Monthly Archives: December 2011

Interview with the Redbrick – GLI.TC/H BIRM

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Shortly after GLI.TC/H hit Birmingham I did a short interview with Jonathan Melhuish for the Redbrick, Birmingham University’s newspaper.

GLI.TC/H Birm in Redbrick Newspaper

Original Photo by Jonathan Melhuish. Click to read article

Jonathan Melhuish: So, what is “glitch art”?

Antonio: Glitch art is making art out of analogue or digital errors. It can bemade using computers using techniques like attempting to open animage in a text editor or with physical objects, like opening up electronic toys andpoking around at its circuitry until you achieve odd and unexpectedresults.

It sounds like you’re celebrating technical failure.

Indeed we are. We don’t discard mistakes, we actively seek them out!

Is glitching something that only geeks can truly appreciate?

When it comes to glitch art, all you need is curiosity. When you startto do it, you may find it’s lots of fun and will achieve vivid imagery that would be difficult, or nearly impossible, to achieve using conventional methods and programs such as Photoshop. If you lookat popular culture, you’ll find artists such as Dizzee Rascal, KanyeWest and Everything Everything using these techniques in their music videos.

Read the full article on their website.

Circuit Bending at Fargo Hack Play Space

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On Sunday 27th November I did a one-day micro-residency at Fargo Hack Play Space in Coventry. I was asked to bring unfinished projects, completed projects or something completely new that I wanted to start on. I have a fair bit of Pure Data and Processing code and ideas that need(ed) a lot of attention but I had serious doubts of whether they could be completed in six hours.

To say I had absolutely no idea what I was going to achieve in one day would be quite an understatement.

Fargo Hack Play Space

In the end I took along my laptop, the unfinshed audio cable hack, an Arduino, and the Vtech Learning Alphabet Classroom Toy toy that I had previously bought for a fizzPOP Circuit Bending Hack Session:

My previous attempts to hack it back then were largely unsuccessful. I was able to cut out the audio completely and break the toy on several occasions, but what I was after was a way to control or glitch the audio and LCD screen.

Fargo Hack Play Space

Part of my problem was that there were very few components to play around with. Aside from the buttons themselves all I had was a circuit board that had very tiny components.

Thankfully, with the help of Dom and Ashley I was able to locate the resistors and attach a potentiometer. Results varied throughout the day, but I was able to get it producing something out of the ordinary!

But then it borked.

Regardless, it’s progress! I’ll be continuing work on it soon, and may even try hooking up the buttons to an Arduino or my computer to trigger other things.

Thanks to Dom and Ashley for inviting me down there for the day, and for the pizza 🙂

GLI.TC/H Birmingham

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GLI.TC/H Birmingham happened on 19th November at VIVID and I’ve only just had time to recover from it.

As the curator of GLI.TC/H Birmingham I’d like to give my own set of thanks:

  • Arts Council England for supporting GLI.TC/H Birmingham.
  • Birmingham City University, in particular two staff members:
    • Gregory Sporton, for supporting the event, even if he doesn’t quite get what it all is!
    • Lorna Hards, whose course, Methods and Models of Curatorial Practice, gave me the confidence to curate GLI.TC/H Birmingham
  • VIVID, for accepting the proposal for GLI.TC/H Birmingham to be part of their “The Garage Presents…” programme and for providing an amazing space to hold this event in as well as technical and programming assistance
  • The GLI.TC/H Bots (Rosa, Nick and Jon) for being great friends and for allowing me to curate GLI.TC/H Birmingham. Moar thanks to Jon Satrom and Nick Briz for traveling to all three GLI.TC/H events (Chicago, Amsterdam and Birmingham)
  • Flip Festival, for hosting a great night of GLI.TC/H video previews. Photos/programme available here
  • Leon (Chromatouch), Pete and James and Sarah, for being great assistants and filling in gaps that I overlooked.
  • fizzPOP, for being a great hackerspace and providing assistance in the workshops
  • All of the artists that gave workshops, delivered lectures, performed or had videos/bumpers screened at GLI.TC/H Birmingham.
  • All of my friends that attended GLI.TC/H Birmingham or supported it in another way. I know that a lot my friends don’t quite understand glitch art, so it was great to see them at it!
  • And last, but not least, thanks to you, the audience, for traveling from the far reaches of England (and in some cases the world) to attend GLI.TC/H Birmingham. I hope that the day gave you a better insight into the world of technological failure!

    I was personally pleasantly surprised by the turnout throughout the whole day, to the point that we ran out of seats! So, thanks for making it a great success 🙂

Videos of all of the performances and lectures are available, thanks to Pete Ashton, on this YouTube playlist. Here’s the video of Jon Satrom’s prepared desktop:

Pete also took photos for the event and many more are available in the GLI.TC/H Flickr group. If you have any photos please add them to this group! Here’s one of my favourite photos, featuring Nicolas Maigret from Art of Failure:

Glitch Birmingham 34

I can’t personally comment on what is next in store for GLI.TC/H (GLI.TC/H 2012???), but I’m already planning future, much smaller, glitch art events to take place locally. I’m always up for collaborating on this, just get in touch.

Now time for sleep.