serial consign

[francis theberge / trame004 (screen capture)]

For the past few months I've been communicating with the energetic Francis Theberge, who has been acting as an ambassador of sorts for the TIND video/art collective. I was introduced to Francis through his contribution to the last issue of Vague Terrain and I am quite indebted to Carrie Gates for tuning me in to his experimental video. TIND stands for thisisnotdesign, and the five member outfit have been active with a variety of multimedia installation and VJ-related projects over the last decade in Montreal. I've been having a lot of fun working through Francis' archives and thought it would be worthwhile to share links to a few of his projects and the work of TIND.

The above video is the fifth installment of Francis' trame series of experimental shorts. Each of these works is a rapid-fire inventory of glitch effects, treatments and composites. These pieces all clock in at around 60 seconds and feel much more like thematic case studies than demo reels. The shorts each explore similar base footage (love those ghostly female forms), and then process said imagery with a minor arsenal of digital and analog tools, including a video glitcher by Karl Klomp. Francis' dedication to error-aesthetics is quite apparent and range of techniques he employs is commendable. He recently consolidated this research into circuit bending, video feedback and camera mods into glitchism: hacking artistique, a workshop that he presented at this years edition of the Mapping Festival in Geneva.

You can view the rest of the trame series on the thisisnotdesign youtube channel or higher resolution FLV's of the first two shorts in Francis' aforementioned Vague Terrain submission.

[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]

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]

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: