GLI.TC/H happened in Chicago, Amsterdam and Birmingham last year but I’ve only just gotten around to making this short video of the event in Birmignham, using footage captured by Pete Ashton
Enjoy!
(I had previously made an overview video for GLI.TC/H 2010)
Part of Birmingham City University‘s involvement in GLI.TC/H 2011 involved me teaching Kate Pushkin, a student on the MA Digital Arts in Performance course, how to “do” glitch art, with the aim of devising a ~15 minute piece to be performed at GLI.TC/H. Given the number of tutorials and tools that are available online one would imagine this to be an easy challenge, right? Well, I only had the week prior to GLI.TC/H to do all of this. Yikes!
It’s true that taking leaps instead of baby steps and working under pressure helps us to learn, and so Gregory Sporton, the course leader, explicitly only gave Pushkin a week to devise this piece, with only a one-day tutorial with myself.
After GLI.TC/H had ended I caught up with Pushkin to see how she approached this task. The first step in teaching her was to find out exactly what she knew about glitch art:
I didn’t know what [glitch art] was. I did know what a glitch was.
I’ve got the impression that the coding side of things and the software side of it, in that respect, is considered key [in glitch art].
Pushkin had done some experimenting with video editing in the past and had, although unintentionally, come into contact with glitch aesthetics through feedback loops. Due to the short time allocated there really wasn’t much of a chance to explore the somewhat hazy history of glitch art.
I went on a couple of glitch artists’ websites and they didn’t work on my computer and I couldn’t tell if that was a big joke or if actually my computer just couldn’t handle what it was doing.
In trying to understand and describe what she had found, Pushkin says:
What I thought glitch was was very much the kind of very modern looking bright colours […] Moving visuals that have abstract content and are quite lurid.
Although the debate still rages on about what glitch art is or isn’t I feel this description is really quite accurate. Although she has described glitch art and the processes as very digital-looking and relying on computers the content she chose to use somewhat surprised me.
Reproducing pixelation using a disco ball
Pushkin had chosen a lot of content that had a very analogue feel to it. The glitches present represented the types found on VHS tapes and old records rather than compression artifacts or digital errors. She utilised her own Super 8 film footage together with attempting to replicate compression artifacts using analogue techniques.
I tried to replicated [the pixelation effect] using a disco ball and my webcam.
Putting the pixelation effect on the organic pixelation of the disco ball. That’s the sort of thing that, if I was going to take [glitch art] further, that’s the sort of thing I’d be into.
Considering that I had mostly shown her glitch art that had a very digital feel to it (databending, datamoshing etc) I was somewhat surprised by her choice of content. Nonetheless, I’m very pleased that she was able to find a style that she was comfortable working with.
On producing her content Pushkin faced several challenges. As we’ve seen she used analogue methods to produce her footage but she still wanted to make something that could integrate well with the festival and have a digital feel to it.
The first thing that Pushkin did, in order to try and glitch her videos was to “Download stuff wrong”:
The very first thing that I did was downloading stuff wrong. Downloading things […] But then saving it before it was finished in order to see what the results would be
What Pushkin had unknowingly come across was what happens when you remove I-frames from videos, or what is more commonly known as Datamoshing. For Pushkin this was a very much a hit-and-miss operation, with most of her clips being unplayable. To assist her I took some of her content and ran it through the What Glitch? scripts, but it was clear that she was after a more analogue feel.
Below is a sample of some of the content that she produced, together with the audio from her performance:
The other challenge came from the software. Pushkin was more akin to using software such as Final Cut Pro to produce videos, but for GLI.TC/H she would be faced with the task of performing live. As a user of Pure Data for nearly all of my performance work I attempted to teach her the basics of this. Although it is a somewhat complicated program, under the right supervision it is very easy to get a video player that has a few basic effects. I gave Pushkin a short tutorial and then later provided her with some abstractions that I use in my video mixer. The resultant patch looked like this:
Click to embiggen
As a tool for manipulating videos Pushkin found Pure Data inspiring, but time constraints prevented her from delving further into the software:
I really wanted to be able to make my own patch for my own effect, and I found it quiet frustrating, but at the same time I did give up relatively quickly because it became obvious what is going to possible in the time, given that I’d have to do something other than just make an effect for 20 minutes of entertainment.
Also technical problems sometimes arose that threatened her performance:
I had a lot of trouble with crossfading and my computer. And every time I’ve ever done it except the actual performance my computer crashed when I first faded too much. But I learnt how to get it running again in 35 seconds, so that’s a good lesson for life!
Despite all of this, it all came together on the day of GLI.TC/H. You can watch her whole performance below:
I’m really very pleased with her performance. Pushkin is by no means a novice in producing artwork, but to tackle a whole new style of art in a few days and then perform in front of nearly 70 people is quite an achievement.
I wonder, is glitch art (and circuit bending) something that could/should be taught at art institutions?
Shortly after GLI.TC/H hit Birmingham I did a short interview with Jonathan Melhuish for the Redbrick, Birmingham University’s 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.
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)
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:
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.
GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Realtime A/V: Jon Satrom
Jon Satrom presents a prepared desktop performance, where he uses the operating system itself as an instrument:
Bio
Satrom spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits. Satrom teaches a course on Glitch Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, runs a creative web and video studio called Studio Thread, performs real-time audio/video, creates colorful glitch-ware, and is involved in various collective online and offline new-media efforts.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University
GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Realtime A/V: Art of Failure
Nicolas Maigret of Art of Failure will perform 8 Silences, which is a completely audio-only performance:
8 silences offers a sensible representation of Internet by broadcasting audio streams that travel and reverberate trough the web. Initially silents, the streams progressively incorporate an infinity of transformations or “errors” that modify the sound as it circulates on the network. These alterations are comparable to a form of erosion caused by the network space – they are a key to allow different mental representations of this digital topography. Presented as a live performance, 8 silences is a sound immersion in the heart of data flows.
8 silences is a live piece made from mixing together several silent ogg and mp3 stream loops with different quality settings (error corrections are bypassed). Each loop is going to a different location on the globe, and then coming back to the location of the concert venue. Performers stand with a laptop in different parts of the venue (non scenic performance). The audio streamloops are exchanged in wifi around the public.
The imperfections allow to identify a medium, in the style of glass becoming visible by the accumulated dusts and scratches. Within the ART OF FAILURE collective, Nicolas Maigret and Nicolas Montgermont experiment the capacity of the contemporary technologies to generate specific sound or visual languages. In their realizations, the internal characteristics of the media are revealed through their errors, dysfunctions, borderlines or failure threshold, which they develop sensory and immersive audio visual experiences.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University
GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Realtime A/V: Minuek and Chromatouch
The second of our Realtime A/V performances comes from UK-based VJs Minuek and Chromatouch. Here they are as a part of the VJ collective Freecode earlier in the year:
Bio
Minuek is a UK based Audio Visual artist. Starting out doing video for the Brighton based Wrong Music label. He has worked doing live visuals at various festivals and events around the UK. Performing Audio Visual sets since 2008 working with node based creation tools. He is part of the Freecode Audio Visual collective, a group of artists exploring realtime audio and video that started from a performance at the ÊExyzt ‘Burningham’ installation at this years Fierce Festival in Birmingham. The collective have performed various shows in unique locations over the intervening months.
Bio
leon trimble goes under the name chromatouch and has been tweaking digital stuff since the last millenium. starting making music on amigas in the early 90s he progressed to noodling with graphics and 3d animation. by the time the millenium bug failed to materialise he’d started using pcs and become a web designer. video editing and photography had taken hold of his creative bent by this time and he started making visuals for dance clubs. having become fairly popular locally and further afield he started turning to more artistic avenues using his skills to express leftfield ideas of light.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University
GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Screening: Andrew Benson – Click on it
Bio
Andrew Benson is a visual artist and performer based in San Francisco. His multi-disciplinary and experimental work is a playful engagement with interconnected systems and feedback, and is the result of complex technological or physical processes. ÊWithin the technical abstract spaces, a clumsy or self-conscious human presence challenges the purely analytical and synthetic nature of digital representation. As an extension to studio work, Andrew Benson has worked as Video Designer/Director for a number of high profile touring musical acts. He has been teaching electronic media courses at San Francisco Art Institute since 2008 and creates online content for Cycling ’74 Software.
Screening: Nick Briz – A New Ecology for the Citizen of a Digital Age
Bio
Nick is a new-media artist/writer/thinker/educator/organizer living and working in Chicago, IL; organizer for Upgrade!Chicago, a monthly art and technology series held at the Nightingale Theater; co-organizer/founder of GLI.TC/H; as an educator heÕs developed and taught courses on new-media art, Internet art + culture[s], remix art + culture[s] and experimental music; he developes digital/web/interactive projects for various clients with Branger_Briz. His work has been exhibited at festivals and galleries around the world and is currently distributed through Video Out Distribution in Vancouver, Canada as well as openly and freely on the web.
The letters AAS do not stand for anything: they should be pronounced as a word. AAS is a self-producing artwork, creating itself through performance fictions and collective consciousness. Our work is future-orientated and is developed through symbolic activity, often drawing upon coincidence and chance as forms of divination. We aim to discover and produce new, alternate readings of reality that we encounter together. We use familiar ritual structures and music to bring people to the appropriate state of mind
Screening: Theodore Darst – cannotfindmywayhome
Bio
theodore darst was born in nyc, became a man in new haven, ct and currently lives, works, and goes to art school in chicago. his videos and prints have been shown internationally and he has provided live visuals for some of the hardest hitting names in drone music.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University
GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Screening: Jon Satrom – Too Many Cats
Bio
Satrom spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits. Satrom teaches a course on Glitch Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, runs a creative web and video studio called Studio Thread, performs real-time audio/video, creates colorful glitch-ware, and is involved in various collective online and offline new-media efforts.
Screening: Dan Tombs – kacien
Bio
Dan Tombs studied Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design, graduating in 2003. He has performed widely in the UK and internationally, exhibited at EAST international 2005, Visions Gallery Tokyo, Nottingham’s Broadway Media Centre, and the World Expo in Shanghai. He now lectures in Film and Moving Image at Norwich’s University College of the Arts, and is currently performing bespoke live visuals for Jon Hopkins and Kompakt’s Walls. D.I.N. is a sound art collective consisting of Dave Ramage, Benji Fox and Iain Wallace, using a homemade DIY aesthetic, they have provided audio accompaniment for various audio visual works and were also commissioned to create a new score of contemporary electronic music for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
Screening: Rosa Menkman – Radio Dada
Bio
Menkman is a Dutch visualist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Rosa emphasizes their positive consequences. ÊBy combining both her practical as well as her academic background, she merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory artifacts (a glitch studies). Besides the creation of a formal ‘Vernacular of File Formats’, within her static work, she also creates (narrative) work in her Acousmatic Videoscapes. In these Videoscapes she strives to connect both sound and video artifacts conceptually, technically and sometimes narratively.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University
GLI.TC/H has started and on Saturday November 19th it’ll be making its way to VIVID in Birmingham, UK! The full programme is available here, and as a PDF. Over the week I’ll be providing a bitesized overview of the upcoming events.
Screening: Jeff Donaldson – Pin 1/12 effect
Bio
Jeff Donaldson is a multimedia artist, guitarist and composer of electronic and acoustic sound. An active member internationally in micromusic as the audio/visual project Notendo, solo work and collaborations as Odea Duo Vii, HD and Wzt Hearts, JeffÕs work encompasses a broad spectrum of audio/visual composition and improvisation. In 2001, with the intent to create animation entirely with his own hardware modifications, Jeff began creatively short-circuiting NES consoles. There is no new code involved, only raw, machine logic. This work has led to international recognition in new media art and has inspired people world-wide to pursue similar expressions.
Screening: Ben Baker-Smith and Evan Kühl (Vaudeo Signal) – Unsound
Bio
The creation of Ben Baker-Smith and Evan KŸhl, Vaudeo Signal explores synaesthetic experiences through the rudimentary interconnectivity of sound and light. Analog signals passing through complex, interconnected networks of archaic audio and video hardware result in complex visual and auditory feedback. The system incites change through the manipulation of its inherent noise. Ben and Evan have been performing Vaudeo Signal since their debut at the 2010 Gli.tc/h festival. For 2011 They are excited to have the opportunity to make an appearance at both the Chicago and Amsterdam Gli.tc/h events.
Screening: Evan Meaney – Ceibas: The Well of Representation
Bio
evan meaney is an american-born scientist who teaches time-based media design atÊthe university ofÊtennessee.Êhis research, curation and artistic practices delve into liminalitiesÊand glitches of all sorts,Êequating failing data to ghosts, seances andÊarchival hauntology. he has been anÊiowa arts fellow, anÊartist in residence at theÊexperimental television center, aÊprincess grace nominee, and a foundingÊmember ofÊGLI.TC/H. currently, evan is hard at work with the super computing team atÊoak ridge nationalÊlaboratoriesÊon new glitch projects made possible through generous funding fromÊthe national scienceÊfoundation.
Meta
GLI.TC/H 20111 will include works from over 100 participants from more than a dozen countries and will be taking place in virtual-space at http://gli.tc/h and in real-space
GLI.TC/H BIRM is part of The Garage presents… programme from VIVID and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Birmingham City University