curate the glitch

Submitted by Greg J. Smith on Sat, 2007-09-22 12:53.

steven reid / screen burn (please wait) / 2005

[steven reid / screen burn (please wait) / 2005]

I capped off a really exciting week on Thursday with a micro-lecture at the first Toronto edition of talk20. Talk20 is an informal salon that operates in the same style as Pecha Kucha and Dorkbot. The gatherings are dedicated to bring together a variety of artists and designers to present work connected by a common thread. The first talk20 explored Error, and I was invited by the series coordinators Mason White and Lola Sheppard to showcase a selection of glitch art culled from the Vague Terrain archives.

When Neil Wiernik and I launched Vague Terrain in September 2005 we dedicated our first issue to an exploration of digital detritus and glitch art. This theme of interrogating software, hardware and modes of production has remained central within the work we have curated and it was exciting for me to highlight this specific vector that runs through the entire history of our digital arts quarterly.

tony scott / endemerol (detail) / 2002

[tony scott / endemerol (detail) / 2002]

The above image is from an early work by UK artist Tony Scott, (aka Beflix). Tony has been subverting a wide range of technology over the course of his artistic career and he is deeply invested in the process of cultivating error. Tony is also very talented at massaging glitch output as is quite evident in his recent mixed media work Primitive Operation and Crystal Method. I still consider his submission to Vague Terrain one of the strongest that we have received.

robin armstrong / camouflage (still) / 2004

[robin armstrong / camouflage (still) / 2004]

The image above is a still from Camouflage, a video piece by my friend and peer Robin Armstrong. The project utilizes aerial footage of Cuba as source material that has been (mal)processed by a corrupt video codec. This creates an abstracted landscape that foregrounds the idiosyncrasies implicit in converting analog to digital video.

If these projects are of interest to you, you may want to take a look at the following submissions from the Vague Terrain archives: Liav Koren, Tasman Richardson, Marius Watz, Meta, Ben Bogart, Jeremy Rotzstain, Michaela Schwentner and Steven Read. All of this work addresses the error and/or revels in complexity and code.

A few related links:

  • Two years later, I'm still happy with my foreword to the Vague Terrain issue on digital detritus.
  • Tony Scott and Iman Morandi have been working on a compendium on glitch art for the past few years. The project appears to be nearing production, so hopefully it will be released shortly. I'm excited to see the fruits of their labour as the book will feature content by JODI, Cory Arcangel, Karl Klomp and Meta amongst many other artists.
  • The archives of Paul Prudence's excellent dataisnature blog is chock-full of related work.
  • 44422435 to nowhere, a video piece by Entter and Goto80, was recently added to the Rhizome Artbase. The project is a C64 megamix of RAM hacks and SID madness. I love this project as it somehow manages to be fun and bleak at the same time.

    • Trackback URL for this post:

    http://serialconsign.com/trackback/123
    »

    great issue + grids

    Submitted by Patricia (not verified) on Mon, 2007-09-24 11:07.

    digital detritus was a great issue... Liav's grids were mesmerizing.

    »