2013 brought with it many surprises but was mostly a time for me to reflect on my practice and refine my skills. Unlike the previous year summaries I won’t give a massive list of everything that I’ve done – lest I still be writing this article at 23:59 on December 31st – just a couple of selections from the highlights from each month.
January
Nothing, as usual, happend in January
February
AlphabeNt, the book that I presented at GLI.TC/H 2112, finally got its release. The book, by Australian Authors Daniel Purvis and Drew Taylor, remixes the alphabet using glitch art aesthetics. Go buy it! I made a video to celebrate the occasion.
In addition to co-directing the rehang of the FRAME_birmingham exhibition, February also saw the release of Lbire Graphics Magazine 2.1, for which I am now a contributor. Various technical issues have prevented the next release from coming out, but in the meantime go read the current issue, Localisation/Internationalization.
March
The main event for this month was Dirty New Media. Since there was no GLI.TC/H 2013 this event was the only chance to bring together many of those from the digital arts, new media and glitch art world.
Being situated within the Barber Institute of Fine Arts presented many interesting opportunities and challenges. They don’t seem so keen on letting me drill holes into the walls 😉 regardless, it was great to challenge the space and situate broken Kindles next to a collection of artworks dating back to the 1500s!
April
Another slow month which saw me included in the Art + Copyright online exhibition from Interartive.
I exhibited some gifs from Copyright Atrophy, which will launch soon. Honest.
May
For awhile I have/had felt that I didn’t understand the tools that I was using or how to develop new ones, so in May I took a break from producing artwork. My Github account finally saw some usage and, in general, a lot of coding skills improved! w00t!
I also released this animation which I had been working on sporadically since 2008. Never again.
June
The highlight for June was the opening of the Glitch Moment/ums exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery in London, for which I performed at the opening event.
Ever since I graduated from my undergraduate studies I’ve been admiring the work of Furtherfield from afar, so to be included in one of their exhibitions was a highlight of my artistic career! Here’s a little video from the exhibition:
July
I took part in a rather special edition of Bring Your Own Beamer (BYOB), which saw the usual barrage of artists projected against a backdrop of music from Mark Ronson. At times I couldn’t tell if the projections were supporting the music or vice versa, but I had a good time regardless.
July also saw the release of Multimedia Programming with Pure Data, for which I was a technical reviewer. If you don’t know anything about Pure Data already then I’d recommend getting it!
I also discovered the joys of analogue video hardware.
August
An old friend of mine, Gabriella Gardosi, was in the area so we decided to collaborate on some artwork. The combination of noisy digital shapes and organic shapes seemed to work well!
Later that month I also unveiled my reworking of Variations on a theme by Casey & Finch. The original work by Erik Bünger used the aesthetic of a skipping scratched CD as a composition method. I aimed to replicated this using scripts and coding.
September
For the Lumiere screenings I did a remix/remake of the Dark, Eerie and Manic video that myself and Alex Juno made earlier in the year.
The highlight for September was definitely doing visuals at SuperByte Festival! Everthing about it – the artists, the musicians, the organisers, the location, the free sweets – was completely awesome 🙂
Photo by Jon Blenky
Above all, I liked being surrounded by a bunch of my peers and friends, and making many more new ones. Even if I don’t do visuals for it next year I’ll still be attending.
October
In addition to running in a half-marathon and giving a lecture in internet cultures at Fierce Festival, I was in Arles again for databit.me #3.
This year I had a “guest” spot as a performer at the closing party (last year I was artist in residence there). It was great to meet noteNdo for the first time in three years and also to finally perform with Axel Debeul on the Magnetophon piece.
noteNdo did a great writeup of the event.
November
Shortly after getting back from Arles I was off again to Barcelona! I perfomed with Gabriella Gardosi and Kerian Lao as Feedback Symphony at Molécula/The Wrong Biennale. We were joined by musicans Diego Lara, Evgeni Krane and Hugh Tetley.
It was fun again to explore combining two different practices and also great to visit a new city! Spain’s nice 🙂
At the end of the month I curated BYOB Birmingham 2013, my final show of the year, with assitance of the awesome Pete Ashton.
Photo by Katja Ogrin
We had more projectors than last time and the music reached 11 on the awesome scale. I’m just thankful none of the equipment blew up.
December
December is usually a very quiet month, but not this time! I performed at the 7 Days of Sound Festival, took part in a group exhibition in London and then did a decidedly different performance at Come Heavy Sleep with Kindle Theatre.
Photo by Jonathon Blackford
This production, which is loosely based around Othello, saw me create my usual style of noisy visuals but it a more controlled way. I also got to stand on a two-metre high plinth in the middle of the stage :-/ Overall, though, it was a very enjoyable challenge for me and great to apply my working style in different areas.
And so, that’s it for the year!
I have no definite goals for 2014, but I do hope to do more explorations into the poltical side of my artwork. As many of you will know, I exclusively use Ubuntu Linux and open source software for my work and have done for many years. This isn’t accidental, and I do so that others will be more easily able to access my work and the processes behind it. This area is something I want to focus on more in the future.
See you next year x