from 2005, 2007) explicitly
focused on these intersections. xxviii
In the field of Noise Music a definition exists and is mobilized by
Noise musicians to identify Harsh Noise from other forms of
Noise Music. The harshness of Harsh Noise musics relates to
the music itself (i.e via high volumes, extreme amplitude shifts,
dramatic and dynamic jumps through frequency ranges, abrupt
rhythmic changes, shifts in tempo from non-movement to movement, etc) as well as the reception of the music (i.e. in the experience of listening to Harsh Noise music performances). Harsh
Noise is harsh. Glitch Art is glitched. But is it harsh? Or, is it
necessarily always harsh, hard-edged or crunchy? Such were
the questions posed by New Media artist and Media Art Histories
scholar Paul Hertz to Rosa Menkman in Chicago during the first
GLI.TC/H festival of Noise & New Media. Menkmans response
(as we walked along Wabash Avenue beside and underneath
train tracks that recall the trains that travel in her The Collapse
of PAL performance/video) was no, not necessarily... and i
would add that Glitch Art is often also cyberpsychedelic.
i use the term cyberpsychedelic to refer to the combinatory effects of mixing Cybernetics and Psychedelics as cultural influjonCates / 97
with Glitch Art by making an implicit claim that the festival is and
always has been about glitch when in fact the 2011 Curatorial
Statement introduces the term which was previously not included in the conception of BENT Festival. Stearns 2011 Curatorial
Statement for BENT also introduces a direct comparison to punk
as a motivation for breakages in Media Art and experimental
Musics. As he begins his text, Stearns claims that these concerns or this curatorial/organizational approach was unknown
before BENT began. xxxi while his motivation for making this claim
is understandable from a promotional perspective, his claim is
nonetheless clearly a convenient fiction (as i am demonstrating in this text) and a predictable form of myopia informed by
NYCentricism (which is prevalent especially in the .US) mixed
with an ahistoricism which would seek to intentionally lapse into
permanent states of willing amnesia about precedents and prejonCates / 99
hystories.
10 years before this most recent BENT Festival, in the summer
of 2001, i went to Rob Rays Deadtech Gallery in Chicago for
Post-Data in the Age of Low Potential, Pt. 2 The first ever Beige
gallery exhibition in which they exhibited, for the first time, their
proprietary 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System movies, along
with ASCII video and various prints. xxxii My memory of the event
is itself a bit distressed over time, slow faded to he point that i
actually remember it taking place instead at an artspace called
Heaven rather than DEADTECH. in any case, that summer
BEIGE started playing a regular night at a Chicago venue, called
Double Door, in a part of the space called Dirt Room:
THE 8 BIT CONSTRUCTION SET (St.Louis/Chicago/NYC)
fat bits and post data;; the first software distribution on vinyl -ever!!;; nasty home made 8 Bit Rave Trax, hacked Nintendo
games;; wicked DJ action;; EXCLUSIVE: the Beige Massive
Magic Show!! xxxiii
BEIGE events quickly commanded the attention of the communities which i work in and develop, especially in the Chicago-based
New Media Art communities and the academic environment of
New Media Art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, both
of which became foundational to our current Glitch Art context.
xxxiv
/ BEIGE was funny then and the members of the now disbanded collective are still individually funny and famously mobilize humor in their projects. They were also very serious and
had a serious attachment to positions they were taking and making in the world. One such position or attachment of theirs was
expressed through the project Low Level All Stars. Low Level
All Stars, now usually singularly credited to Cory Arcangel of
BEIGE Programming Ensemble and RSG, AKA Radical Software Group (which is in most cases a group made up of a single
individual, Alexander R. Galloway), xxxv articulates a particular
position that BEIGE developed and extended into the New Media Art worlds we share/d. Low Level All Stars is a curated collection of crack screen intros from pirated Commodore 64 game
software. The cracks themselves are then recracked in this collaboration which is MADE DIRECTLY FROM THE C64 WITH
NO COMPUTER EMULATION. xxxvi This project represents motivations and intents as do other BEIGE projects. Among these
intentionalities, BEIGE associated itself with Hacker/Cracker
cultures xxxvii and represented itself collectively and themselves
individually as hackers/crackers. xxxviii
As with the 2 examples previously footnoted, these associations and representations were variously/simultaneously ironic,
100 / GLI.TC/H READER[ROR] 20111
jonCates / 101
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xxxv. http://eai.org/title.htm?id=7694
xxxvi. LOW LEVEL ALL-STARS - RADICAL SOFTWARE GROUP
and BEIGE RECORDS (2003)
xxxvii. Hacking Art: Interview with Cory Arcangel - Paddy Johnson (2006)
xxxviii. TEMP IS #173083.844NUTS ON YOUR NECK, or, Hacker Fashion: A Photo Essay - Paul B.Davis, Cory Arcangel, and
Lauren Viera (2002)
xxxix. Jake Elliott and i concepted and organized an event
called Critical Glitch Artware at a conference called NOTACON
and within a demoscene party/competition called BLOCKPARTY
in 2010. We organized this event together and invited curators
(Nick Briz), artists/musicians/performers (Jon Satrom, James
Connolly and Eric Pellegrino) and collaborators (Mark Beasley
and Tamas Kemenczy) to be involved in this event in specific
ways. The organizers of GLI.TC/H were invited participants in
the Critical Glitch Artware event and vice versa. Previously, the
criticalartware crew (jonCates, Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy
and Mark Beasley) won first place in the Artware category at
BLOCKPARTY 2008. This winning of the Artware category was
infact a reframing of our being disqualified from the competition. In response to our disqualification we invented a category
and announced that we had won, running a social engineering hack on the conceptual operating system of BLOCKPARTY
and NOTACON. Recognizing the hackerly inventiveness of this,
the organizers then invited us as speakers the following year
to we reveal our secret source codes for speculative artware
operating systems and realtime applications at BLOCKPARTY
and NOTACON 2009. Previous to that Elliott and Kemenczy organized Artware Death Matches at an Free and Open Source
hacklab/community computing space called dai5ychain (which
Jake ran) within a larger artspace called the Flowershop (that
Elliott, Kemenczy, Nicholas OBrien and others ran) in Chicago
during the Chicago Hackmeetings. The Chicago Hackmeetings were inspired directly by a presentation on Hacklabs and
Hackmeetings by Xabier Barandiaran at a space then called
Polvo. Barandiarans presentation was organized by myself (as/
with criticalartware) and Daniel Tucker (as/with AREA Chicago).
xl. criticalartwares formation in 2002 was deeply informed
by the Radical Software [publication/platform/project] (by the
Raindance Corporation). criticalartware co-founders (jonCates,
Blithe Riley, Christian Ryan, jon.satrom and bensyverson) met in
jonCates Radical Software/Critical Artware course in the Film,
Video & New Media Department @ The School of the Art InstijonCates / 109
jonCates / 111
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Matthew Fuller
Know Your Sorts
Matthew Fuller & Andrew Goffey, Evil Media, MIT Press, 2012
Sorting takes a sequence of entities and permutates that sequence in order to arrive at a result which renders it more useful.
As a stratagematic force in its own right, therefore, sorting should
be understood both as something that yields results, in the form
of a ranking, and as something that generates its own terms of
composition, shifting relations between things that are sorted in
ways that imply multiple kinds of use and attention.
Amongst other qualities, permutation, the process of the shifting
and sifting of the order of things, has an aesthetics of its own
which renders it distinct from the conceptual lock-down of nominally Platonic essentialism favoured in certain kinds of mathematically grounded accounts of software. Such an aesthetics
establishes a vivid dynamic of interplay between algorithms, the
machinic context of hardware and software resources and the
data which is being handled, all of which makes demands on
the other and combine to render each permutational process
individual. Further iterations and enfoldings of sorting in other
media - such as social processes - make it particularly interesting. In such a context, knowing your sorts, gaining a sense of the
aesthetic dimensions of ordering is crucial. But aside from the
way in which it engages the sensorial aspect of being, sorting
has a profound and intricate relationship to systems of ordering.
Amongst these, sorting is something distinct from categorization,
to which it is naturally affiliated. Categorisation may be the result
of a sort, and categories may also be sorted, but it is the permutational moment and the kinds of power it produces and invokes
that we are concerned with here.
As a distinct field of thought, computer science usefully maintains intellectual and technical reserve in relation to its application, its wider place in the world. As such it maintains relations of
pretended universality, in that everything finds its place in computation, but also equally establishes its separateness. In such a
context of technical neutrality, sorts are evaluated in terms of the
optimal use of resources both for processing code and for han/ 119
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1
5
A classic problem in computer science, in which the shortest
path between several different points (cities to be visited by a
salesman) is to be calculated.
6
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jon.satrom,
Menkman,
Briz, JODI
Rosa
Nick
http://twitter.com/#!/4040404040404
The work 404 error by Jodi, [...] has become not just
about an error or non-place, but has been erected as an
iconographic work standing for a desired destination,
and spawned a cult of broken link art works. Such works,
[...] insist that their spectators establish new conceptual
paradigms for approaching these particular works of glitch
art.1
On August 18th we asked Jodi to create a special easteregg
for the GLI.TC/H website, in celebration of the iconic 1998 work
http://404.jodi.org/. The result was 4040404040404, a social
spiderhole for tweeting spiders and other web scutter spheres.
When mistyping an URL, or following a 404 link within the
GLI.TC/H domain, any user agent will automatically land
on 4040404040404. Every agent landing on such a page is
redirected to the 404 page, which sends specific user agent
information to the 4040404040404 Twitter page that will collect
for instance the visitors ip, and append it to the gli.tc/h domain
name from which the user was linked in, effectively curating and
creating gli.tc/hs 404 non-space cloud.
But 4040404040404 also exposes Twitters own active (and
normally completely obfuscated documentation (or scraping
process) of links shared on the microblogging website: when a
user shares their 404 (or any other) link on Twitter, Twitter will
index this url (to rank its relevance). The 404 page however,
redirects the spider back to Twitter, creating a publicly visible
feedback loop of Twitters corporate dark fiber scraping spiders,
bots and crawlers. 4040404040404 thus exposes and facilitates
the clouds made inside, with the help of the cloud(s).
While many glitchers fear that the potential for glitch
will be drastically challenged through cloud computing,
4040404040404 shows a new opportunity for glitching within
the clouds.
4040404040404 heavily draws upon spectator literacy (references to media technology texts, aesthetics and machinic
processes). It prompts the spectator to engage not only with
technical, but also with subcultural and meta-cultural gestures.
This is how users do not consume but instead become active
participants in a culture invested in constant re-definition.
Alexander Galloway
FORK
/ 137
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A Bill Miller
gridworks2000
/ 143
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Laimonas Zakas
/ 147
/ 149
Iman Moradi
Glitchbreak 11/11/11
/ 151
- 2011 only one person had something aggressively opinionated to say to me about something I had said, Im saddened
that most times people overrated the Glitch Dissertation I wrote.
http://oculasm.org/glitch
Some people were generous enough to call it a PhD dissertation, it most certainly was no such thing, and a few others translated bits in totality as their own, to me that speaks volumes
about how young this field is! I feel it definitely either needs to
marry into projects that combine great compelling content or
be used as a dominant part of a work by a well known artist
of an another field who then discusses the glitch in relation to
their work.
Having said all this, the glitch is still only young and already
there is an inventive, beautiful community that is formed around
discussing the glitch, creating works. A charge that cant be levied against it, is that its stagnant and not evolving, it is evolving,
it does have it critics too. I hope they dont hold back!
The people at the forefront of this genre who may consider
themselves as old hands at it, for all intents and purposes are
quite young and are always exquisitely excited and excitable
with the exception of myself on a bad day and maybe my long
time collaborator Ant Scott (BEFLIX) who genuinely needs to be
celebrated for bringing all this about and possibly being the first
to coin this term glitch art.
As a last note, what I really liked about what Ant did on his glitch
blog those many years ago was everything to do with content,
he made some distinctions about the provenance of each glitch
and sometimes shared fragments of stories about them but never went too far to unravel the mystery of their existence or how
they came to be. Things were alluded to and thats what made
it compelling at least thats the lingering impression I have of it.
Perhaps what made a lasting and significant emotional connection were those evocative one line abstract narratives or bits of
micro-fiction. In a sense, they dont have anything to do with the
glitch itself but amplify its experience.
I certainly hadnt heard of glitch art till I came across Ants work.
Most people flirt with it for a while and either decide to stay or
leave, some people find the vocabulary, others invent their own.
The ones who do form lasting relationships with the glitch will
almost certainly find it very hard to shake off.
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