Monthly Archives: April 2010

Theremin Day

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For the last month or so the fizzPOP team and Mr Underwood have been planning the awesomely awesome Theremin Day that took place at fizzPOP on Saturday 24th April.

The day kicked off with an optical theremin building workshop, which produced some very interesting sounds. One person described the noises produced as “lil creatures… being tortured by having light shone on them“. Decide for yourself:

The circuitry for all of the theremin were the same, but the housing for the device made them all that more interesting. I think Julia’s Apple Theremin wins some kind of award for most healthy looking theremin! More photos from the day:

After all of the noises we did a frantic de, then reconstruction for the evening performance featuring 8Bit Pete, Mr Underwood and Ms Hypnotique (all totally real names).

First up, 8Bit Pete treated us all to his own Thingamagoop optical theremin and even invited earlier workshop attendees to join in the performance

8bit Pete (by hellocatfood)

Mr Underwood then treated us to a rather hypnotic rendition of Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music using optical theremin and torches:


It’s definitely worth watching the whole 10 minute performance!

Finally, world renowned theremin player Ms Hypnotique treated us to a short history of the theremin, improvised compositions and performances of a few classics, including that Dr Who theme tune

Ms Hypnotique (by hellocatfood)

Nikki has a few good videos of the performance on her Vimeo channel

I think the day was really a great success and I can definitely see a future workshop taking place and I’d really like to see Pendulum music being performed again somewhere. Well done to all involved in making this event happen!

Next up, the fizzPOP residency at The Lombard Method

Show of Science at TROVE

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This week at the old Science Museum there’s an exhibition from TROVE that features a video from a.a.s, which features meeee! And now for some details:

image courtesy of Pete Ashton from his series The former Museum of Science and Industry

Pseudo-science, the make believe, the hand made and discovery are themes running through the four artists in this exhibition. a.a.s. have created a new piece of film and installation for the show dealing with themes of the scientific experiment, whether real or unreal is up to you. The same is visualised in Victoria Jenkins’ beautiful black and white photographic series Lapis Philosophorum of constructed experiments. The works of Lee Stowers and Luke Williams, though also constructed objects, are real, Luke’s camera and Lee’s music boxes are beautiful in their antique appearances. All pieces hint at the historic, at first glance there is nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary, though with closer inspection there is something odd about the works. The double take allows this Show of Science to move from a series of simple objects of science to pieces that make you question its use, its reliability as official face and of the make believe.

I can only speak for the video that I’m in, but if you like anything to do with aliens you’ll love it! The show opens this Friday from 6pm – 8pm at The Old Science Museum [location details] and is open from 30th April – 16th May 2010 by appointment thereafter.

Where does it all go wrong?

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I recently turned on the TV to find that the channel it was last on was totally glitching!

What I kept trying to figure out was where the glitch was occurring. Sure, it’s on screen, but what part of the signal is getting errors? I imagine that there’s three places it could’ve gone wrong: at Virgin Media headquaters, on the receiver at home or from the HDMI cable connecting the receiver to the TV. I turned the channel over and the glitch was gone, but that still doesn’t rule out where it could’ve been happening.

I think approach is one less seen in the glitch art world, but one that I’d really like to explore. It’s one thing to glitch an image or video on screen, but I have come across few examples that modify the screen itself, or the signal being sent to the screen. It might be a case of analogue versus digital.

One artist/hacker/tinkerer that I’ve come across recently is Karl Klomps, who appears to like to mess around with video signals:

failter 4 from karl klomp on Vimeo.

(thanks for the recommendation Rosa!)

Whilst I don’t yet have the technical skills to do something like that I think there are other ways that I can explore analogue glitches, even if it doesn’t actually involve computers or anything electrical.

Critical Glitch Artware

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Blockparty and Notacon will be taking place in Cleaveland, Ohio from 15th-18th April and for it criticalartware will be showing a range of “Noise && New Media Art; Realtime Audio-Video Performances; Art Mods and Art Games as well as a Glitch Art screening program curated by Nick Briz!“

For this they’ll be showing one of my recent glitchy videos as well as a whole host of awesome glitch artwork, so if you’re in the Ohio area please do check it out, or tune in to glitch.fm on April 16th for a live stream of the event.

Glitched Badges

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Badges from my video are now available from the Created in Birmingham shop!

glitched badges

This marks somewhat of a new shift for me as it’s the second time that I’ve taken glitch off the screen and into a more physical form. I do like that when I sent the images to print I received this e-mail:

Thank you for our order from —.

Just wanted to double check your artwork – the five files we’ve got are different colours of large pixel-style blocks, is this correct? Just wanted to ensure the files have come through to us correctly.

I’m looking at setting up an online shop for people to buy the rest of the badges and perhaps other glitchy stuff.